The resolution was taken up and debated.
* * * * *
January 24th, Mr. Sumner moved the following resolutions as a
substitute.
“_Resolved_, That retaliation is harsh always, even in the
simplest cases, and is permissible only where, in the first
place, it may be reasonably expected to effect its object,
and where, in the second place, it is consistent with the
usages of civilized society; and in the absence of these
essential conditions, it is a useless barbarism, having
no other end than vengeance, which is forbidden alike to
nations and to men.
“_Resolved_, That the treatment of our officers and
soldiers in Rebel prisons is cruel, savage, and
heart-rending beyond precedent; that it is shocking to
morals; that it is an offence against human nature itself;
that it adds new guilt to the crime of the Rebellion, and
constitutes an example from which history will turn with
sorrow and disgust.
“_Resolved_, That any attempted imitation of Rebel
barbarism in the treatment of prisoners is plainly
impracticable, on account of its inconsistency with the
prevailing sentiments of humanity among us; that it would
be injurious at home, for it would barbarize the whole
community; that it would be utterly useless, for it could
not affect the cruel authors of the revolting conduct we
seek to overcome; that it would be immoral, inasmuch as
it proceeded from vengeance alone; that it could have no
other result than to degrade the national character and
the national name, and to bring down upon our country the
reprobation of history; and that, being thus impracticable,
useless, immoral, and degrading, it must be rejected as
a measure of retaliation, precisely as the barbarism
of roasting or eating prisoners is always rejected by
civilized powers.
“_Resolved_, That the United States, filled with grief and
sympathy for cherished fellow-citizens who, as officers
and soldiers, have become the victims of Heaven-defying
outrage, hereby declare their solemn determination to
end this great iniquity by ending the Rebellion of which
it is the natural fruit; that, to secure this humane
and righteous consummation, they pledge anew their best
energies and the resources of the whole people; and they
call upon all to bear witness that in this necessary
warfare with barbarism they renounce all vengeance and
every evil example, and plant themselves firmly on the
sacred landmarks of Christian civilization, under the
protection of that God who is present with every prisoner,
and enables heroic souls to suffer for their country.”
Mr. Sumner addressed the Senate in support of his resolutions.
After analyzing the resolution of the Committee, and exhibiting
its character, he proceeded:--
Now, Sir, I believe that the Senate will not venture, in this age
of Christian light, under any inducement, under any provocation, to
counsel the Executive Government to enter into such open competition
with barbarism. Sir, the thing is impossible; it must not be
entertained. We cannot be cruel, or barbarous, or savage, because the
Rebels we now meet in warfare are cruel, barbarous, and savage. We
cannot imitate the detested example. We find no precedent for such
retaliation in our own history nor in the history of other nations.
We find no precedent, I say, in our own history. This question was
one of the earliest presented to General Washington after taking
command of the American forces at Cambridge. From his headquarters
there, under date of August 11, 1775, he addressed a letter to General
Gage, commander of the British forces in Boston, which, as I believe,
contains the full extent to which a nation can honorably go; and I must
say, that, as I read it, I felt new pride in that commander who thus
early in the discharge of his great duties showed such insight into
their proper limits and responsibilities. Addressing General Gage, he
said:--
“SIR,--I understand that the officers engaged in the cause
of Liberty and their country, who by the fortune of war have
fallen into your hands, have been thrown indiscriminately into
a common jail appropriated for felons; that no consideration
has been had for those of the most respectable rank, when
languishing with wounds and sickness; and that some have been
even amputated in this unworthy situation.”
Then, reminding the British commander of the cause in which he was
engaged, Washington continued:--
“My duty now makes it necessary to apprise you that for the
future I shall regulate all my conduct towards those gentlemen
who are or may be in our possession exactly by the rule you
shall observe towards those of ours now in your custody. If
severity and hardship mark the line of your conduct, painful as
it may be to me, your prisoners will feel its effects; but if
kindness and humanity are shown to ours, I shall with pleasure
consider those in our hands only as unfortunate, and they shall
receive from me that treatment to which the unfortunate are
ever entitled.”[48]
Senators about me say, “That is sound.” I am glad they say so; and
if they can find in this correspondence any sanction of the savage
system now inaugurated in Rebel prisons, let them point it out. The
correspondence has its own limitations in the statement of facts on
which it proceeds, which you will please observe. Prisoners had been
thrown indiscriminately into a common jail for felons, and with
no consideration for those of the most respectable rank, even when
languishing with wounds and sickness; and some of them had limbs
amputated in this unworthy situation. But there is, Sir, no such
painful suggestion as that in our resolution: they had not “been
subjected to treatment unexampled for cruelty in the history of
civilized war, and finding its parallels only in the conduct of savage
tribes,--a treatment resulting in the death of multitudes by the slow,
but designed, process of starvation”: no such thing appears in the
case; and the judgment of Washington was applied strictly to the facts
before him.
This is not all. Search the history of our country, and you find that
the practice is fixed, while the rule has received an accuracy of
statement from which there can be no escape. I have before me the words
of Chancellor Kent, in his valuable Commentaries:--
“Instances of resolutions to retaliate on innocent prisoners of
war occurred in this country during the Revolutionary War, as
well as during the War of 1812; but there was no instance in
which retaliation, beyond the measure of severe confinement,
took place in respect to prisoners of war.”[49]
There you have the authoritative testimony of that great expounder
of our history and of our jurisprudence, the late Chancellor Kent. I
add also the testimony of another American writer, whom I have quoted
more than once in this Chamber, General Halleck, who, in his work on
International Law, thus expresses himself:--
“Retaliation should be limited to such punishments as may be
requisite for our own safety and the good of society; beyond
this it cannot be justified. We have no right to mutilate the
ambassador of a barbarous power because his sovereign has
treated our ambassador in that manner, nor to put prisoners
and hostages to death, and to destroy private property, merely
because our enemy has done this to us; for no individual is
justly chargeable with the guilt of a personal crime for the
acts of the community of which he is a member.”[50]
I said, Sir, the practice proposed was without precedent in the history
of other nations. I believe that I am right. I am confident that no
authentic record can be shown where such savage treatment has been
imitated in retaliation by a Christian power. One of the most learned
writers on the Law of Nations, Vattel, dealing with this very subject,
aptly puts the following question:--
“By what right will you cause the nose and ears of the
ambassador of a barbarian to be cut off who shall have treated
your ambassador in this manner?”[51]
That question strikes at the heart of this whole subject. What right
have you to adopt any barbarous conduct because the barbarous enemy
with whom you deal has set the example? This same eminent publicist, in
another place, says:--
“The Roman Senate held it as a maxim, that war was to be
carried on with arms, and not with poison.… The Senate, and
Tiberius himself, thought it not permissible to employ poison,
even against a perfidious enemy, and as a kind of retortion or
reprisal.”[52]
That statement covers the whole case. Why is it unlawful in
retaliation to adopt poison? Because it is barbarous. And for the same
reason it is unlawful for us to adopt starvation, to adopt all that
cruel system of treatment so emphatically set forth in the preamble
to this resolution. And while, Sir, I concede that by the Laws of War
retaliation is permissible, yet it has its limits; and those limits, as
I venture to say in the resolutions sent to the Chair as a substitute,
are at least twofold: first, the retaliation must be useful, it must
reasonably promise some practical result; and, in the second place,
it must be in harmony with the usages of civilized nations. The
retaliation now proposed is useless, for it can have no practical
result; and it is not in harmony with the usages of civilized nations.
I have said that the Laws of War recognize retaliation, as appears in
the recent most formal and explicit declaration to be found in the very
elaborate “Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United
States in the Field,”[53] prepared since this war began, under the
direction of a learned commission, and by the pen of one of the ablest
and most accomplished publicists of our age. I refer to Dr. Lieber, for
many years professor in South Carolina College, and now professor in
Columbia College, New York. In these Instructions the general law of
retaliation is affirmed.
“The Law of War can no more wholly dispense with retaliation
than can the Law of Nations, of which it is a branch. Yet
civilized nations acknowledge retaliation as the sternest
feature of war. A reckless enemy often leaves to his opponent
no other means of securing himself against the repetition of
barbarous outrage.”[54]
Such is the general principle, officially declared. And now, Sir, I
shall read the commentary of this same learned publicist on these very
Instructions in a private letter which I have received from him this
morning. Bear in mind, Sir, that the writer is a student of the Laws
of War, that he vindicates their exercise, and that in proper cases
he asserts the right of retaliation; and now allow me to present his
criticism on the retaliation proposed.
“I am unqualifiedly against the retaliation resolutions
concerning prisoners of war. The provision that the Southerners
in our hands shall be watched over by national soldiers who
have been in Southern pens is unworthy of any great people
or high-minded statesman. I am not opposed to retaliation
because it strikes those who are not or may not be guilty of
the outrage we wish to put an end to. That is the terrible
character of almost all retaliation in war. I abhor this
revenge on prisoners of war, because we would sink thereby to
the level of the enemy’s shame and dishonor. All retaliation
has some limit. If we fight with Indians who slowly roast
their prisoners, we cannot roast in turn the Indians whom we
may capture. And what is more, I defy Congress or Government
to make the Northern people treat captured Southerners as our
sons are treated by them. God be thanked, you could not do it;
and if you could, how it would brutalize our own people! I feel
the cruelty as keenly as any one; I grieve most bitterly that
people whom we and all the world have taken to possess the
common attributes of humanity, and who, after all, are our kin,
have sunk so loathsomely low; I feel the hardship of seeing no
immediate and direct remedy, except conquering and trampling
out the vile Rebellion; but I maintain that the proposed (yet
unfeasible) retaliation is not the remedy. Indeed, calmly to
maintain our ground would do us in the end far more good.
Revenge is passion, and ought never to enter the sphere of
public action. Passion always detracts from power.
“I believe that the ineffable cruelty practised against our men
has been equalled in the history of our race by the Spanish
treatment of the Indians, and by the Inquisition; but counter
cruelty would not mend matters. Those who can allow such crimes
would not be moved by cruelties inflicted upon their soldiers
in our hands. These cruelties, therefore, would be simply
revenge, not retaliation; for retaliation, as an element of
the Law of War, and of Nations in general, implies the idea of
thereby stopping a certain evil. But no mortal shall indulge in
revenge.
“I am, indeed, against all dainty treatment of the prisoners
in our hands; but, for the love of our country and the great
destiny of our people, do not sink, even in single cases, to
the level of our unhappy, shameless enemy.”
I have read this letter, and I quote it as authority, because it is
by the very pen which embodied retaliation in the Instructions to the
Armies of the United States.
There is another authority which I quote. It is Phillimore, the
accomplished publicist, whose elaborate work on the Law of Nations has
a learning second only to that of Grotius in treating the same subject.
Recording excesses of war by the French, this Englishman says:--
“At the beginning of the wars of the first French Revolution,
the French general announced his intention of giving no quarter
to English prisoners. The English did not retaliate, and the
Laws of War upon this subject were soon restored.”[55]
In other words, the Laws of War are essentially humane, and not to be
changed by any spasm of barbarism in an enemy.
A debate of several days ensued, in which Mr. Wade and Mr.
Howard argued earnestly for the resolution of the Committee,
and they were sustained by Mr. Gratz Brown, of Missouri, Mr.
Howe, of Wisconsin, Mr. Harlan, of Iowa, Mr. Clark, of New
Hampshire, Mr. Wilkinson, of Minnesota, Mr. Chandler, of
Michigan, and Mr. Lane, of Indiana. On the other side were
Mr. Cowan, of Pennsylvania, Mr. Hendricks, of Indiana, Mr.
Henderson, of Missouri, Mr. Foster, of Connecticut, Mr. Davis,
of Kentucky, Mr. Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland, Mr. Richardson,
of Illinois, Mr. McDougall, of California, and Mr. Doolittle,
of Wisconsin. Mr. Chandler especially condemned the position of
Mr. Sumner. Here he said:--
“Sir, the Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. SUMNER] has
brought in a sublimated specimen of humanitarianism that
does not apply to these accursed Rebels at this time. They
do not appreciate that kind of humanitarianism. I expected
those men who desire that the Rebellion should succeed to
oppose retaliation, and to oppose it to the bitter end; but
I did not expect the Senator from Massachusetts to come
in here and say that it was inexpedient to protect our
suffering prisoners.”
MR. SUMNER. “I have not said so.”
Mr. Wilson, of Massachusetts, moved as a substitute for Mr.
Sumner’s amendment a simple resolution requiring the President
“to appoint two commissioners to confer with the Confederate
authorities, with a view of devising some practicable plan for
the relief and better treatment of our prisoners of war.” Mr.
Clark, of New Hampshire, offered still another substitute, to
be considered when in order:--
“That Congress earnestly calls the attention of the
President to the condition and treatment of our prisoners
of war in Rebel prisons and camps; and if, for reasons
satisfactory to or controlling the Executive, they cannot
be exchanged, desires that he should employ every means
in his power, embracing retaliation to such a degree as
may be proper and effectual, to prevent the continuance
and recurrence of such barbarities, and to compel the
insurgents to observe the laws of civilized warfare.”
Mr. Wade, who was urging the original resolution, also gave
notice of an amendment, to strike out all after the word
“retaliation,” and insert as follows:--
“That the executive and military authorities of the United
States are hereby directed to retaliate upon the prisoners
of the enemy in such manner _and kind_ as shall be
effective in deterring him from the perpetration in future
of cruel and barbarous treatment of our soldiers.”
Mr. Wade recognized the change so far as to say, “Now, if a
Senator is for retaliation, if he is for the principle of
it, he cannot have it in a milder form than it is there.”
Mr. Morrill proposed to strike out the words “and kind,” and
insert, instead, “in conformity to the Laws of Nations,” which
amendment was accepted by Mr. Wade.