Charles Sumner. 1811-1874, was born in Boston. He studied at the Latin
school in his native city, graduated from Harvard University at the age of
nineteen, studied law at the same institution, and was admitted to
practice in 1834. He at once took a prominent position in his profession,
lectured to the law classes at Cambridge for several successive years,
wrote and edited several standard law books, and might have had a
professorship in the law school, had he desired it. In his famous address
on "The True Grandeur of Nations," delivered July 4, 1815, before the
municipal authorities of Boston, he took strong grounds against war among
nations. In 1851 he was elected to the United States Senate and continued
in that position till his death. As a jurist, as a statesman, as an
orator, and as a profound and scholarly writer, Mr. Sumner stands high in
the estimation of his countrymen. In physical appearance, Mr. Sumner was
grand and imposing; men often turned to gaze after him, as he passed along
the streets of his native city.
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I need not dwell now on the waste and cruelty of war. These stare us
wildly in the face, like lurid meteor lights, as we travel the page of
history. We see the desolation and death that pursue its demoniac
footsteps. We look upon sacked towns, upon ravaged territories, upon
violated homes; we behold all the sweet charities of life changed to
wormwood and gall. Our soul is penetrated by the sharp moan of mothers,
sisters, and daughters--of fathers, brothers, and sons, who, in the
bitterness of their bereavement, refuse to be comforted. Our eyes rest at
last upon one of these fair fields, where Nature, in her abundance,
spreads her cloth of gold, spacious and apt for the entertainment of
mighty multitudes--or perhaps, from the curious subtlety of its position,
like the carpet in the Arabian tale, seeming to contract so as to be
covered by a few only, or to dilate so as to receive an innumerable host.
Here, under a bright sun, such as shone at Austerlitz or Buena
Vista--amidst the peaceful harmonies of nature--on the Sabbath of
peace--we behold bands of brothers, children of a common Father, heirs to
a common happiness, struggling together in the deadly fight, with the
madness of fallen spirits, seeking with murderous weapons the lives of
brothers who have never injured them or their kindred. The havoc rages.
The ground is soaked with their commingling blood. The air is rent by
their commingling cries. Horse and rider are stretched together on the
earth. More revolting than the mangled victims, than the gashed limbs,
than the lifeless trunks, than the spattering brains, are the lawless
passions which sweep, tempest-like, through the fiendish tumult.
Horror-struck, we ask, wherefore this hateful contest? The melancholy, but
truthful answer comes, that this is the established method of determining
justice between nations!
The scene changes. Far away on the distant pathway of the ocean two ships
approach each other, with white canvas broadly spread to receive the
flying gales. They are proudly built. All of human art has been lavished
in their graceful proportions, and in their well compacted sides, while
they look in their dimensions like floating happy islands on the sea. A
numerous crew, with costly appliances of comfort, hives in their secure
shelter. Surely these two travelers shall meet in joy and friendship; the
flag at the masthead shall give the signal of friendship; the happy
sailors shall cluster in the rigging, and even on the yardarms, to look
each other in the face, while the exhilarating voices of both crews shall
mingle in accents of gladness uncontrollable. It is not so. Not as
brothers, not as friends, not as wayfarers of the common ocean, do they
come together; but as enemies.
The gentle vessels now bristle fiercely with death-dealing instruments. On
their spacious decks, aloft on all their masts, flashes the deadly
musketry. From their sides spout cataracts of flame, amidst the pealing
thunders of a fatal artillery. They, who had escaped "the dreadful touch
of merchant-marring rocks"--who had sped on their long and solitary way
unharmed by wind or wave--whom the hurricane had spared--in whose favor
storms and seas had intermitted their immitigable war--now at last fall
by the hand of each other. The same spectacle of horror greets us from
both ships. On their decks, reddened with blood, the murderers of St.
Bartholomew and of the Sicilian Vespers, with the fires of Smithfield,
seem to break forth anew, and to concentrate their rage. Each has now
become a swimming Golgotha. At length, these vessels--such pageants of
the sea--once so stately--so proudly built--but now rudely shattered by
cannon balls--with shivered mast's and ragged sails--exist only as
unmanageable wrecks, weltering on the uncertain waves, whose temporary
lull of peace is now their only safety. In amazement at this strange,
unnatural contest--away from country and home--where there is no country
or home to defend--we ask again, wherefore this dismal duel? Again the
melancholy but truthful answer promptly comes, that this is the
established method of determining justice between nations.
NOTES.--Austerlitz, a small town in Austria, seventy miles north from
Vienna. It is noted as the site of a battle, in December, 1805, between
the allied Austrian and Russian armies, and the French under Napoleon. The
latter were victorious. Buena Vista, a small hamlet in eastern Mexico,
where, in 1847, five thousand Americans, under Gen. Taylor, defeated
twenty thousand Mexicans, under Gen. Santa Anna.
Dreadful touch.--Quoted from Merchant of Venice, Act III, Scene II.
St. Bartholomew.--A terrible massacre took place in France, on St.
Bartholomew's day, August 24, 1572. It has been estimated that twenty
thousand persons perished.
Sicilian Vespers, a revolt and uprising against the French in Sicily,
March 30, 1282, at the hour of vespers.
Smithfield, a portion of London noted as a place for execution during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.