The Revolutionary war was the contest for a great idea. If there were
ever a just war it was that, a contest for national existence. Yet it
brought out many of the worst qualities of human nature on both sides,
as well as some of the best. It helped make a Washington, it is true,
but a Benedict Arnold likewise. A war with a powerful nation, terrible
as it must be, yet develops the energy of the people, promotes
self-denial, and helps the growth of some qualities of a high order. It
had this effect in England from 1798 to 1815. True, England for that
time became a despotism, but the self-consciousness of the nation, its
self-denial and energy were amazingly stimulated; the moral effect of
that series of wars was doubtless far better than of the infamous
contest which she has kept up against Ireland for many years. Let us
give even war its due: when a great boy fights with an equal, it may
develop his animal courage and strength--for he gets as bad as he gives,
but when he only beats a little boy that cannot pay back his blows, it
is cowardly as well as cruel, and doubly debasing to the conqueror.
Mexico was no match for America. We all knew that very well before the
war begun. When a nation numbering 8,000,000 or 9,000,000 of people can
be successfully invaded by an army of 75,000 men, two thirds of them
volunteers, raw, and undisciplined; when the invaders with less than
15,000 can march two hundred miles into the very heart of the hostile
country, and with less than 6,000 can take and hold the capital of the
nation, a city of 100,000 or 200,000 inhabitants, and dictate a peace,
taking as much territory as they will--it is hardly fair to dignify such
operations with the name of war. The little good which a long contest
with an equal might produce in the conqueror, is wholly lost. Had Mexico
been a strong nation we should never have had this conflict. A few years
ago, when General Cass wanted a war with England, "an old-fashioned
war," and declared it "unavoidable," all the men of property trembled.
The northern men thought of their mills and their ships; they thought
how Boston and New York would look after a war with our sturdy old
father over the sea; they thought we should lose many millions of
dollars and gain nothing. The men of the South, who have no mills and no
ships and no large cities to be destroyed, thought of their "peculiar
institution;" they thought of a servile war; they thought what might
become of their slaves, if a nation which gave $100,000,000 to
emancipate her bondmen should send a large army with a few black
soldiers from Jamaica; should offer money, arms, and freedom to all who
would leave their masters and claim their unalienable rights. They knew
the southern towns would be burnt to ashes, and the whole South, from
Virginia to the Gulf, would be swept with fire, and they said, "Don't."
The North said so, and the South; they feared such a war, with such a
foe. Everybody knows the effect which this fear had on southern
politicians, in the beginning of this century, and how gladly they made
peace with England soon as she was at liberty to turn her fleet and her
army against the most vulnerable part of the nation. I am not blind to
the wickedness of England more than ignorant of the good things she has
done and is doing; a Paradise for the rich and strong, she is still a
Purgatory for the wise and the good, and the Hell of the poor and the
weak. I have no fondness for war anywhere, and believe it needless and
wanton in this age of the world, surely needless and wicked between
Father England and Daughter America; but I do solemnly believe that the
moral effect of such an old-fashioned war as Mr. Cass in 1845 thought
unavoidable, would have been better than that of this Mexican war. It
would have ended slavery; ended it in blood no doubt, the worst thing to
blot out an evil with, but ended it and for ever. God grant it may yet
have a more peaceful termination. We should have lost millions of
property and thousands of men, and then, when peace came, we should know
what it was worth; and as the burnt child dreads the fire, no future
President, or Congress, or Convention, or Party would talk much in favor
of war for some years to come.
The moral effect of this war is thoroughly bad. It was unjust in the
beginning. Mexico did not pay her debts; but though the United States,
in 1783, acknowledged the British claims against ourselves, they were
not paid till 1803. Our claims against England, for her depredations in
1793, were not paid till 1804; our claims against France, for her
depredations in 1806-13, were not paid us till 1834. The fact that
Mexico refused to receive the resident Minister which the United States
sent to settle the disputes, when a commissioner was expected--this was
no ground of war. We have lately seen a British ambassador ordered to
leave Spain within eight and forty hours, and yet the English Minister
of foreign affairs, Lord Palmerston, no new hand at diplomacy, declares
that this does not interrupt the concord of the two nations! We treated
Mexico contemptuously before hostilities began; and when she sent troops
into a territory which she had always possessed, though Texas had
claimed it, we declared that that was an act of war, and ourselves sent
an army to invade her soil, to capture her cities, and seize her
territory. It has been a war of plunder, undertaken for the purpose of
seizing Mexican territory, and extending over it that dismal curse which
blackens, impoverishes, and barbarizes half the Union now, and swiftly
corrupts the other half. It was not enough to have Louisiana a slave
territory; not enough to make that institution perpetual in Florida; not
enough to extend this blight over Texas--we must have yet more slave
soil, one day to be carved into Slave States, to bind the Southern yoke
yet more securely on the Northern neck; to corrupt yet more the
politics, literature, and morals of the North. The war was unjust at its
beginning; mean in its motives, a war without honorable cause; a war for
plunder; a quarrel between a great boy and a little puny weakling who
could not walk alone, and could hardly stand. We have treated Mexico as
the three Northern powers treated Poland in the last century--stooped to
conquer. Nay, our contest has been like the English seizure of Ireland.
All the justice was on one side, the force, skill, and wealth on the
other.
I know men say the war has shown us that Americans could fight. Could
fight!--almost every male beast will fight, the more brutal the better.
The long war of the Revolution, when Connecticut, for seven years, kept
5,000 men in the field, showed that Americans could fight; Bunker Hill
and Lexington showed that they could fight, even without previous
discipline. If such valor be a merit, I am ready to believe that the
Americans, in a great cause like that of Mexico, to resist wicked
invasion, would fight as men never fought before. A republic like our
own, where every free man feels an interest in the welfare of the
nation, is full of the elements that make soldiers. Is that a praise?
Most men think so, but it is the smallest honor of a nation. Of all
glories, military glory, at its best estate, seems the poorest.
Men tell us it shows the strength of the nation and some writers quote
the opinions of European kings who, when hearing of the battles of
Monterey, Buena Vista, and Vera Cruz, became convinced that we were "a
great people." Remembering the character of these kings, one can easily
believe that such was their judgment, and will not sigh many times at
their fate, but will hope to see the day when the last king who can
estimate a nation's strength only by its battles, has passed on to
impotence and oblivion. The power of America--do we need proof of that?
I see it in the streets of Boston and New York; in Lowell and in
Lawrence; I see it in our mills and our ships; I read it in those
letters of iron written all over the North, where he may read that runs;
I see it in the unconquered energy which tames the forest, the rivers,
and the ocean; in the school-houses which lift their modest roof in
every village of the North; in the churches that rise all over the
freeman's land: would God that they rose higher, pointing down to man
and to human duties, and up to God and immortal life! I see the strength
of America in that tide of population which spreads over the prairies of
the West, and, beating on the Rocky Mountains, dashes its peaceful spray
to the very shores of the Pacific sea. Had we taken 150,000 men and
$200,000,000, and built two railroads across the continent, that would
have been a worthy sign of the nation's strength. Perhaps those kings
could not see it; but sensible men could see it and be glad. This waste
of treasure and this waste of blood is only a proof of weakness. War is
a transient weakness of the nation, but slavery a permanent imbecility.
What falsehood has this war produced in the executive and legislative
power; in both parties, whigs and democrats! I always thought that here
in Massachusetts the whigs were the most to blame; they tried to put the
disgrace of the war on the others, while the democratic party coolly
faced the wickedness. Did far-sighted men know that there would be a war
on Mexico, or else on the tariff or the currency, and prefer the first
as the least evil?
See to what the war has driven two of the most famous men of the nation:
one wished to "capture or slay a Mexican;"[12] the other could encourage
the volunteers to fight a war which he had denounced as needless, "a war
of pretexts," and place the men of Monterey before the men of Bunker
Hill;[13] each could invest a son in that unholy cause. You know the
rest: the fathers ate sour grapes, and the children's teeth were set on
edge. When a man goes on board an emigrant ship, reeking with filth and
fever, not for gain, not for "glory," but in brotherly love, catches the
contagion, and dies a martyr to his heroic benevolence, men speak of it
in corners, and it is soon forgot; there is no parade in the streets;
society takes little pains to do honor to the man. How rarely is a
pension given to his widow or his child; only once in the whole land,
and then but a small sum.[14] But when a volunteer officer--for of the
humbler and more excusable men that fall we take no heed, war may mow
that crop of "vulgar deaths" with what scythe he will--falls or dies in
the quarrel which he had no concern in, falls in a broil between the two
nations, your newspapers extol the man, and with martial pomp, "sonorous
metal blowing martial sounds," with all the honors of the most honored
dead, you lay away his body in the tomb. Thus is it that the nation
teaches these little ones, that it is better to kill than to make alive.
I know there are men in the army, honorable and high-minded men,
Christian men, who dislike war in general, and this war in special, but
such is their view of official duty, that they obeyed the summons of
battle, though with pain and reluctance. They knew not how to avoid
obedience. I am willing to believe there are many such. But with
volunteers, who, of their own accord, came forth to enlist, men not
blinded by ignorance, not driven by poverty to the field, but only by
hope of reward--what shall be said of them! Much may be said to excuse
the rank and file, ignorant men, many of them in want--but for the
leaders, what can be said? Had I a brother who, in the day of the
nation's extremity, came forward with a good conscience, and perilled
his life on the battle field, and lost it "in the sacred cause of God
and his country," I would honor the man, and when his dust came home, I
would lay it away with his fathers'; with sorrow indeed, but with
thankfulness of heart, that for conscience' sake he was ready even to
die. But had I a brother who, merely for his pay, or hope of fame, had
voluntarily gone down to fight innocent men, to plunder their territory,
and lost his life in that felonious essay--in sorrow and in silence, and
in secrecy would I lay down his body in the grave; I would not court
display, nor mark it with a single stone.
See how this war has affected public opinion. How many of your
newspapers have shown its true atrocity; how many of the pulpits? Yet,
if any one is appointed to tell of public wrongs, it is the minister of
religion. The Governor of Massachusetts[15] is an officer of a Christian
church; a man distinguished for many excellences, some of them by no
means common: it is said, he is opposed to the war in private, and
thinks it wicked; but no man has lent himself as a readier tool to
promote it. The Christian and the man seem lost in the office, in the
Governor! What a lesson of falseness does all this teach to that large
class of persons who look no higher than the example of eminent men for
their instruction. You know what complaints have been made, by the
highest authority in the nation, because a few men dared to speak
against the war. It was "affording aid and comfort to the enemy." If the
war-party had been stronger, and feared no public opinion, we should
have had men hanged for treason, because they spoke of this national
iniquity! Nothing would have been easier. A "gag law" is not wholly
unknown in America.
If you will take all the theft, all the assaults, all the cases of
arson, ever committed in time of peace in the United States since the
settlement of Jamestown in 1608, and add to them all the cases of
violence offered to woman, with all the murders, they will not amount to
half the wrongs committed in this war for the plunder of Mexico. Yet the
cry has been and still is, "You must not say a word against it; if you
do, you 'afford aid and comfort to the enemy.'" Not tell the nation that
she is doing wrong? What a miserable saying is that; let it come from
what high authority it may, it is a miserable saying. Make the case your
own. Suppose the United States were invaded by a nation ten times abler
for war than we are, with a cause no more just, intentions equally bad;
invaded for the purpose of dismembering our territory and making our
own New England the soil of slaves; would you be still? would you stand
and look on tamely while the hostile hosts, strangers in language,
manners, and religion, crossed your rivers, seized your ports, burnt
your towns? No, surely not. Though the men of New England would not be
able to resist with most celestial love, they would contend with most
manly vigor; and I should rather see every house swept clean off the
land, and the ground sheeted with our own dead; rather see every man,
woman, and child in the land slain, than see them tamely submit to such
a wrong: and so would you. No, sacred as life is and dear as it is,
better let it be trodden out by the hoof of war, rather than yield
tamely to a wrong. But while you were doing your utmost to repel such
formidable injustice, if in the midst of your invaders men rose up and
said, "America is in the right, and brothers, you are wrong, you should
not thus kill men to steal their land; shame on you!" how should you
feel towards such? Nay, in the struggle with England, when our fathers
perilled every thing but honor, and fought for the unalienable rights of
man, you all remember, how in England herself there stood up noble men,
and with a voice that was heard above the roar of the populace, and an
authority higher than the majesty of the throne they said, "You do a
wrong; you may ravage, but you cannot conquer. If I were an American,
while a foreign troop remained in my land, I would never lay down my
arms; no, never, never, never!"
But I wander a little from my theme, the effect of the war on the morals
of the nation. Here are 50,000 or 75,000 men trained to kill. Hereafter
they will be of little service in any good work. Many of them were the
off-scouring of the people at first. Now these men have tasted the
idleness, the intemperance, the debauchery of a camp; tasted of its
riot, tasted of its blood! They will come home before long, hirelings of
murder. What will their influence be as fathers, husbands? The nation
taught them to fight and plunder the Mexicans for the nation's sake; the
Governor of Massachusetts called on them in the name of "patriotism" and
"humanity" to enlist for that work: but if, with no justice on our side,
it is humane and patriotic to fight and plunder the Mexicans on the
nation's account, why not for the soldier to fight and plunder an
American on his own account? Ay, why not?--that is a distinction too
nice for common minds; by far too nice for mine.
See the effect on the nation. We have just plundered Mexico; taken a
piece of her territory larger than the thirteen states which fought the
Revolution, a hundred times as large as Massachusetts; we have burnt her
cities, have butchered her men, have been victorious in every contest.
The Mexicans were as unprotected women, we, armed men. See how the lust
of conquest will increase. Soon it will be the ambition of the next
President to extend the "area of freedom" a little further south; the
lust of conquest will increase. Soon we must have Yucatan, Central
America, all of Mexico, Cuba, Porto Rico, Hayti, Jamaica,--all the
islands of the Gulf. Many men would gladly, I doubt not, extend the
"area of freedom" so as to include the free blacks of those islands. We
have long looked with jealous eyes on West Indian emancipation--hoping
the scheme would not succeed. How pleasant it would be to reestablish
slavery in Hayti and Jamaica, in all the islands whence the gold of
England or the ideas of France have driven it out. If the South wants
this, would the North object? The possession of the West Indies would
bring much money to New England, and what is the value of freedom
compared to coffee and sugar and cotton?
I must say one word of the effect this war has had on political parties.
By the parties I mean the leaders thereof, the men that control the
parties. The effect on the democratic party, on the majority of
Congress, on the most prominent men of the nation, has been mentioned
before. It has shut their eyes to truth and justice; it has filled their
mouths with injustice and falsehood. It has made one man "available" for
the Presidency who was only known before as a sagacious general, that
fought against the Indians in Florida, and acquired a certain
reputation by the use of bloodhounds, a reputation which was rather
unenviable even in America. The battles in northern Mexico made him
conspicuous, and now he is seized on as an engine to thrust one corrupt
party out of power, and to lift in another party, I will not say less
corrupt, I wish I could; it were difficult to think it more so. This
latter party has been conspicuous for its opposition to a military man
as ruler of a free people; recently it has been smitten with sudden
admiration for military men, and military success, and tells the people,
without a blush, that a military man fresh from a fight which he
disapproved of, is most likely to restore peace, "because most familiar
with the evils of war!" In Massachusetts the prevalent political party,
as such, for some years seems to have had no moral principle; however,
it had a prejudice in favor of decency: now it has thrown that
overboard, and has not even its respectability left. Where are its
"Resolutions?" Some men knew what they were worth long ago; now all men
can see what they are worth.
The cost of the war in money and men I have tried to calculate, but the
effect on the morals of the people, on the press, the pulpit, and the
parties, and through them on the rising generation, it is impossible to
tell. I have only faintly sketched the outline of that. The effect of
the war on Mexico herself, we can dimly see in the distance. The
Government of the United States has wilfully, wantonly broken the peace
of the continent. The Revolutionary war was unavoidable; but for this
invasion there is no excuse. That God, whose providence watches over the
falling nation as the falling sparrow, and whose comprehensive plans are
now advanced by the righteousness and now by the wrath of man, He who
stilleth the waves of the sea and the tumult of the people, will turn
all this wickedness to account in the history of man,--of that I have no
doubt. But that is no excuse for American crime. A greater good lay
within our grasp, and we spurned it away.
Well, before long the soldiers will come back, such as shall ever
come--the regulars and volunteers, the husbands of the women whom your
charity fed last winter, housed and clad and warmed. They will come
back. Come, New England, with your posterity of States, go forth to meet
your sons returning all "covered with imperishable honors." Come, men,
to meet your fathers, brothers. Come, women, to your husbands and your
lovers; come. But what! is that the body of men who a year or two ago
went forth, so full of valor and of rum? Are these rags the imperishable
honors that cover them? Here is not half the whole. Where is the wealth
they hoped from the spoil of churches? But the men--"Where is my
husband?" says one; "And my son?" says another. "They fell at Jalapa,
one, and one at Cerro Gordo; but they fell covered with imperishable
honor, for 'twas a famous victory." "Where is my lover?" screams a
woman whom anguish makes respectable spite of her filth and
ignorance;--"And our father, where is he?" scream a troop of
half-starved children, staring through their dirt and rags. "One died of
the vomit at Vera Cruz. Your father, little ones, we scourged the naked
man to death at Mixcoac."
But that troop which is left, who are in the arms of wife and child,
they are the best sermon against war; this has lost an arm and that a
leg; half are maimed in battle, or sickened with the fever; all polluted
with the drunkenness, idleness, debauchery, lust, and murder of a camp.
Strip off this man's coat, and count the stripes welted into his flesh,
stripes laid on by demagogues that love the people, "the dear people!"
See how affectionately the war-makers branded the "dear soldiers" with a
letter D, with a red-hot iron, in the cheek. The flesh will quiver as
the irons burn; no matter: it is only for love of the people that all
this is done, and we are all of us covered with imperishable honors! D
stands for deserter,--aye, and for demagogue--yes, and for demon too.
Many a man shall come home with but half of himself, half his body, less
than half his soul.
"Alas, the mother that him bare,
If she could stand in presence there,
In that wan cheek and wasted air,
She would not know her child."
"Better," you say, "for us better, and for themselves better by far, if
they had left that remnant of a body in the common ditch where the
soldier finds his 'bed of honor;' better have fed therewith the vultures
of a foreign soil, than thus come back." No, better come back, and live
here, mutilated, scourged, branded, a cripple, a pauper, a drunkard, and
a felon; better darken the windows of the jail and blot the gallows with
unusual shame, to teach us all that such is war, and such the results of
every "famous victory," such the imperishable honors that it brings, and
how the war-makers love the men they rule!
O Christian America! O New England, child of the Puritans! Cradled in
the wilderness, thy swaddling garments stained with martyrs' blood,
hearing in thy youth the warwhoop of the savage and thy mother's sweet
and soul-composing hymn:
"Hush, my child, lie still and slumber,
Holy angels guard thy bed;
Heavenly blessings, without number,
Rest upon thine infant head:"
Come, New England, take the old banners of thy conquering host, the
standards borne at Monterey, Palo Alto, Buena Vista, Vera Cruz, the
"glorious stripes and stars" that waved over the walls of Churubusco,
Contreras, Puebla, Mexico herself, flags blackened with battle and
stiffened with blood, pierced by the lances and torn with the shot;
bring them into thy churches, hang them up over altar and pulpit, and
let little children, clad in white raiment and crowned with flowers,
come and chant their lessons for the day:
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
"Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called the children of
God."
Then let the priest say, "Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a
reproach unto any people. Blessed is the Lord my strength, which
teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight. Happy is that people
that is in such a case. Yea, happy is that people whose God is the Lord,
and Jesus Christ their Saviour."
Then let the soldiers who lost their limbs and the women who lost their
husbands and their lovers in the strife, and the men--wiser than the
children of light--who made money out of the war; let all the people,
like people and like priest, say "Amen."
* * * * *