Part 11

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."

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But suppose these men were to come back to Boston on a day when, in civil style, as having never sinned yourself, and never left a man in ignorance and want to be goaded into crime, you were about to hang three men--one for murder, one for robbery with the armed hand, and one for burning down a house. Suppose, after the fashion of "the good old times," you were to hang those men in public, and lead them in long procession through your streets, and while you were welcoming these returned soldiers and taking their officers to feast in "the Cradle of Liberty," they should meet the sheriff's procession escorting those culprits to the gallows. Suppose the warriors should ask, "Why, what is that?" What would you say? Why, this: "These men, they broke the law of God, by violence, by fire and blood, and we shall hang them for the public good, and especially for the example, to teach the ignorant, the low, and the weak." Suppose those three felons, the halters round their neck, should ask also, "Why, what is that?" You would say, "They are the soldiers just come back from war. For two long years they have been hard at work, burning cities, plundering a nation, and butchering whole armies of men. Sometimes they killed a thousand in a day. By their help, the nation has stolen seven hundred thousand square miles of land!" Suppose the culprits ask, "Where will you hang so many?" "Hang them!" is the answer, "we shall only hang you. It is written in our Bible that one murder makes a villain, millions a hero. We shall feast these men full of bread and wine; shall take their leader, a rough man and a ready, one who by perpetual robbery holds a hundred slaves and more, and make him a king over all the land. But as you only burnt, robbed, and murdered on so small a scale, and without the command of the President or the Congress, we shall hang you by the neck. Our Governor ordered these men to go and burn and rob and kill; now he orders you to be hanged, and you must not ask any more questions, for the hour is already come."

To make the whole more perfect--suppose a native of Loo-Choo, converted to Christianity by your missionaries in his native land, had come hither to have "the way of God" "expounded unto him more perfectly," that he might see how these Christians love one another. Suppose he should be witness to a scene like this!

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To men who know the facts of war, the wickedness of this particular invasion and its wide-extending consequences, I fear that my words will seem poor and cold and tame. I have purposely mastered my emotion, telling only my thought. I have uttered no denunciation against the men who caused this destruction of treasure, this massacre of men, this awful degradation of the moral sense. The respectable men of Boston--"the men of property and standing" all over the State, the men that commonly control the politics of New England, tell you that they dislike the war. But they reelect the men who made it. Has a single man in all New England lost his seat in any office because he favored the war? Not a man. Have you ever known a northern merchant who would not let his ship for the war, because the war was wicked and he a Christian? Have you ever known a northern manufacturer who would not sell a kernel of powder, nor a cannon-ball, nor a coat, nor a shirt for the war? Have you ever known a capitalist, a man who lives by letting money, refuse to lend money for the war because the war was wicked? Not a merchant, not a manufacturer, not a capitalist. A little money--it can buy up whole hosts of men. Virginia sells her negroes; what does New England sell? There was once a man in Boston, a rich man too, not a very great man, only a good one who loved his country, and there was another poor man here, in the times that tried men's souls,--but there was not money enough in all England, not enough promise of honors, to make Hancock and Adams false to their sense of right. Is our soil degenerate, and have we lost the breed of noble men?

No, I have not denounced the men who directly made the war, or indirectly edged the people on. Pardon me, thou prostrate Mexico, robbed of more than half thy soil, that America may have more slaves; thy cities burned, thy children slain, the streets of thy capital trodden by the alien foot, but still smoking with thy children's blood: pardon me if I seem to have forgotten thee! And you, ye butchered Americans, slain by the vomito, the gallows, and the sword; you, ye maimed and mutilated men, who shall never again join hands in prayer, never kneel to God once more upon the limbs he made you; you, ye widows, orphans of these butchered men, far off in that more sunny South, here in our own fair land, pardon me that I seem to forget your wrongs! And thou, my Country, my own, my loved, my native land, thou child of great ideas and mother of many a noble son, dishonored now, thy treasure wasted, thy children killed or else made murderers, thy peaceful glory gone, thy Government made to pimp and pander for lust of crime, forgive me that I seem over-gentle to the men who did and do the damning deed which wastes thy treasure, spills thy blood, and stains thine honor's sacred fold! And you, ye sons of men everywhere, thou child of God, Mankind, whose latest, fairest hope is planted here in this new world,--forgive me if I seem gentle to thy enemies, and to forget the crime that so dishonors man, and makes this ground a slaughter-yard of men--slain, too, in furtherance of the basest wish! I have no words to tell the pity that I feel for them that did the deed. I only say, "Father, forgive them, for they know full well the sin they do!"

A sectarian church could censure a General for holding his candle in a Catholic cathedral; it was "a candle to the Pope"; yet never dared to blame the war. While we loaded a ship of war with corn and sent off the Macedonian to Cork, freighted by private bounty to feed the starving Irishman, the State sent her ships to Vera Cruz, in a cause most unholy, to bombard, to smite, and to kill. Father! forgive the State; forgive the church. It was an ignorant State. It was a silent church--a poor, dumb dog, that dared not bark at the wolf who prowls about the fold, but only at the lamb.

Yet ye leaders of the land, know this,--that the blood of thirty thousand men cries out of the ground against you. Be it your folly or your crime, still cries the voice, "Where is thy brother?" That thirty thousand--in the name of humanity I ask, "Where are they?" In the name of justice I answer, "You slew them!"

It was not the people who made this war. They have often enough done a foolish thing. But it was not they who did this wrong. It was they who led the people; it was demagogues that did it. Whig demagogues and demagogues of the democrats; men that flatter the ignorance, the folly, or the sin of the people, that they might satisfy their own base purposes. In May, 1846, if the facts of the case could have been stated to the voters, and the question put to the whole mass of the people, "Shall we go down and fight Mexico, spending two hundred million of dollars, maiming four and twenty thousand men, and butchering thirty thousand; shall we rob her of half her territory?"--the lowest and most miserable part of the nation would have said as they did say, "Yes;" the demagogues of the nation would have said as they did say, "Yes;" perhaps a majority of the men of the South would have said so, for the humanity of the nation lies not there; but if it had been brought to the great mass of the people at the North,--whose industry and skill so increase the national wealth, whose intelligence and morals have given the nation its character abroad,--then they, the great majority of the land, would have said "No. We will have no war! If we want more land, we will buy it in the open market, and pay for it honestly. But we are not thieves, nor murderers, thank God, and will not butcher a nation to make a slave-field out of her soil." The people would not have made this war.

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