To David Low Dodge of New York belongs the high honor of having written
the first pamphlets published in America directed expressly against the
war system of nations, and of having founded the first peace society
ever organized in America or in the world. His first pamphlet, _The
Mediator's Kingdom not of this World_, was published in 1809. His second
and more important pamphlet, _War Inconsistent with the Religion of
Jesus Christ_, was prepared for the press in 1812. This was two years
before the publication of Noah Worcester's _Solemn Review of the Custom
of War_, which was issued in Boston on Christmas Day, 1814. Early in
1812 Mr. Dodge and his friends in New York deliberated on the expediency
of forming a peace society; but on account of the excitement attending
the war with Great Britain this was postponed until 1815. In August of
that year the New York Peace Society, the first in the world, was
organized, with Mr. Dodge as its president. This was four months before
the organization of the Massachusetts Peace Society (December 26, 1815)
under the leadership of Noah Worcester, and nearly a year before the
English Peace Society, the first in Europe, was formed (June 14, 1816)
in London.
The preeminent historical interest attaching to Mr. Dodge's pioneering
work in the peace cause in this country would alone justify and indeed
seem to command the republication of his pamphlets at this time, when
the great ideas for which he so courageously and prophetically stood are
at last winning the general recognition of humane and thoughtful men.
But it is not merely historical interest which warrants a revival of
attention to these almost forgotten papers. Their intrinsic power and
worth are such as make their reading, especially that of the second
essay, _War Inconsistent with the Religion of Jesus Christ_, which
stands first in the present volume, edifying and inspiring to-day.
Marked by few literary graces and cast in a theological mold which the
critical thought of the present has in large measure outgrown, there is
a force of thought, a moral earnestness, a persevering logic, a common
sense, a hatred of inhumanity, a passion for justice, a penetration and
a virtue in them, which commends them to the abiding and reverent regard
of all who work for the peace and order of the world. Among such workers
to-day are men of various political philosophies, and perhaps only a
small minority are nonresistants of the extreme type of David L. Dodge;
but to that minority, we cannot fail to remark, belongs the greatest and
most influential of all the peace prophets of this time, Leo Tolstoi.
None can read these old essays without being impressed by the fact that
their arguments are essentially the same as those of the great Russian.
There is little indeed of the Tolstoian thunder and lightning, the
pathos, wrath, and rhetoric, the poetry and prophecy, in these
old-fashioned pages; but the doctrine is the same as that of _Bethink
Yourselves!_ and _Patriotism versus Christianity_. In his central
thought and purpose, in his religious trust and reliance upon the
Christian principle, the New York merchant was a Tolstoi a hundred years
before his time.
David Low Dodge was born June 14, 1774, in that part of Pomfret,
Connecticut, now called Brooklyn. This was the home of Israel Putnam;
and David Dodge's father, a farmer and carpenter, was Putnam's neighbor
and friend,--may well have been near him when in April, 1775, upon
hearing of the battle of Lexington, he left his plow in the furrow and
started to join the forces gathering at Cambridge. David Dodge's father,
grandfather, and great-grandfather each bore the name of David Dodge.
The great-grandfather was a Congregational minister, who was understood
to have come from Wales,--a learned and wealthy man, who was for a while
settled in the vicinity of Cape Ann in Massachusetts. The grandfather,
who also received a liberal education, probably in England, came into
the possession of his father's estate, for that day a large one, and we
are not informed whether he followed any profession or regular business.
He was a man fully six feet tall, of great muscular power, and a lover
of good horses, on which he spent much time and money. He married Ann
Low, from a wealthy Massachusetts family, and settled in Beverly, where
their sons David and Samuel were born, and where the family fortunes
became much embarrassed. About 1757 the family removed to Pomfret,
Connecticut, and the boys, whose education at the hands of their mother
had been but slight, were apprenticed, David to a carpenter and Samuel
to a shoemaker. Their father, obtaining at this time a commission in the
army invading Canada, met his death in a bateau which attempted to
descend the falls of the Oswego and was dashed to pieces on the rocks
with the loss of every soul on board.
David Low Dodge's mother, when a girl, was Mary Stuart, and when she
married his father, in 1768, was a widow bearing the name of Earl. The
young husband hired a small farm, the wife by her industry and economy
had furniture sufficient to begin housekeeping, and the little home was
founded in which David Low Dodge's only sister Mary was born in 1770.
Three years later the father hired a more expensive place in the same
town, where the boy was born in 1774. "During that year," he writes in
his autobiography, "my father became serious, and commenced family
prayer. He was educated in the old semi-Arminian views of his mother and
the halfway covenant. My mother was a rigid Calvinist of the Whitefield
school. Neither of them ever made a public profession of religion, but
they were careful to observe external ordinances, catechize their
children, and give religious instruction. They were honest, industrious,
temperate, kind-hearted people, universally respected and esteemed by
all who were acquainted with them."
Such was the atmosphere in which the boy grew up. "The American
Revolution at this period was convulsing the whole country, drafting and
enlisting soldiers. Wagons were needed for the army, and by the advice
of the Putnams, the old general and his son Israel, who was about two
years younger than my father, he was induced to engage in the
manufacture of continental wagons. He hired a convenient place for
carpenters and blacksmiths, took several journeymen into the family,
and embarked all his earnings in the business." The boy's half-brothers,
William and Jesse Earl, entered the army at the tender ages of fourteen
and sixteen, endured battles, sickness, and every privation, and both
died towards the close of the war, the event almost wrecking the nervous
system of the mother, a woman of acute sensibility. Thus early were the
horrors of war brought personally home to the boy. He remembered hearing
the distant cannonading when New London was burned by the British, and
the exclamation of the man beside him, "Blood is flowing to-day." "News
came the next morning that the forts were stormed, the garrisons put to
the sword, New London burnt, and the British were marching upon Norwich,
and would proceed up into the country. My mother wrung her hands, and
asked my father if we had not better pack up some things to secrete
them."
The boy's education was slight and fragmentary. The summer he was six
years old he attended the school of a venerable Irish maiden lady about
sixty years of age, learning Watts' _Divine Songs_, texts of Scripture,
and the _Shorter Catechism_. From the age of seven to fourteen--the
family now living on a farm in the neighboring town of Hampton--he
attended the district school for two terms each winter, having no access
to any other books than the primer, spelling book, arithmetic, and
Bible. "I used often, when not at work in the shop evenings, to retire
to the old kitchen fireplace, put my lamp into the oven, and, sitting
with my back against it, take my arithmetic, slate, and pencil, and try
to cipher a little. I often think how I should have been delighted to
have had one fifth part of the advantages enjoyed by most of my
descendants." Confined to the house for seven weeks a little later as
the result of accidents, he turned hungrily to such books as he could
secure--Dilworth's _Arithmetic_, Webster's _Abridged Grammar_, and
Salmon's _Universal English Geography_. "This opened a new and
astonishing field to me for contemplation. I now obtained the first
glimpse of the boundaries of land and water, of the lofty mountains, and
of the mighty rivers which had cut their channels through the earth. I
read and surveyed the maps and meditated upon them until I began to
lecture to my young companions, and was considered quite learned in
geography. Having an object in view, I began to thirst for knowledge,
and succeeded in borrowing in succession _The Travels of Cyrus_,
_Xerxes' Expedition into Greece_, _The History of Alexander the Great_,
and _Hannibal's Invasion of Rome_." He proposed and brought about the
formation of a society of young men in the town, for the improvement of
minds and manners. There were fourteen young men, with an equal number
of young women presently added, each furnishing a useful book as the
beginning of a library. "We obtained some of the British classics, such
as the _Spectator_, _Guardian_, etc., with a few histories; the subjects
formed a foundation for conversation when we met together."
Now the young man's ambition turned from farming to school-teaching. He
began with district schools, becoming a successful teacher from the
start, prosecuting his own studies assiduously in every leisure hour,
fired with a desire to improve the schools, which were everywhere as
wretched as can well be imagined. For some months in 1795 he left
teaching to join other young men in building a bridge at Tiverton, Rhode
Island. Then he attended the academy at North Canterbury, Connecticut,
under the charge of the eminent teacher, John Adams. "This was the only
opportunity I ever enjoyed of attending a good school, and this was
abridged to fulfill my engagement to teach the town school in
Mansfield." In 1796 he opened a private school in Norwich, adding the
next year a morning school for young ladies and an evening school for
apprentices and clerks, all of which flourished. During this time he was
profoundly interested in religious matters, attending many revivals and
becoming more and more concerned with moral and social problems. Now,
too, he married, his wife being a daughter of Aaron Cleveland of
Norwich, a strong character, afterwards a clergyman, "whose name you
will find enrolled among the poets of Connecticut," and who as early as
1775 published a poem on slavery, which, condemning slavery as wholly
antichristian, attracted a good deal of notice. He was the first man in
Connecticut to arraign slavery publicly. Elected to the General Assembly
from Norwich on that issue, he introduced a bill in behalf of
emancipation.
With health somewhat impaired and with family cares increasing, David
Dodge now turned from teaching to trade. First it was as a clerk in
Norwich, then as a partner in a general store, then as head of various
dry goods establishments in Hartford and other Connecticut towns, always
and everywhere successful. In 1805 Messrs. S. and H. Higginson of
Boston, cousins of his wife, a firm of high standing and large capital,
made him a proposition to enter into a copartnership with a view to
establishing an extensive importing and jobbing store in the city of New
York; and he accepted the proposition, going to New York the next year
to take charge of the concern in that city. He took a store in Pearl
Street, and the year afterwards the family took possession of the house
connected with the store, still reserving the house in Hartford as a
retreat in case of yellow fever in New York. From this time until his
death, April 23, 1852, New York was, with occasional interruptions, his
home and the center of his varied and ever enlarging activities. Just
before the outbreak of the war with England his partners became bankrupt
through losses in extensive shipping of American produce to Europe.
"Bonaparte sprung his trap upon more than a million dollars of their
property." Mr. Dodge now established cotton factories in Connecticut,
and later commenced anew the dry goods business in New York, his home
for years alternating between New York and the Norwich neighborhood; and
for the nine years following 1835 he occupied a large farm in
Plainfield, New Jersey.
Active as was his business life, and faithful his devotion to his large
business affairs,--and he came to rank with the most prominent mercantile
men of his day,--his mind was always intent upon social and religious
subjects. "During the years of 1808 to 1811 our business became extensive
and demanded much thought and attention; yet I think my affections were on
the subject of religion." Revivals of religion, the interests of his
church in Norwich or New York, the improvement of the lives of his
factory operatives, the organization in New York of the Christian Friendly
Society for the Promotion of Morals and Religion,--such were the objects
which commanded him. Throughout his long residence in New York he was a
prominent worker in the Presbyterian church, for many years an elder in
the church. He took a leading part in organizing the New York Bible
Society and the New York Tract Society, was much engaged in the early
missionary movements in New York, and in promoting the education of young
men for the ministry. He was a lover of knowledge, a great reader, and one
who thought and wrote as he read. Deeply interested in history, ancient
and modern, his chief interest was in theological discussion. He was
familiar with the chief theological controversies of the day, and upon
many of them committed his views to writing. His knowledge of the Bible
was remarkable; he read it through critically in course forty-two times.
He held firmly the Calvinistic system of doctrine, and he addressed to his
children a series of letters, characterized by great ability and logical
force, in defense of the faith, and constituting together a compendious
system of theology.
Several of these letters are included in the memorial volume published
for the family in 1854 under the editorial supervision of Rev. Matson M.
Smith. This volume contains, besides the two essays on war here
reprinted, and various verses and letters, the interesting autobiography
which he prepared, at the request of his children, a few years before
his death, and a supplementary biographical sketch by his pastor, Rev.
Asa D. Smith. In the mass of manuscripts which he left behind was an
essay upon "The Relation of the Church to the World," and one upon
"Retributive Judgment and Capital Punishment,"--to which he was sharply
opposed. He was opposed indeed to so much in human governments as now
constituted,--"whose ultimate reliance," he said, "is the sword," and
whose laws he felt to be so often contrary to the laws of Christ to
which he gave his sole allegiance,--that he would neither vote nor hold
office. Strict and inflexible as he was in his views of political and
religious duty, he was one of the most genial and delightful of men, a
Christian in whom there was no guile, fond of the young, affectionate,
courteous, "given to hospitality," "careful habitually to make even the
conventionalities of life a fitting accompaniment and expression of the
inward principle of kindness." A face as strong as it is gentle, and as
gentle as it is strong, is that which looks at us in the beautiful
portrait preserved in the family treasures, and a copy of which forms
the frontispiece of the present volume.
The character and influence of the family which he founded in New York,
during the three generations which have followed, constitute an
impressive witness to David Dodge's force and worth, his religious
consecration, and high public spirit. At the junction of Broadway and
Sixth Avenue stands the statue of his son, William Earl Dodge, whose
life of almost fourscore years ended in 1883. For long years the head of
the great house of Phelps, Dodge & Co., the manager of immense railway,
lumber, and mining interests, the president of the New York Chamber of
Commerce, a representative of New York in Congress, a leader in large
work for temperance, for the freedmen, for the Indians, for theological
education, for a score of high patriotic and philanthropic interests,
New York had in his time no more representative, more useful, or more
honored citizen. And what is said of him may be said in almost the same
words of William Earl Dodge, his son, who died but yesterday, and who
combined broad business and philanthropic activities in the same strong
and influential way as his father and grandfather before him. President
of many religious and benevolent associations, he was pre-eminently a
patriot and an international man. The logic of his life and of his
heritage placed him naturally at the head of the National Arbitration
Committee, which was appointed at the great conference on international
arbitration held at Washington in the spring of 1896, following the
anxiety attendant upon President Cleveland's Venezuelan message,--a
committee which, under his chairmanship, and since his death that of
Hon. John W. Foster, has during the decade rendered such great service
to the peace and arbitration cause in this country. It is to be noted
also that the names of his son and daughter, Cleveland H. Dodge and
Grace H. Dodge, names so conspicuously associated to-day with
charitable, religious, and educational efforts in New York, are
associated, too, like his with the commanding cause of the world's peace
and better organization; both names stand upon the American Committee of
the Thirteenth International Peace Congress, which met in Boston in
1904. Thus have the generations which have followed him well learned and
strongly emphasized the lesson taught by David Dodge almost a century
ago, that war is "inhuman, unwise, and criminal," and "inconsistent with
the religion of Jesus Christ."
It was in 1805 that a startling personal experience prompted the train
of thought which soon and forever made David L. Dodge the advocate of
the thorough-going peace principles with which his name is chiefly
identified, and led him to condemn all violence, even in self-defense,
in dealings between men, as between nations. Accustomed to carry pistols
when traveling with large sums of money, he was almost led to shoot his
landlord in a tavern at Providence, Rhode Island, who by some blunder
had come into his room at night and suddenly waked him. The thought of
what his situation and feelings would have been had he taken the man's
life shocked him into most searching thinking. For two or three years
his mind dwelt on the question. He turned to the teaching and example of
Christ, and became persuaded that these were inconsistent with violence
and the carrying of deadly weapons, and with war. The common churchman
sanctioned such things, but not the early Christians; and he found
strong words condemning war in Luther and Erasmus, the Moravians and
Quakers. Discussing the matter with many pious and Christian men, he
found them generally avoiding the gospel standard. He was shocked by the
"general want of faith in the promises"; but he himself laid aside at
once his pistols and the fear of robbers. He became absolutely convinced
that fighting and warfare were "unlawful for the followers of Christ";
and from now on he began to bear public testimony against the war
spirit.
Early in the spring of 1809 he published his essay, _The Mediator's
Kingdom not of this World_, which attracted so much attention that in
two weeks nearly a thousand copies were sold. Three literary men joined
in preparing a spirited and sarcastic criticism of it; and he
immediately published a rejoinder. _The Mediator's Kingdom_ was
republished in Philadelphia and in Providence, and Mr. Dodge writes
truly: "These publications gave the first impulse in America, if we
except the uniform influence of the Friends, to inquiry into the
lawfulness of war by Christians. Some who were favorable to the
doctrines of peace judged that, with a bold hand, I had carried the
subject too far; and doubtless, as it was new and had not been much
discussed, I wrote too unguardedly, not sufficiently defining my terms.
The Rev. Dr. Noah Worcester was one who so judged, and a few years after
he published his very spirited and able essay, _The Solemn Review of
War_." This famous essay of Worcester's represents the platform of the
great body of American peace workers for a century, the position of men
like Channing and Ladd and Jay and Sumner; but to a nonresistant and
opponent even of self-defense, like David Dodge, these seemed the
exponents of a halfway covenant.
Mr. Dodge entered into private correspondence on the lawfulness of war
with Rev. Lyman Beecher, Rev. Aaron Cleveland, his father-in-law, Rev.
John B. Romeyn, and Rev. Walter King. He preserved among his manuscripts
letters of twenty-five pages from Dr. Romeyn and Mr. Cleveland, and
copies of his reply to Dr. Romeyn (one hundred and thirty-two pages) and
to Dr. Beecher (forty-four pages). Important letters from Dr. Beecher
and Governor Jay he had lost. All these took the position of Dr.
Worcester, sanctioning strictly defensive war in extreme cases,--all
except Mr. Cleveland, who finally came into complete accord with Mr.
Dodge, and published two able sermons on "The Life of Man Inviolable by
the Laws of Christ."
Early in 1812 the friends of peace whom Mr. Dodge had gathered about him
in New York conferred upon the forming of a peace society, "wholly
confined to decided evangelical Christians, with a view to diffusing
peace principles in the churches, avoiding all party questions." There
being at this juncture, however, intense political feeling over the
threatened war with Great Britain, they feared their motives would be
misapprehended, and decided for the moment simply to act individually in
diffusing information. Mr. Dodge was appointed to prepare an essay on
the subject of war, stating and answering objections; and, removing at
this time to Norwich, he there, in a period of great business
perplexity, completed his remarkable paper on "War Inconsistent with the
Christian Religion," which was published in the very midst of the war
with England.
Upon his return to New York, the friends of peace there had two or three
meetings relative to the organization of a society; and in August, 1815,
they formed the New York Peace Society, of between thirty and forty
members, their strict articles of association condemning all war,
offensive and defensive, as wholly opposed to the example and spirit and
precepts of Christ. The peace societies formed immediately afterwards in
Massachusetts, Ohio, Rhode Island, and London were organized, according
to Mr. Dodge, without any knowledge of each other, the movements being
the simultaneous separate results of a common impulse. Of the New York
society Mr. Dodge was unanimously elected president. Monthly meetings
were arranged, and at the first of these Mr. Dodge read an address upon
"The Kingdom of Peace under the Benign Reign of Messiah," of which a
thousand copies were at once printed and circulated. Within two years
the society had increased to sixty members, men active not only against
war--which the society regarded as "the greatest temporal evil, as
almost every immorality is generated in its prosecution, and poverty,
distress, famine, and pestilence follow in its train"--but in all the
benevolent enterprises of that day. "Several respectable clergymen
united with the society,--Rev. Drs. E. D. Griffin and M. L. Parvine,
Rev. E. W. Baldwin (to whose pen we were much indebted), Rev. Samuel
Whelpley, and his son, Rev. Melancthon Whelpley, Rev. H. G. Ufford, and
Rev. S. H. Cox. Dr. Cox, however, afterwards entertained different views
on the subject."
The New York Peace Society had friendly correspondence with all the
other peace societies, and for several years took two hundred copies of
Dr. Worcester's _Friend of Peace_. This seems finally to have
contributed to divide the society, some relinquishing the nonresistant
views of Mr. Dodge and adopting Worcester's less extreme position. But
our brave Tolstoian was a "thorough," and never wavered. "If it was
morally wrong for individuals to quarrel and fight, instead of returning
good for evil,"--these are his last words on the subject in his
autobiography,--"it was much more criminal for communities and nations
to return evil for evil, and not strive to overcome evil with good. In
fact, the great barrier to our progress was the example of our fathers
in the American Revolution. That they were generally true patriots, in
the political sense of the term, and many hopefully pious, I would not
call in question, while I consider them as ill directed by education as
St. Paul was when on his way to Damascus."
The New York Peace Society maintained its existence and work for many
years. In 1828 it united with other societies in the creation of the
American Peace Society, which was organized in New York on May 8 of that
year on the initiative of William Ladd. After this the New York society
seems to have done little separate work, and finally its independent
existence ceased. Mr. Dodge assisted in the organization of the new
national society, and presided at its first annual meeting, May 13,
1829. He was chosen a member of its board of directors, and later became
a life director, maintaining his connection with the society until his
death in 1852, faithful to the end to the radical views by which he had
become so powerfully possessed almost half a century before.
For two generations New York has been without a local peace society. The
services of eminent individual citizens of the city and state of New
York for the peace cause during that period, however, have been signal.
Judge William Jay of New York was for a decade president of the American
Peace Society,--the important decade covering the great peace congresses
in Europe at the middle of the last century; and it was his proposal
that an arbitration clause should be attached to all future commercial
treaties which furnished the basis for the most constructive debates of
the first congress, that at London in 1843. The three really important
members of the American delegation at The Hague Conference were citizens
of New York,--Andrew D. White, Seth Low, and Frederick W. Holls. A
remarkable plan adopted by the New York State Bar Association suggested
important features of The Hague Court as finally constituted. It is a
citizen of New York, Andrew Carnegie, who has given $1,500,000 for a
worthy building for the court at The Hague,--a temple of peace. Mr.
Carnegie, whose influence in behalf of international fraternity is
perhaps second to that of no other to-day, has also given $5,000,000 to
establish a pension fund for "heroes of peace," whose heroism, too long
comparatively neglected, he rightly sees to be not less than the heroism
of the soldier. The most important series of arbitration conferences in
recent times have been those at Lake Mohonk, in the state of New York,
arranged by Albert K. Smiley,--conferences of growing size and
importance, commanding world-wide attention, and performing for this
country almost the same service performed for France and England by
their national peace congresses. Finally, it must not be forgotten that
Theodore Roosevelt, the President of the United States, through whose
initiative the second Hague Conference will presently meet, is also a
citizen of New York.
At this very time a promising movement is gaining head to organize once
more in David Dodge's city a New York Peace Society. At one of the
recent Mohonk conferences a large committee of New York men, under the
chairmanship of Mr. Warner Van Norden, was formed for conference with
this end in view. Upon the American committee of the International Peace
Congress which met in Boston in 1904 were no less than sixteen residents
of the city of New York,--Andrew Carnegie, Hon. Oscar S. Straus, Hon.
George F. Seward, Walter S. Logan, Felix Adler, William D. Howells, Mrs.
Charles Russell Lowell, Mrs. Anna Garlin Spencer, Miss Grace H. Dodge,
Rev. Josiah Strong, Rev. Charles E. Jefferson, Cleveland H. Dodge,
George Foster Peabody, Professor John B. Clark, Leander T. Chamberlain,
and J. G. Phelps Stokes. In the week following the Boston congress a
series of great peace meetings was held in New York, at the Cooper Union
and elsewhere, arranged by members of this committee; and out of all
this a new impulse has come to plans for local organization in New York.
As one result a strong society was formed by the Germans of the city,
and a large Women's Peace Circle has since been organized and begun
important educational work. The larger New York Peace Society is now
certainly a thing of the near future. To the men and women who will
constitute that society, the noble body of those now working in their
various ways in the great city for the cause of peace, is dedicated
especially this republication of the old essays of David Dodge, the
founder of the first peace society in the world, who by his pioneering
and prophetic service gave to New York a place so significant in the
history of what is to-day the world's most commanding cause.