Part 7

What a scene that morning looks upon! I will not turn again. Let the dead bury their dead. But their blood cries out of the ground against the rulers who shed it,--"Cain! where are thy brothers?" What shall the fool answer; what the traitor say?

Then comes thanksgiving in all the churches of Boston. The consecrated banners, stiff with blood and "glory," are hung over the altar. The minister preaches and the singer sings: "The Lord hath been on our side. He treadeth the people under me. He teacheth my hands to war, my fingers to fight. Yea, He giveth me the necks of mine enemies; for the Lord is his name;" and "It was a famous victory!" Boston seizes miles square of land; but her houses are empty; her wives widows; her children fatherless. Rachel weeps for the murder of her innocents, yet dares not rebuke the rod.

I know there is no fighting across Charles River, as in this poor fiction; but there was once, and instead of Charles say Rio Grande; for Cambridge read Metamoras, and it is what your President recommended; what your Congress enacted; what your Governor issued his proclamation for; what your volunteers go to accomplish: yes, what they fired cannon for on Boston Common the other day. I wish that were a fiction of mine!

* * * * *

We are waging a most iniquitous war--so it seems to me. I know I may be wrong, but I am no partisan, and if I err, it is not wilfully, not rashly. I know the Mexicans are a wretched people; wretched in their origin, history, and character. I know but two good things of them as a people--they abolished negro slavery, not long ago; they do not covet the lands of their neighbors. True, they have not paid all their debts, but it is scarcely decent in a nation, with any repudiating States, to throw the first stone at Mexico for that!

I know the Mexicans cannot stand before this terrible Anglo-Saxon race, the most formidable and powerful the world ever saw; a race which has never turned back; which, though it number less than forty millions, yet holds the Indies, almost the whole of North America; which rules the commerce of the world; clutches at New Holland, China, New Zealand, Borneo, and seizes island after island in the furthest seas; the race which invented steam as its awful type. The poor, wretched Mexicans can never stand before us. How they perished in battle! They must melt away as the Indians before the white man. Considering how we acquired Louisiana, Florida, Oregon, I cannot forbear thinking that this people will possess the whole of the continent before many years; perhaps before the century ends. But this may be had fairly; with no injustice to any one; by the steady advance of a superior race, with superior ideas and a better civilization; by commerce, trade, arts, by being better than Mexico, wiser, humaner, more free and manly. Is it not better to acquire it by the schoolmaster than the cannon; by peddling cloth, tin, any thing rather than bullets? It may not all belong to this Government, and yet to this race. It would be a gain to mankind if we could spread over that country the Idea of America--that all men are born free and equal in rights, and establish there political, social, and individual freedom. But to do that, we must first make real these ideas at home.

In the general issue between this race and that, we are in the right. But in this special issue, and this particular war, it seems to me that we are wholly in the wrong; that our invasion of Mexico is as bad as the partition of Poland in the last century and in this. If I understand the matter, the whole movement, the settlement of Texas, the Texan revolution, the annexation of Texas, the invasion of Mexico, has been a movement hostile to the American idea, a movement to extend slavery. I do not say such was the design on the part of the people, but on the part of the politicians who pulled the strings. I think the papers of the Government and the debates of Congress prove that. The annexation has been declared unconstitutional in its mode, a virtual dissolution of the Union, and that by very high and well-known authority. It was expressly brought about for the purpose of extending slavery. An attempt is now made to throw the shame of this on the democrats. I think the democrats deserve the shame; but I could never see that the whigs, on the whole, deserved it any less; only they were not quite so open. Certainly, their leaders did not take ground against it, never as against a modification of the tariff! When we annexed Texas we of course took her for better or worse, debts and all, and annexed her war along with her. I take it everybody knew that; though now some seem to pretend a decent astonishment at the result. Now one party is ready to fight for it as the other! The North did not oppose the annexation of Texas. Why not? They knew they could make money by it. The eyes of the North are full of cotton; they see nothing else, for a web is before them; their ears are full of cotton, and they hear nothing but the buzz of their mills; their mouth is full of cotton, and they can speak audibly but two words--Tariff, Tariff, Dividends, Dividends. The talent of the North is blinded, deafened, gagged with its own cotton. The North clamored loudly when the nation's treasure was removed from the United States Bank; it is almost silent at the annexation of a slave territory big as the kingdom of France, encumbered with debts, loaded with the entailment of war! Northern Governors call for soldiers; our men volunteer to fight in a most infamous war for the extension of slavery! Tell it not in Boston, whisper it not in Faneuil Hall, lest you weaken the slumbers of your fathers, and they curse you as cowards and traitors unto men! Not satisfied with annexing Texas and a war, we next invaded a territory which did not belong to Texas, and built a fort on the Rio Grande, where, I take it, we had no more right than the British, in 1841, had on the Penobscot or the Saco. Now the Government and its Congress would throw the blame on the innocent, and say war exists "by the act of Mexico!" If a lie was ever told, I think this is one. Then the "dear people" must be called on for money and men, for "the soil of this free republic is invaded," and the Governor of Massachusetts, one of the men who declared the annexation of Texas unconstitutional, recommends the war he just now told us to pray against, and appeals to our "patriotism," and "humanity," as arguments for butchering the Mexicans, when they are in the right and we in the wrong! The maxim is held up, "Our country, right or wrong;" "Our country, howsoever bounded;" and it might as well be, "Our country, howsoever governed." It seems popularly and politically forgotten that there is such a thing as Right. The nation's neck invites a tyrant. I am not at all astonished that northern representatives voted for all this work of crime. They are no better than southern representatives; scarcely less in favor of slavery, and not half so open. They say: Let the North make money, and you may do what you please with the nation; and we will choose governors that dare not oppose you, for, though we are descended from the Puritans we have but one article in our creed we never flinch from following, and that is--to make money; honestly, if we can; if not, as we can!

Look through the action of your Government, and your Congress. You see that no reference has been had in this affair to Christian ideas; none to justice and the eternal right. Nay, none at all! In the churches, and among the people, how feeble has been the protest against this great wrong. How tamely the people yield their necks--and say: "Take our sons for the war--we care not, right or wrong." England butchers the Sikhs in India--her generals are elevated to the peerage, and the head of her church writes a form of thanksgiving for the victory, to be read in all the churches of that Christian land.[7] To make it still more abominable, the blasphemy is enacted on Easter Sunday, the great holiday of men who serve the Prince of Peace. We have not had prayers in the churches, for we have no political Archbishop. But we fired cannon in joy that we had butchered a few wretched men--half starved, and forced into the ranks by fear of death! Your peace societies, and your churches, what can they do? What dare they? Verily, we are a faithless and perverse generation. God be merciful to us, sinners as we are!

* * * * *

But why talk for ever? What shall we do? In regard to this present war, we can refuse to take any part in it; we can encourage others to do the same; we can aid men, if need be, who suffer because they refuse. Men will call us traitors: what then? That hurt nobody in '76! We are a rebellious nation; our whole history is treason; our blood was attainted before we were born; our creeds are infidelity to the mother-church; our Constitution treason to our father-land. What of that? Though all the governors in the world bid us commit treason against man, and set the example, let us never submit. Let God only be a master to control our conscience!

We can hold public meetings in favor of peace, in which what is wrong shall be exposed and condemned. It is proof of our cowardice that this has not been done before now. We can show in what the infamy of a nation consists; in what its real glory. One of your own men, the last summer, startled the churches out of their sleep,[8] by his manly trumpet, talking with us, and telling that the true grandeur of a nation was justice, not glory; peace, not war.

We can work now for future times, by taking pains to spread abroad the sentiments of peace, the ideas of peace, among the people in schools, churches--everywhere. At length we can diminish the power of the national Government, so that the people alone shall have the power to declare war, by a direct vote, the Congress only to recommend it. We can take from the Government the means of war by raising only revenue enough for the nation's actual wants, and raising that directly, so that each man knows what he pays, and when he pays it, and then he will take care that it is not paid to make him poor and keep him so. We can diffuse a real practical Christianity among the people, till the mass of men have courage enough to overcome evil with good, and look at aggressive war as the worst of treason and the foulest infidelity!

Now is the time to push and be active. War itself gives weight to words of peace. There will never be a better time till we make the times better. It is not a day for cowardice, but for heroism. Fear not that the "honor of the nation" will suffer from Christian movements for peace. What if your men of low degree are a vanity, and your men of high degree are a lie? That is no new thing. Let true men do their duty, and the lie and the vanity will pass each to its reward. Wait not for the churches to move, or the State to become Christian. Let us bear our testimony like men, not fearing to be called traitors, infidels; fearing only to be such.

I would call on Americans, by their love of our country, its great ideas, its real grandeur, its hopes, and the memory of its fathers--to come and help save that country from infamy and ruin. I would call on Christians, who believe that Christianity is a truth, to lift up their voice, public and private, against the foulest violation of God's law, this blasphemy of the Holy Spirit of Christ, this worst form of infidelity to man and God. I would call on all men, by the one nature that is in you, by the great human heart beating alike in all your bosoms, to protest manfully against this desecration of the earth, this high treason against both man and God. Teach your rulers that you are Americans, not slaves; Christians, not heathen; men, not murderers, to kill for hire! You may effect little in this generation, for its head seems crazed and its heart rotten. But there will be a day after to-day. It is for you and me to make it better; a day of peace, when nation shall no longer lift up sword against nation; when all shall indeed be brothers, and all blest. Do this, you shall be worthy to dwell in this beautiful land; Christ will be near you; God work with you, and bless you for ever!

This present trouble with Mexico may be very brief; surely it might be even now brought to an end with no unusual manhood in your rulers. Can we say we have not deserved it? Let it end, but let us remember that war, horrid as it is, is not the worst calamity which ever befalls a people. It is far worse for a people to lose all reverence for right, for truth, all respect for man and God; to care more for the freedom of trade than the freedom of men; more for a tariff than millions of souls. This calamity came upon us gradually, long before the present war, and will last long after that has died away. Like people like ruler, is a true word. Look at your rulers, representatives, and see our own likeness! We reverence force, and have forgot there is any right beyond the vote of a Congress or a people; any good beside dollars; any God but majorities and force, I think the present war, though it should cost 50,000 men and $50,000,000, the smallest part of our misfortune. Abroad we are looked on as a nation of swindlers and men-stealers! What can we say in our defence? Alas, the nation is a traitor to its great idea,--that all men are born equal, each with the same unalienable rights. We are infidels to Christianity. We have paid the price of our shame.

There have been dark days in this nation before now. It was gloomy when Washington with his little army fled through the Jerseys. It was a long dark day from '83 to '89. It was not so dark as now; the nation never so false. There was never a time when resistance to tyrants was so rare a virtue; when the people so tamely submitted to a wrong. Now you can feel the darkness. The sack of this city and the butchery of its people were a far less evil than the moral deadness of the nation. Men spring up again like the mown grass; but to raise up saints and heroes in a dead nation corrupting beside its golden tomb, what shall do that for us? We must look not to the many for that, but to the few who are faithful unto God and man.

I know the hardy vigor of our men, the stalwart intellect of this people. Would to God they could learn to love the right and true. Then what a people should we be, spreading from the Madawaska to the Sacramento, diffusing our great idea, and living our religion, the Christianity of Christ! Oh, Lord! make the vision true; waken thy prophets and stir thy people till righteousness exalt us! No wonders will be wrought for that. But the voice of conscience speaks to you and me, and all of us: The right shall prosper; the wicked States shall die, and History responds her long amen.

What lessons come to us from the past! The Genius of the old civilization, solemn and sad, sits there on the Alps, his classic beard descending o'er his breast. Behind him arise the new nations, bustling with romantic life. He bends down over the midland sea, and counts up his children--Assyria, Egypt, Tyre, Carthage, Troy, Etruria, Corinth, Athens, Rome--once so renowned, now gathered with the dead, their giant ghosts still lingering pensive o'er the spot. He turns westward his face, too sad to weep, and raising from his palsied knee his trembling hand, looks on his brother genius of the new civilization. That young giant, strong and mocking, sits there on the Alleghanies. Before him lie the waters, covered with ships; behind him he hears the roar of the Mississippi and the far distant Oregon--rolling their riches to the sea. He bends down, and that far ocean murmurs pacific in his ear. On his left, are the harbors, shops and mills of the East, and a five-fold gleam of light goes up from Northern lakes. On his right, spread out the broad savannahs of the South, waiting to be blessed; and far off that Mexique bay bends round her tropic shores. A crown of stars is on that giant's head, some glorious with flashing, many-colored light; some bloody red; some pale and faint, of most uncertain hue. His right hand lies folded in his robe; the left rests on the Bible's opened page, and holds these sacred words--All men are equal, born with equal rights from God. The old says to the young: "Brother, beware!" and Alps and Rocky Mountains say "Beware!" That stripling giant, ill-bred and scoffing, shouts amain: "My feet are red with the Indians' blood; my hand has forged the negro's chain. I am strong; who dares assail me? I will drink his blood, for I have made my covenant of lies, and leagued with hell for my support. There is no right, no truth; Christianity is false, and God a name." His left hand rends those sacred scrolls, casting his Bibles underneath his feet, and in his right he brandishes the negro-driver's whip, crying again--"Say, who is God, and what is Right." And all his mountains echo--Right. But the old genius sadly says again: "Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not prosper." The hollow tomb of Egypt, Athens, Rome, of every ancient State, with all their wandering ghosts, replies, "AMEN."

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Isaiah lxiii. 1-6. _Noyes's_ Version.

_The People._

1. Who is this that cometh from Edom? In scarlet garments from Bozrah? This, that is glorious in his apparel, Proud in the greatness of his strength?

_Jehovah._

I, that proclaim deliverance, And am mighty to save.

_The People._

2. Wherefore is thine apparel red, And thy garments like those of one that treadeth the wine-vat?

_Jehovah._

3. I have trodden the wine-vat alone, And of the nations there was none with me. And I trod them in mine anger, And I trampled them in my fury, So that their life-blood was sprinkled upon my garments, And I have stained all my apparel. 4. For the day of vengeance was in my heart, And the year of my deliverance was come. 5. And I looked, and there was none to help, And I wondered, that there was none to uphold, Therefore my own arm wrought salvation for me, And my fury, it sustained me. 6. I trod down the nations in my anger; I crushed them in my fury, And spilled their blood upon the ground.

[4] To show the differences between the Old and New Testament, and to serve as introduction to this discourse, the following passages were read as the morning lesson: Exodus, xv. 1-6; 2 Sam. xxii. 32, 35-43, 48; xlv. 3-5; Isa. lxvi. 15, 16; Joel, iii. 9-17, and Matt. v. 3-11, 38-39, 43-45.

[5] Such was the price offered, and such the number of soldiers then called for.

[6] See the appropriate forms of prayer for that service by the present Bishop of Oxford, in Jay's Address before the American Peace Society, in 1845.

[7] _Form of Prayer and Thanksgiving to Almighty God._

"O Lord God of Hosts, in whose hand is power and might irresistible, we, thine unworthy servants, most humbly acknowledge thy goodness in the victories lately vouchsafed to the armies of our Sovereign over a host of barbarous invaders, who sought to spread desolation over fruitful and populous provinces, enjoying the blessings of peace, under the protection of the British Crown. We bless Thee, O merciful Lord, for having brought to a speedy and prosperous issue a war to which no occasion had been given by injustice on our part, or apprehension of injury at our hands! To Thee, O Lord, we ascribe the glory! It was Thy wisdom which guided the counsel! Thy power which strengthened the hands of those whom it pleased Thee to use as Thy instruments in the discomfiture of the lawless aggressor, and the frustration of his ambitious designs! From Thee, alone, cometh the victory, and the spirit of moderation and mercy in the day of success. Continue, we beseech Thee, to go forth with our armies, whensoever they are called into battle in a righteous cause; and dispose the hearts of their leaders to exact nothing more from the vanquished than is necessary for the maintenance of peace and security against violence and rapine.

"Above all, give Thy grace to those who preside in the councils of our Sovereign, and administer the concerns of her widely extended dominions, that they may apply all their endeavors to the purposes designed by Thy good Providence, in committing such power to their hands, the temporal and spiritual benefit of the nations intrusted to their care.

"And whilst Thou preservest our distant possessions from the horrors of war, give us peace and plenty at home, that the earth may yield her increase, and that we, Thy servants, receiving Thy blessings with thankfulness and gladness of heart, may dwell together in unity, and faithfully serve Thee, to Thy honor and glory, through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with Thee and the Holy Ghost, belong all dominion and power, both in heaven and earth, now and for ever. Amen."--See a defence of this prayer, in the London "Christian Observer" for May, p. 319, _et seq._, and for June, p. 346, _et seq._

Would you know what he gave thanks for on Easter Sunday? Here is the history of the battle:

"This battle had begun at six, and was over at eleven o'clock; the hand-to-hand combat commenced at nine, and lasted scarcely two hours. The river was full of sinking men. For two hours, volley after volley was poured in upon the human mass--the stream being literally red with blood, and covered with the bodies of the slain. At last, the musket ammunition becoming exhausted, the infantry fell to the rear, the horse artillery plying grape till not a man was visible within range. No compassion was felt or mercy shown." But "'twas a famous victory!"

[8] Mr. Charles Sumner.

IV.

SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE ANTI-WAR MEETING IN FANEUIL HALL, FEBRUARY 4, 1847.

Mr. Chairman,--We have come here to consult for the honor of our country. The honor and dignity of the United States are in danger. I love my country; I love her honor. It is dear to me almost as my own. I have seen stormy meetings in Faneuil Hall before now, and am not easily disturbed by a popular tumult. But never before did I see a body of armed soldiers attempting to overawe the majesty of the people, when met to deliberate on the people's affairs. Yet the meetings of the people of Boston have been disturbed by soldiers before now, by British bayonets; but never since the Boston massacre on the 5th of March, 1770! Our fathers hated a standing army. This is a new one, but behold the effect! Here are soldiers with bayonets to overawe the majesty of the people! They went to our meeting last Monday night, the hireling soldiers of President Polk, to overawe and disturb the meetings of honest men. Here they are now, and in arms!

We are in a war; the signs of war are seen here in Boston. Men, needed to hew wood and honestly serve society, are marching about your streets; they are learning to kill men, men who never harmed us, nor them; learning to kill their brothers. It is a mean and infamous war we are fighting. It is a great boy fighting a little one, and that little one feeble and sick. What makes it worse is, the little boy is in the right, and the big boy is in the wrong, and tells solemn lies to make his side seem right. He wants, besides, to make the small boy pay the expenses of the quarrel.

The friends of the war say "Mexico has invaded our territory!" When it is shown that it is we who have invaded hers, then it is said, "Ay, but she owes us money." Better say outright, "Mexico has land, and we want to steal it!"