time of peace, Baron was hailed by Captain S. P. Humphreys, commanding
the British Frigate Leopard, and ordered to lie to and deliver over
alleged deserters on board the Chesapeake. His brother officers
accused him of failing to make preparations to defend his frigate when
he was attacked and compelled to surrender to Captain Humphreys.
Baron called for a court of inquiry. Decatur was a member of the
subsequent court martial, although junior to Baron. Before the court
martial was sworn, Decatur advised Baron that he felt prejudiced
against him and feared he could not do him justice, suggesting Baron
exercise his right to object to being tried by him. Baron declined,
and Decatur reluctantly sat on the court, which suspended Baron for
five years. This he took much to heart, making frequent applications
for reinstatement. One of these applications passed through Decatur's
hands. When he could not recommend Baron's reinstatement, Baron took
offense and threatened a challenge. Decatur replied that he felt
no animosity toward Baron, but had made his endorsement through a
conscientious conviction of duty. He hoped Baron would not resort to
extremes, but, if he did, would feel bound to accommodate him. Baron
responded with a formal challenge, which Decatur accepted.
Just before they were placed in position, Baron remarked, "Commodore
Decatur, I hope when we meet in another world we will be better
friends."
Decatur promptly replied, "I have never been your enemy."
The distance was ten paces. Both were excellent shots, and firing
simultaneously, both fell, Baron seriously, and Decatur fatally
wounded.
Baron lived thirty years, becoming the senior officer of the navy, but
he never wholly reinstated himself in the good opinion of either his
brother officers or the people of his country.
_Graves and Cilley_
Graves and Cilley were congressmen from Kentucky and Maine,
respectively. Cilley, in debate in the House, reflected on the
character of Mr. Webb, editor of the New York _Courier and Inquirer_,
who sent a note by his friend Graves demanding an explanation. Not
wanting a controversy with Webb, Cilley declined to receive the note,
expressing his high respect for Graves. According, however, to the
duellists' hair-line theory of honor, Cilley's refusal to receive the
note from Graves implied a reflection upon the latter and after some
correspondence Graves sent a challenge to Cilley, which he accepted.
They met on the road to Marlborough, Maryland, Graves attended by
Mr. Wise, his second, and Cilley by his friend, Mr. Jones. The
weapons were rifles, the distance about 92 yards. They exchanged two
shots without effect. After each shot efforts were made to reach an
accommodation, thwarted by Graves and his seconds. After the second,
Graves said, "I must have another shot," and asked Wise to prevent
a prolongation of the affair by proposing closer quarters, if they
missed repeatedly. But at the third shot, Cilley dropped his rifle,
cried, "I am shot," put both hands to his wound, fell, and in two or
three minutes expired, shot through the body.
The committee of seven appointed by the House of Representatives
to investigate this affair reported that early on the day on which
Cilley met his unfortunate end, James Watson Webb, Daniel Jackson, and
William H. Morell agreed to arm, repair to Cilley's rooms and force
him to fight Webb with pistols on the spot, or pledge his word to
give Webb a meeting before he did Graves. If Cilley would do neither,
they agreed to shatter his right arm.
Finding Cilley was not at his lodgings, they went to Bladensburg,
where it was said the duel was to take place. It was agreed that Webb
would approach Cilley, claim the quarrel, insist on fighting him and
assure him if he aimed at Graves, Webb would shoot him. Not finding
the party at Bladensburg, they returned to the city to await the
result of the duel. A statement drawn up by Webb, signed by Jackson
and Morell, and published in the New York _Courier and Inquirer_,
says: "It is unnecessary to add what would have been the course of
Colonel Webb if Mr. Graves, instead of Mr. Cilley, had been injured.
Suffice it to say that it was sanctioned by us and, however much we
deplore it, we could not doubt but the extraordinary position in which
he would have been placed would have warranted the course determined
upon." It is difficult to imagine what is here darkly shadowed, if it
be not that, had Cilley survived the encounter with Graves, and had
the latter suffered it, it would then have been Cilley's fate to have
encountered an assassin.
A prominent politician, Graves never fully recovered from his
countrymen's universal condemnation of the killing of Cilley, who had
tried in every honorable way to avoid the meeting. He did not die in
as great disgrace as other duellists, but the affair marred his career.
_Terry and Broderick_
Terry was an advocate of the duello. Broderick had previously fought
with a Mr. Smith.
Terry from Texas, Broderick from New York, went to California as
Forty-Niners.
Both rose to prominence in politics. Terry became Chief Justice of
the State, and Broderick a senator in Congress. Later they became
political adversaries, Terry pro-slavery and Broderick anti-slavery.
While at breakfast in a San Francisco hotel, Broderick read an address
Terry had delivered in Sacramento. Angered by something Terry had
said, he remarked to a friend, "I have said that I considered him the
only honest man on the supreme bench, but now I take it all back." A
Mr. Perley, an English subject, asked Broderick if he meant Terry.
Being answered "yes" he at once resented the reflection on Terry.
Broderick cut him short with some curt remark, whereupon Perley
challenged Broderick, but the latter declined because of the political
canvass then in progress. On September 7, 1859, Broderick's party was
overwhelmingly defeated, and he emerged from the contest dispirited
and in ill health. As soon as Terry knew the result of the election,
he tendered his resignation as chief justice and sent Broderick a note
by his friend Benham, demanding a retraction of the remarks overheard
by Perley. Admitting the words, Broderick observed Terry was "the best
judge as to whether this language affords good grounds for offense."
Terry sent a formal challenge by Benham, which Broderick accepted, and
on September 13th they met.
Terry had passed a comfortable night, but Broderick's friends had
taken him to a house where he got little rest, and he came on the
field unrefreshed and without even a cup of coffee. The pistols had
very delicate hair triggers, and Terry had practiced with them.
They were strange to Broderick, and he had difficulty in handling
them. When, according to the custom, the seconds searched both,
McKibben, Broderick's second, merely touched Terry's vest. But Benham
manipulated his hands up and down Broderick's person as though he
thought to discover a coat of mail. This annoyed Broderick at a time
when he needed to be calm. When word was given, Broderick fired and
missed. Then Terry took deliberate aim and Broderick fell, fatally
wounded.
The day of Broderick's funeral public sentiment changed suddenly in
the late senator's favor, and against Terry. He lost standing in his
party, and although a great lawyer and a universally popular man,
became something of an outcast in California. He was indicted, but
the case was transferred to another court and dismissed.
His end was violent. He had harbored resentment against Stephen J.
Field, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, for a
certain decision unfavorable to Terry's wife, widely known as Sarah
Althea Hill, and also because he had not hesitated to send both Terry
and his wife to jail for resisting and assaulting a United States
marshal in open court. Field's friends were informed that Terry
threatened violence, and when Field returned to California after
Terry's release from jail he was accompanied by a deputy marshal as
body guard. Terry sought Field, entered a restaurant where Field was
seated, walked directly back of him and struck the venerable justice
in the face. Nagle, the body guard, shot Terry, who died instantly.
These four duels are mentioned here because they involved citizens of
the highest prominence. They proved clearly to the American people
that King Gundobald's law that "Providence awards the victory to the
juster cause" was wholly untenable.
After the Burr-Hamilton affair severe laws were passed against
duelling; but the influence and power of its advocates rendered it
difficult to get an indictment from a grand jury or a conviction from
a petit jury. After the Terry-Broderick duel, however, it became
easy, and so many convictions were obtained that this mode of trial
was permanently banished from America. Today no one could give better
evidence of unrighteous and murderous intentions than to challenge
another to trial by combat.
It should not be difficult to draw an analogy between this barbarous
and cruel method of trying so-called non-justiciable cases and that of
the great and powerful nations, which make the same false claim that
differences between them are non-justiciable and only to be settled by
trial by combat.
If, as the world has decided, questions of honor between individuals
are justiciable, it must also be true that no question of honor
between nations is non-justiciable.
NATIONAL TRIAL BY COMBAT
Of the present war, I want to record my conviction that, as we are in
it, whether wisely or no, it is the duty of every American to help
prosecute it with all his abilities until peace is attained.
But of war in general, I have much to say. As personal trial by combat
has disappeared from all civilized lands, so national trial by combat
will, I believe, be abolished by force of public opinion, at no very
distant date.
The manner in which this, the greatest of all reforms, can best be
brought about has been with me a matter of the greatest interest, to
which I have given much reflection.
My profession, and Nannie's attachment to it and to me, led us to
see more of humanity than falls to the lot of most. We lived in
almost every State and Territory in the Union, and in several foreign
countries, mingling with many races. We knew the negro, a short time
as slaves, but for over fifty years emerged from bondage, as household
help, as soldiers and as citizens. We learned their racial instincts,
hopes, aspirations and ambitions. As closely, in service with and over
them, we knew the wild Indians. We knew closely and intimately, both
officially and in private life, the misunderstood Mexicans, and the
Chinese and Japanese, who are so misunderstood by our own people.
This intercourse with many races taught us that men in their
instincts, hopes, ambitions, passions and dislikes are much the same
the world over, and that no race or nation can claim any very great
superiority over any other. In the inherent desire to be of use,
all have practically the same good purposes as far as environment
will permit, and as it is given them to see. Those whose efforts win
greater academic civilization and consequently greater power often
develop a mistaken sense of duty to compel less fortunate neighbors
to take on suddenly that state of civilization and progress they have
been thousands of years in acquiring, arguing that it is "_Manifest
Destiny_" that they could do better with these people and their
belongings than they could do themselves. It is a short step to the
further mistaken doctrine that "_The End Justifies the Means_," and
the means is always conquest and subjugation by the doctrine that
"_Might Makes Right_."
This logic consolidated the different German nations into one central
power, and, under the present Kaiser, organized a militarism for the
purpose of conquering and subjugating the world. Hannibal, Alexander,
Cæsar and Spain's rulers, accomplished and maintained wicked and
tyrannous powers for an average of 300 years. When oppression became
unbearable, their subjects freed themselves by bloody rebellions.
Lately England (by destroying the Spanish Armada and building one
of her own) began ruling all the seas and straits of the world,
its commerce and trade "by orders in council," confiscating the
mail, censoring the news of the world, and is no less arbitrary in
controlling the sea and commerce by navalism than those who controlled
the land by militarism.
England, however, during the last three hundred years, has been more
beneficent and benevolent than any of her predecessors. The best ruler
the world has ever had, she abandoned to some extent her right to rule
the land by allying herself with some of the most powerful nations of
the world, while maintaining rule of the seas by overwhelming navalism.
Though we are now her ally, Americans should ponder well what our
position in the world will be after the present war.
Flags of truce, if they should appear today, would find about 40
millions of soldiers of the seventeen combative nations in arms, who
have taken captive, in fair proportion, some 4,500,000 prisoners,
who are now face to face with their captors, learning each other's
language, their hopes, and aspirations and arguing, none altogether
without reason, their aims in the war.
This, like the conditions of our own Civil War, presents the grandest
peace table ever known to history, all having been eye witnesses, and
for the most part, unwilling participants in the despotic cruelties,
participated in more or less by all the armies, formulating an
enduring peace without vainglorious victory in contradistinction to
their secretive, vengeful rulers, the politicians and diplomats who
would have no peace without vainglorious victory.
In the years to come, these unselfish arbitrators may prevail and
establish the principles of a democratic peace and a confederacy of
the world's nations to control it. This must come not only on land,
but on all the seas and straits and in commerce, for a democratic
peace is just as necessary for the betterment of humanity on the seas
as on the land. An oligarchal government of the seas and straits is
just as detrimental to the peace and prosperity of the world as an
oligarchal government anywhere else. In the face of a peace of this
character insincere and unrighteous formulations will melt away as
did those of the politicians, diplomats, carpetbaggers and Ku Klux
before the well formed judgment of the "Blue and the Gray" engaged in
our Civil War by which we were enabled to establish an enduring peace
without vainglorious victory.
Peace will leave at least 40 millions of the most efficient small arms
ever known, probably 10 million machine guns of the same character;
three hundred thousand cannon, large and small; thousands of
war-ships, all with corresponding munitions and equipments for which
the world will then have little use.
Peace will find most of these soldiers with three or four times
their number employed as accessories to the army, discharged without
vocation, and, perhaps, 100 million expatriated citizens, poor,
helpless and starving men, women and children, wandering on the face
of the earth. All these several hundred millions must be provided
for in food, shelter and raiment. How to do it will be the greatest
problem mankind has ever faced.
The bonded indebtedness of the world is, perhaps, today 100 billions,
and after flags of truce are flying, it will necessitate, perhaps, one
or two years to compose a satisfactory peace among the many nations
at war; so, that before it will be practicable to disarm and free
these hundreds of millions of unemployed, the bonded indebtedness
will probably increase to 200 billions. If it be attempted to enforce
the punitive doctrine that "to the victors belong the spoils," it is
obvious that it would be wholly impossible for the victors to maintain
these bonds and maintain their national armies necessary to enforce
reparations and indemnities, and the world would be compelled to face
at least a partial repudiation. It would take hundreds of years for
the vanquished to indemnify and repair, and hundreds of billions to
support the necessary armies to enforce the penalties. Whereas, if
the individual nations could be relieved of the support of armies and
navies, they could readily indemnify and restore themselves in twenty
years, and advantageously charge the expense to "Profit and Loss."
To palliate and partially remedy this distressing situation, three
courses may be presented to the American people:
=_First._ An alliance with the victorious nations claiming new-found
democratic emperors by Divine right, (hereditary royal families, lords
and nobles), for the future preservation of the peace of the world.
Such an alliance could hardly prove more successful in the future than
similar alliances have proven in the past, and would only engender
and breed similar opposing alliances in a comparatively short space
of time, probably embracing the yellow races, which would produce
a similar world war, besides which it would make "scraps of paper"
of our Constitution framed by Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin,
and Lincoln's government "of the people, by the people and for the
people."=
=_Second._ Apparently a better remedy: a policy of isolation carried
out by building ships for coast defense only, by girding our seacoast
and our international borders with a broad gauge national railway,
capable of carrying the heaviest ordnance and transporting strong
armies rapidly; by building emplacements, magazines and trenches, and
manufacturing and storing at strategic points heavy artillery, small
arms, ammunition and equipment for at least two million men; forming
a regular army of several hundred thousand men with pay equal to, or
even greater, than that of other government employees, to serve but
one short enlistment. When thoroughly trained and disciplined, they
would be returned to civil life subject to call in an emergency. This
in a few years would provide several million efficient soldiers. With
the present airplane scouts the approach of any foe could be detected
and announced so as to assemble an army either on the land or seashore
that would destroy any possible force that could approach us. America
is better situated for such isolation than any other quarter of the
globe that nature has given to a homogeneous people, because we
produce all the necessities of life. The rest of the world would be
obliged to make terms with us for the necessities they can not live
without, of which fact this war is a perfect exemplification.=
=_Third._ Certainly the most promising and feasible course, if
the tyranny of the world's custom can be overcome as it has been in
personal trial by combat, is to federate all the nations of the world
under a constitution similar to the constitution of the original
thirteen States, now the greatest nation in the world, and that of the
Swiss cantons, now the oldest fundamentally unchanged government in
the world.=
=This plan ought to be offered at the coming peace table with the
United States a controlling factor in its accomplishment. We will
be stronger, less impoverished, less distressed and less bitterly
antagonistic than any of the other warring nations, with a President
capable of leading his people, known to be in sympathy with control of
the world's peace.=
=A spontaneous call from the peace societies of America is suggested
for a convention of all the nations of the earth having a population
of three million or more, with a democratic or republican government
with powers derived from the consent of the governed, to consider a
confederacy of the world's nations, to which all should be invited to
enter by "knocking at the door," and subscribing to the constitution
then to be formed.=
=That the nations so confederated should take over all the seas,
the Straits of Gibraltar, the Dardanelles, those at Dover and Calais,
those between Japan and Korea and the Panama Canal, together with
adequate adjacent lands, and build tunnels thereunder and maintain
them free to the passage of persons and property of all nations save
those who may fail to confederate.=
=That this confederacy should have as its main feature the
establishment of an itinerant arbitral government with, perhaps, five
capitals, say, at these straits so taken over.=
=The world government should consist of a Congress of not over two
senators from each nation, and not over four hundred representatives,
proportioned to the population of each nation, selected in the
constitutional manner of each nation. The government should be
executive, legislative and judicial; the executive chosen by the
Senate, to choose his cabinet from the Senate. All government officers
would serve a limited number of years, save the judges, who would
serve for life. The government to sit five years at each capital in
turn.=
=That the nations so confederated should take over, intern and
maintain in approximate equal portions at the five mentioned points,
all instrumentalities of the nations confederated for the destruction
of life and property in international wars, not necessary for the
preservation of law and order within the respective nations, or,
required by the police force of the confederacy to guarantee to
nations confederated, free passage through all the seas, straits,
canals and tunnels under its control, of all persons, ships and
commerce.=
=That the National police collect from nations who fail to
confederate a toll at least equal to their proportion of the total
expenses of the confederated administration.=
=That each nation reciprocally with others, control within their
own borders, citizenship, migration, emigration, taxation, militia
and police for the preservation and maintenance of their laws, but
no nation, whether of the confederacy or not to be permitted to have
armed vessels at sea.=
=Any nation, whether a member of the confederacy or not, would have
the right to present a grievance, if it agreed to abide the decision
of the confederacy's court. No nation, whether of the confederacy or
not, would be allowed to disturb the peace of the world by entering
into war with any other nation without first presenting its grievance
to the world's court and obtaining permission therefrom.=
=Nations, like individuals, often have wrongs without adequate
remedies, which are better served to the general good by waiving them
to other nations as individuals do to their communities.=
HONOLULU
In 1915 Nannie and I spent some time at the exposition at San
Francisco. Previous visits to many other international expositions
enabled us intelligently to understand the superiorities of the
various exhibits. We thought the best showing, outside of our own
country, was made by Canada, the next best by Germany, and the third
best by the Japanese.
From there we went to Honolulu, spending a month in the most
interesting island of Oahu. Stopping at the Moana Hotel, we enjoyed
our visit there perhaps as well as any we ever made. Numerous friends,
our favorite nephew, Captain Carl Anson Martin, with his interesting
wife, Agnes, among them, showed us many courtesies. We visited every
place of interest, and particularly enjoyed watching the wonderful
surf riding. Many journeys in the mountains showed us the sea from
all directions. Captain Martin took us to Tantalus Beach, where,
though we were old people, we were able to climb five hundred feet of
the ruggedest part of Tantalus, a mountain some twenty-five hundred
feet high, with the younger ones. I believe Nannie was as strong and
vigorous and enjoyed her outing as much as she did forty years before.
The island has a population of about one hundred and fifty thousand,
only seven per cent native Americans, the rest Chinese, Japanese and
Portuguese. The original Hawaiians have practically disappeared from
the earth as a result of so-called missionary efforts to Christianize
them by presenting them with a Bible with the right hand and a bottle
of rum with the left.