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Let us teach that the honor of a nation
consists not in the forced submission of other states,
but in equal laws and free institutions,
in cultivated fields and prosperous cities;
in the development of intellectual and moral power,
in the diffusion of knowledge, in magnanimity and justice,
in the virtues and blessings of peace.
William Ellery Channing, “First Discourse on War”Our country is the world, our countrymen all mankind.
We love the land of our nativity,
only as we love all other lands.
The interests, rights, and liberties of American citizens
are no more dear to us,
than are those of the whole human race.
William Lloyd Garrison, “Declaration of Sentiments, 1838”Nonresistance cannot be for war,
capital punishment, slavery and all sorts of penal injury.
Nor can it be for any government
which is fundamentally for these things.
Adin Ballou, Christian Non-ResistancePeace has its battle-fields; bloodless, but brave
to a degree of heroic endurance of wrong and outrage
to which martial courage could never attain.
The patriotism of peace, like the first grace of Christianity,
is first pure, then peaceable;
pure from those intense emotions of selfishness
which are generally the heart and soul
of the patriotism of the warrior.
Elihu Burritt, “Passive Resistance”Love is the adamantean shield which makes blows ridiculous.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals III, 295The manhood that has been in war
must be transferred to the cause of peace,
before war can lose its charm,
and peace be venerable to men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "War"Whenever we see the doctrine of peace embraced by a nation,
we may be assured it will not be one that invites injury;
but one, on the contrary, which has a friend
in the bottom of the heart of every man,
even of the violent and the base;
one against which no weapon can prosper;
one which is looked upon as the asylum of the human race
and has the tears and the blessings of mankind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "War"Only the defeated and deserters go to the wars,
cowards that run away and enlist.
Henry David ThoreauMen make an arbitrary code, and because it is not right,
they try to make it prevail by might.
The moral law does not want any champion.
Its asserters do not go to war.
It was never infringed with impunity.
Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience"The law will never make men free;
it is men who have got to make the law free.
They are the lovers of law and order,
who observe the law when the government breaks it.
Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience"If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year,
that would not be a violent and bloody measure,
as it would be to pay them, and enable the State
to commit violence and shed innocent blood.
This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution,
if any such is possible.
Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience"
William Ellery Channing (1780-1842) was a forerunner of the
Transcendentalists
and preached against slavery, poverty, and
war
at a Boston church from 1803 until his death.
He began as
a Congregationalist, but in 1815 he was attacked as a Unitarian.
He defended Unitarian Christianity and in 1820 formed a conference
of liberal Congregational ministers, which five years later
became
the American Unitarian Association.
Channing, like Emerson, disliked
sectarian squabbles,
and he was praised by Emerson above all other
ministers.
Channing was active in the peace movement, which began
in 1815
when Noah Worcester founded the Massachusetts Peace Society,
the first influential peace society in the world.
Channing's first address on war was given to the
Congregational
Ministers of Massachusetts at Boston in 1816.
He described the
miseries and crimes of war, their causes, and some possible remedies.
In addition to the suffering and destruction, he pointed out how
war
corrupts the morals of society, promotes "criminal modes
of subsistence,"
and endows government with dangerous powers.
The sources of war are the human propensity for excitement that
makes war
the deepest game of all, the passion for superiority
and power,
admiration for warlike deeds, false patriotism that
puts one's nation over others,
and upbringing and education which
glamorize military exploits.
Channing saw the remedies as well as the causes to be of a
moral nature.
Yet he considered national subjugation worse than
a war of defense.
He argued that just as a government has a right
to repress the violence
of its own citizens, it also may resist
a foreign army because the
"very end and office of government
is to resist evil men."1
He suggested that rulers
should take more honor in the prosperity
of their states than
in the extent of their territories.
Even more we should honor
nations for their free institutions,
equal laws, knowledge, benevolence,
and justice.
We must learn to admire the heroes of conscience,
human rights,
the martyrs for peace and freedom more than the
false attributes of military courage.
The peaceful qualities of
the Christian teachings ought
to be emphasized and demonstrated
by its ministers.
Courage can reach a much more generous height
working for peace
than on the rough field of war.
Channing gave another discourse on war on January 25, 1835.
He suggested that the most conspicuous use of human wisdom
has
been to use civil institutions to repress war, retaliation,
and
the resort to force among citizens of the same state;
but governments
have organized and let loose their forces
against other nations,
spreading desolation, misery, and death.
All other evils fade
in comparison to war.
The old barbarous worship of mere courage
must be replaced by wise moral judgment.
Justice must be the first
element of a nation's honor.
People who systematically sacrifice
justice
for their own selfish interests are basically a band of
robbers.
The next element of national honor that
Channing recommended
is the spirit of philanthropy.
Spreading education can purify
morals and refine manners.
Once again Channing disagreed with
the nonresistants,
as he believed that outrages against peace
must be repressed by force.
Yet a nation should engage in war
wisely,
aware of what is right, and with sorrow.
Usually a nation
loses more by going to war to redress a past wrong.
The main consideration
should be security for the future.
He held that governments have
a duty to protect
their people from violence and aggression.
To
make sure that it is being just,
a nation should refer disputes
to an impartial umpire.
An unjust war involves people in the guilt
of murder.
Channing also gave a lecture on war in 1838.
Again he described
the physical and moral evils of war, which can
only be overcome
by the principles of universal justice and love.
He noted that
Europe had been at peace since 1816
and had been able to apply
its industry to useful arts.
He emphasized the inward morality.
"No calculations of interest, no schemes of policy can do
the work of love,
of the spirit of human brotherhood.
There can
be no peace without but through peace within."2
Channing
found various reasons why people become insensitive to war.
First,
it appears common and seems familiar.
Second, war is exercised
by the great power
of the government with its assumption that
it is right.
Yet he argued that government's right to war must
be bounded,
and those who go beyond what is truly right are responsible.
Thus he maintained that the citizen before fighting must inquire
into the justice of the cause and is "bound to withhold his
hand
if his conscience condemns the cause."3
The presumption
should be that war is always unjust
because of the dangers of
false patriotism.
Channing warned that the attitude of rulers and nations
towards
foreign states, which is usually partial and unjust,
ought to show us that war is rarely just or necessary.
He advised the Christian
to refuse war and to submit
if necessary to prison and execution
in martyrdom for peace.
We must distinguish between reasonable
laws and those
which require a person to commit manifest crimes.
Every individual is responsible for one's own actions,
even if
the rulers claim the "right of war."
In a republican
government the rights of speech, press, and
peaceful methods of
redressing public grievances are extremely valuable.
Even in war
these freedoms are of great importance.
Channing tempered the
right of free discussion with
the admonition to speak and write
only the truth.
The third cause of insensitivity he attributed
to the deceptive
shows, costumes, and splendor by which war is
arrayed.
Finally he noted that people tend to be blind to the
dignity of human nature,
because they do not see their enemies
and dehumanize them.
Channing also drew lessons from the life of Napoleon and
exposed
the problems caused by the passion for dominion.
On August 1,
1837 Channing published an 80-page open letter
to Henry Clay on
the "Annexation of Texas."
He reviewed the insurrection
and the underlying scheme to take over
Mexican territory and considered
it the first encroaching step
toward crime, war, and the extension
of slavery.
Although he did not want to see the Union dissolved,
he indicated
he would prefer that to becoming a partner in this
war to spread slavery.
After the death of Noah Worcester in November
1837,
Channing wrote a tribute to the saintly founder of the Massachusetts
Peace Society.
At the end of his life Channing wrote that if the
spirit of justice and humanity
pervaded the country, they would
not be easily driven to war.
Peace societies were formed at the conclusion of the Napoleonic
wars
in 1815 in both England and America.
In August of that year
the successful New York merchant David Lord Dodge
founded the
New York Peace Society.
Years earlier Dodge had been advised to
carry firearms while traveling
because of robbers; but after nearly
killing the landlord at an inn,
he decided that the use of weapons
was contrary to being a Christian.
By 1808 he had adopted the
nonresistant position,
renouncing all violence even in defense.
The next year he published a pamphlet condemning defensive war
as against the teachings of the Gospels.
The publication of Dodge's longer War Inconsistent with
the Religion of Jesus Christ
was delayed by the war until
1815.
In this book he argued that war is an economic calamity
because even the winning side usually loses more than it gains.
He believed the distinction between offensive and defensive war
is illusory.
War destroys the young and healthy, and it does not
lead
to peace and freedom because of its hatred and violence.
He noted that nations do not allow soldiers to decide which
wars
are unjust because it would undermine military discipline.
If
they did allow soldiers to follow their consciences,
war would
become impractical.
Dodge was surprised that so many Christians
protest slavery and intemperance
but fail to see the greater evil
of war.
Dodge explained the difference between personal defense
and war;
the latter is a planned and organized activity that allows
time for debate and reflection.
Dodge did not accept arguments
from the Old Testament
because Christians are under a new
dispensation.
A nation is a collection of individuals and still
has
the same ethical responsibility that an individual has.
Because of Dodge's leadership the New York Peace Society adopted
a nonresistant platform, and he criticized the more moderate views
of
Noah Worcester, who founded the Massachusetts Peace Society,
also in 1815.
The year before Worcester had published A Solemn
Review of the Custom of War
in which he argued that war does
not right wrongs because the people killed
are not the people
responsible for the wrong policies.
He recommended settling international
disputes by arbitration in a world court.
By 1818 the Massachusetts
Peace Society had a thousand members,
including the governor and
some military officers.
The Baptist minister Henry Holcombe and
Quakers
formed the Pennsylvania Peace Society in 1822.
In 1828
these groups joined to become the American Peace Society,
and
William Ladd emerged as the new leader.
In 1832 the South Carolina slave owner Thomas S. Grimké
(1786-1834)
gave an address for the Connecticut Peace Society
in which he orated
that war in any form is utterly contrary to
Christian principles.
He was one of the first to argue that even
the American War of Independence
was wrong and unchristian to
use violence.
In 1841 the Unitarian minister Sylvester Judd from
Maine would publish
The Moral Evils of Our Revolutionary War.
Actually even John Adams admitted that the real American revolutio
occurred between 1760 and 1775 and was nonviolent,
but it was
followed by the violent war for independence.
In 1836 Bowdoin
professor Thomas Upham (1799-1872) published a long
Manual
of Peace that discussed many peace issues and suggested that
until
more people had advanced to the level of nonresistance
a
congress of nations could bring world order.
That year the American
Peace Society had been kept vibrant
by the speaking tour of the
zealous Rev. Henry C. Wright.
In 1837 he and Garrison were able
to persuade Ladd to put through an amendment
to clarify that the
American Peace Society was
"founded on the principle that
all war is contrary to the spirit of the gospel."4
This caused
some moderates, like the society's vice president Dr. William
Allen,
to resign because they opposed the radical nonresistants
and supported "defensive" wars.
In 1839 Ladd published An Essay on a Congress of Nations.
He proposed two main international bodies - first, a congress of
ambassadors
from all Christian and civilized nations to make a
mutual treaty for preserving peace,
and second, a court of nations
to arbitrate and judge cases brought before it
by mutual consent
of disputing nations.
Instead of an executive branch, Ladd trusted
to public opinion,
which he called "the queen of the world."5
His plan gave equal representation to every nation sending delegates
and required unanimous consent to establish international laws.
The congress was to organize the court of nations.
After Ladd died in 1841, the American Peace Society reverted
to
a moderate program under the conservative administration of
George Beckwith.
Most of the "ultras" supported the
more radical
Non-Resistance Society founded by Garrison in 1838.
The more moderate abolitionist Lewis Tappan in 1843 represented
the
American Peace Society at the first World Peace Congress in
London.
On July 4, 1845 Boston lawyer Charles Sumner gave an oration
in which he
suggested that in their time no war was honorable,
and no peace was dishonorable.
Instead of "trial by battle"
he recommended arbitration and a congress of nations,
and he called
international conflict unchristian.
To the surprise of his audience
of patriots, he called for disbanding the standing army,
the regular
navy, and state militias, though he would preserve
some armed
naval forces to suppress piracy and slave trading.
Lewis Tappan
got 400 New Yorkers to sign a petition
against going to war over
Oregon in 1846.
During the Mexican War the southern Episcopalian
minister Philip Berry
wrote "An Essay on the Means to Preventing
War" and suggested sending
peacemakers from different countries
to risk their lives as "soldiers of peace."
Such unarmed
world-police might perish as martyrs
or they might "arrest
the collision of the two armies."6
Peace Congresses were held at Brussels in 1848, at Paris in
1849,
at Frankfort in 1850, at London again in 1851, and at Edinburgh
in 1853.
Two fugitive slaves joined the large American Peace Society
delegation
to the World Peace Congress in Paris in 1849.
In his
address at Paris the great novelist Victor Hugo urged organizing
peace
by using
arbitration, proportionate and simultaneous disarmament,
and a Congress of Nations.
Hugo prophetically believed that cooperation
between the United States
and a union of European nations could
lead the world to peace.
Between 1842 and 1854 efforts to get
nations to stipulate with each other
that they would use arbitration
instead of war to settle disagreements were led by
Richard Cobden
and Henry Richard in England
and by Judge William Jay in the United
States.
In 1849 Cobden proposed in the House of Commons that
the
British government pursue this, but it was defeated 176 to 79.
Elihu Burritt (1810-79) was from a poor family and became a
blacksmith,
and studying on his own he learned many languages.
In 1843 he realized the oneness of life and joined the American
Peace Society.
He perceived that the law of love is for the spiritual
universe
what the law of gravity is in the physical world.
In
1845 Burritt became editor of the Society's publication Advocate
of Peace
and added to its name and Universal Brotherhood.
However, when Beckwith gained control of the American Peace Society
the next year,
the pacifists, including Burritt, resigned from
the executive committee.
Burritt and Amasa Walker had started
the Worcester County Peace Society
and wanted to oppose all wars,
and in June 1846 Burritt went to England.
There he lectured and
got thousands of people to sign a pledge
not to support war nor
prevent peaceful brotherhood in any way.
He was strongly supported
by Quakers.
As a laborer himself, Burritt appealed to the working
class.
By 1847 some 30,000 people had signed the pledge in England
and the United States
as the League of Universal Brotherhood was
officially formed.
For a decade Burritt spent most of his time
in Britain
working for the League with the London Peace Society.
However, League activities declined in the 1850s in America and
in England
with the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1855 and Burritt's
departure
with the result that in 1857 the League dissolved into
the
American Peace Society and the London Peace Society.
Elihu Burritt wrote essays on "Passive Resistance"
that were published
in his Thoughts and Things at Home and
Abroad in 1854.
He believed that the full power of the Gospel
precept to "overcome evil with good"
had never been
fully tested by a community to subdue evils and overcome oppression;
but he found a few recent examples of passive resistance
successfully
withstanding oppressive force.
When the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii)
imposed a tax on liquor to reduce drunkenness,
the French navy
threatened to use cannons
if they did not repeal the tax on French
brandy;
but the people did not give in nor resist with force,
and the French marines were powerless.
A community at the Cape
of Good Hope refused to cooperate
with the British attempt to
make the country a penal settlement.
Passive resistance uses the
power of the will by holding to what is good.
Burritt argued it
can raise the smallest nation to the equal of the great powers
on Earth,
but resistance using brute force weakens the will of
a nation and
subordinates it to the precarious contingencies of
the battlefield.
Conquering by moral will is to be like a God,
but conquering by brute force is to be like a beast.
Burritt found
a greater patriotism in being courageously peaceful.
He wrote,
Peace has its patriotism,
deep, earnest, unselfish, self-sacrificing, and sensitive,—
a love of country that would bleed to the last vein,
but never wound, for its rights, honor, and prosperity.7
He described how William Penn courageously faced Indians
after
they had been
scarred by previous conflicts with European colonists
and made peace with them.
Burritt argued that passive resistance
is most economical and moral.
In a battle right has no advantage
over wrong,
and oppressed people lose the moral force they had
before fighting.
Burritt asked what force can a despotic government use to overcome
the will of people who oppose it without fighting.
Every act of
violence puts it more in the wrong;
thus it has no moral force,
and its soldiers become powerless.
Women and children can also
become heroes in this struggle
by enduring patiently wrongs without
doing wrong in return.
The generals can hang a few leaders; they
can put hundreds in prison;
they can spoil the goods of thousands.
Yet the total destruction is always less when only one side is
fighting instead of two,
and those enduring peacefully are not
subjected to the despotism of military rule.
This bravery of the
human heart can face down gigantic despotism
as people establish
democracy by their wills.
This is the way to realize fully liberty,
equality, and fraternity.
Alien armies of despots "may encamp
around such a nation,
but they can no more withhold from it the
freedom
it has won by its capacity to enjoy it,
than they can
withhold the communion and friendship
of the Holy Spirit from
the individual soul."8
In 1867 Burritt hoped that one day
working Christians would form
one big trade union and go on a
world-wide strike against the whole war system.
The next year
at the Social Science Congress he proposed that
a congress of
nations be called to codify international law.
William Lloyd Garrison (1805-79) was born
into a poor family
in Newburyport, Massachusetts.
He became a printer's apprentice,
and in 1826 he started the Free Press.
After editing reform
newspapers in Boston and Vermont, Garrison went
to Baltimore in
1829 to become co-editor of The Genius of Emancipation.
He was soon converted by the Quaker Benjamin Lundy
to the radical
position of immediate emancipation.
Garrison wrote the first nationally
published demand for the
immediate and unconditional emancipation
of slaves.
The next month he opposed compensating slave owners
because it would be like paying a thief to give up stolen property.
At age 24 he refused to appear at a militia muster and paid a
fine of four dollars.
He also supported other reforms such as
peace, temperance, women's rights,
vegetarianism, and abolishing
capital punishment of criminals,
corporal punishment of children,
and the use of tobacco.
Garrison was sentenced to six months in
prison for criminal libel
when he did not pay the $50 fine for
condemning those connected to slavery.
After seven weeks the wealthy
Arthur Tappan of New York paid his fine,
and Garrison returned
to Boston.
When Garrison gave an impassioned speech, the saintly
Unitarian pastor
Samuel J. May called him a prophet who will shake
slavery out of the nation.
On January 1, 1831 Garrison began publishing The Liberator
under
the well known motto "Our Country Is the World - Our
Countrymen Are Mankind."
Having recanted on gradual abolition,
he promised to be
"as harsh as truth and as uncompromising
as justice."
The periodical was excluded from the South,
but the number of subscribers
grew gradually to 3,000 by 1837
and stayed at that level
until all slaves were emancipated in
1865.
In 1832 Garrison organized the New England Anti-Slavery
Society and published
the 240-page pamphlet Thoughts on African
Colonization, in which he exposed
the contradictions of the
Colonization Society and called for the immediate liberation
of
all slaves in the United States and recognized their right to
live where they choose.
Arthur Tappan distributed a pamphlet by
Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier
calling for the abolition
of slavery without "violence or blood."
In 1833 Garrison and his followers met in Philadelphia with
Quakers
and moderate abolitionists from New York led by Arthur
and Lewis Tappan
to form the American Anti-Slavery Society
The
founding members adopted a constitution that declared the society
would
never
"countenance the oppressed in vindicating their
rights by resorting to physical force."9
Overnight Garrison
wrote a "Declaration of Sentiments"
that was modified
and signed by all the founding members.
This document contrasted
their nonviolent methods with the shedding of blood
in the American
Revolution, saying that their
principles forbid doing evil that
good may come.
Thus they advised the oppressed to reject all carnal
weapons
and use the power of love to overthrow prejudice with
the truth.
They declared that all laws supporting slavery were
before God null and void.
The Anti-Slavery Society grew quickly,
and by 1838
there were 1350 societies with about 250,000 members.
Garrisonian blacks William Whipper and Robert Purvis of Pennsylvania
persuaded
the Negro national convention in 1835 to use
peaceful
methods in disobeying the fugitive slave law.
Garrison bravely spoke out, and once he escaped threats
to
lynch him in Boston by sailing to England.
Abolitionists there
were surprised to learn that he was not a Negro, because
African
Americans made up the large majority of subscribers to The
Liberator.
In 1835 a mob led by property owners disrupted
a meeting of the
Female Anti-Slavery Society and tied a rope around
the unresisting Garrison, dragging him away.
Eventually the mayor
put him in jail overnight for his own safety;
this incident was
witnessed by the young Wendell Phillips,
who later became the
abolitionists' finest orator.
The abolitionist Elijah P. Lovejoy was driven out of Missouri
and went to Alton, Illinois,
where mobs destroyed his printing
press three times and invaded his house
more than that, driving
his wife to distraction.
The mayor said that he could not defend
his new press but in November 1837
permitted Lovejoy to guard
it with arms.
When a mob arrived to destroy it, both sides fired;
one person in the mob was killed.
The mayor ordered them to go
home, but they refused.
When someone climbed a ladder with a torch
to set the roof in fire,
Lovejoy aimed his gun and was shot dead.
This incident led Garrison and others to emphasize not resisting
violence
as Jesus taught in the sermon on the mount.
Thomas S.
Grimké's sisters Sarah and Angelina
were won over to Garrison's
nonresistance.
Channing, who did not adopt nonresistance, advised
the abolitionists
that they could not use violence successfully.
Most abolitionists agreed, and their efforts in this era were
primarily nonviolent.
Nonetheless the tolerant view of Garrison
and Lewis Tappan prevailed
that there should be no specific test
regarding nonresistance
for membership in the Anti-Slavery Society.
In 1838 Garrison organized and wrote a "Declaration of
Sentiments"
for the New England Non-Resistance Society that
was open to all regardless
of color or sex or creed who accepted
their principle of renouncing all violence.
The founders considered
themselves
"a few obscure, moneyless, uninfluential men and
women."
One of the outspoken leaders was the Quaker Lucretia
Mott.
Novelist Lydia Maria Child did not like to attend meetings,
but she wrote that the idea of nonresistance is what distinguishes
the gospel of Christ from other philosophies and makes it holy.
In this "Declaration of Sentiments" Garrison even
went so far as to
renounce allegiance to any government that uses
force,
asserting that they consider God as the only Judge and
Ruler of mankind.
They affirmed no distinction of rank nor inequality
of sex.
They proclaimed equal love for all lands and that the
rights and liberties
of the entire human race are as important
to them as those of American citizens.
They denied that any nation
has the right to defend itself or punish.
They opposed all wars
and all preparations for war.
Since human governments are upheld
by force,
they stated they could not hold any office.
They held
that the old penal code of "an eye for an eye" had been
abrogated
by the new covenant of forgiveness taught by Jesus Christ.
They believed that the meek shall inherit the Earth,
because the
violent resorting to weapons will perish by them.
They had faith
that God would protect them
if they adopted the nonresistance
principle.
They would obey all requirements of government except
those contrary to the Gospels,
and they would meekly submit
to any penalties for their disobedience.
Although they submit
passively to enemies, they promised to act and speak boldly
for
the cause of God "to assail iniquity in high places and in
low places."
Thus they would employ lecturers and circulate
publications for universal peace.
Having withdrawn from human
protection, they put their trust in God.
For a time Garrison devoted himself primarily to the cause
of nonresistance,
and Henry Wright went on speaking tours.
Adin
Ballou (1803-90) became the Society's president in 1843
and tried
to revive the Non-Resistant in 1845 and 1848;
in the latter
year Wright managed to arouse interest in Ohio;
but after that,
Ballou's Practical Christian absorbed this cause.
Ballou
founded the Hopedale community in 1841, and it lasted until 1856,
longest of the five socialist communities in this era.
Hopedale
was nonresistant, religious, racially integrated,
and allowed
some wage differences.
In addition to Garrison the cause of nonresistance
was promoted by the speeches
and writings of Ballou, Henry C.
Wright, and Charles K. Whipple (1808-1900).
Wright gave thirty
reasons why the armed forces
were incompatible with the teachings
of Christ.
They were criticized for many as "no-government"
men;
but Ballou was certainly not for anarchy, and even Garrison
believed that
to abrogate existing laws and government regulations
that punish wrong-doers
would be calamitous if the people were
not morally and spiritually regenerated.
Usually the nonresistants
complied with government in paying their taxes.
In 1839 Whipple published the 16-page pamphlet "Evils
of the Revolutionary War"
because patriotic feelings about
this often kept people from accepting nonresistance.
He agreed
with the aims of the revolutionaries but suggested they could
have
obtained independence as effectively and as quickly
with
more honor and in better circumstances by not resorting to arms.
Patriots could have refused to carry out unjustified demands or
pay taxes
and boycott imported tea and other products.
Even if
they had taken leaders to England and hanged them,
continued peaceful
resistance would surely have aroused
public opinion to change
British policy eventually.
Instead of resulting in an independent
government based on force,
a successful nonviolent revolution
would have produced a much better society
in which slavery, the
child of war, would have to be abolished,
and Indians would have
been treated better.
After John Brown's raid on the Harpers Ferry
arsenal in 1859,
Whipple praised his heroism but once again deprecated
his violent methods.
He repeated that Christ's spirit of love
is the way to win over enemies;
otherwise one is using Satan to
cast out Satan.
Whipple also urged slaves to peacefully resist
by refusing to work for a master.
Whipple's main approach was
to encourage the free to help
the oppressed escape by the underground
railroad.
Adin Ballou lectured on nonresistance in 1839 and in 1846
published
his first book on Christian Non-Resistance.
He did not
advise passivity but moral resistance to evil without injuring
any person.
Ballou developed the concept of "uninjurious
physical force" that can be used
to restrain the insane,
the delirious, disruptive children,
the intoxicated, and the violently
passionate.
One may actively put oneself between the helpless
victim and the destroyer
and even use physical force as long as
no personal injury is inflicted.
Ballou delineated seven things
a nonresistant will not do.
These are not killing or injuring
any human even in self-defense,
not participating in any lawless
conspiracy or mob that would cause personal injury,
not being
a member of any voluntary association that practices war,
capital
punishment, or personal injury,
not being an officer or a chaplain
for the military,
not being an officer or agent of any government
that authorizes
war, slavery, capital punishment, or injury,
not
being a member of a corporation that supports government violence,
and not promoting or encouraging any act that injures a person.
Ballou argued that nonresistance is the best way to preserve
oneself
in safety as well as others, and he gave numerous examples.
Quakers like Robert Barclay and Leonard Fell had each
escaped
unscathed after being attacked by highwaymen.
In 1798 Quakers
in Ireland refused to fight for the Catholics or the Protestants and
were criticized by both sides; yet during two years of war
their houses were the safest,
as eventually both sides realized
that they should be spared
because they had done good to all and
harm to none.
Essentially Ballou argued simply that evil cannot
be overcome by evil but only by good.
He explained that nonresistants
cannot work within a corrupt government
because they cannot be
for war, capital punishment, and slavery.
Such governments are
anti-Christian, and any Christian
swearing to support them would
be committing perjury.
He observed that those considered "political
good men" tend to be used as tools
for mischief but that
"non-political good men" are
more likely to influence
the government to be decent.
He thought it an absurd assertion
to say that no one could live in the world
without actually fighting,
threatening to fight, or being armed to fight.
Ballou suggested that if they could get two-thirds of the people
to support nonresistance as true Christians, then government could
dispense with the military and violent punishments.
Such a government
would save 80% of its expenditures and could greatly
improve society
by spending half of that savings on education and reformation.
Noninjurious force could be used to prevent personal outrage in
extreme cases.
Such a government of superior justice, forgiveness,
and charity would be a tremendous blessing.
The Anti-Slavery movement used many nonviolent methods
to protest
racial prejudice and pressure people to abolish slavery.
In 1841
anti-slavery whites and blacks began
riding railroads to protest
racial segregation.
Efforts were made to integrate segregated
churches and
to get people to leave churches that countenanced
slavery.
In addition to the schools in the socialist communities,
others also offered education to Negroes.
In 1833 Garrison persuaded
the Quaker Prudence Crandall
to accept Negroes in her school in
Canterbury.
The white students left; but she persevered teaching
the blacks,
won her case in court, but was driven out the next
year.
In 1838 to persecute the school the Connecticut legislature
repealed the law they
had passed.
Abolitionists boycotted segregated
schools.
Educational reformer Horace Mann was an abolitionist
and did much
to improve public schools in Massachusetts.
Oberlin
College in Ohio accepted Negroes, and in 1840
their students formed
a branch of the Non-Resistance Society.
Abolitionists also boycotted products of slavery, particularly
cotton, following
the example of the British who ended slavery
in the West Indies after boycotting sugar.
Lucretia Mott carried
her own free-labor sugar to sweeten her tea,
and many wore linen
clothing.
Abolitionists promoted the planting of sugar beets.
Stephen S. Foster and Parker Pillsbury gained attention
by attending
churches and speaking out against slavery.
Ministers were encouraged
to get everyone
in their denomination to renounce slave-holding.
Quakers and the peace churches (United Brethren, Mennonites,
River
Brethren, and Shakers) accomplished this, and
by 1864 Wesleyan
Methodists, German Methodists, African Methodist Episcopal,
United
Presbyterians, and Reformed Presbyterians had
joined them in excluding
slaveholders from membership.
Courageous missionaries sponsored
by the American Missionary Association
took the abolitionist message
into the southern states.
Not cooperating with the government's
laws that promoted slavery
meant helping fugitive slaves escape
through the underground railroad.
Evidence indicates that violence
or weapons were rarely used in these escapes.
For many years Frederick Douglass also followed Garrison's
views on nonresistance,
while riding on railroads, for example.
However, resistance to the fugitive slave law and battles in Kansas
caused many to begin to fight back against violent pro-slavery
forces.
Douglass began advocating force to protect fugitives.
When Sojourner Truth heard Douglass persuading an audience that
slavery
could only be destroyed by bloodshed, she changed their
minds
by asking, "Frederick, is God dead?"10
In the
1850s Garrison opposed the compromises made to protect slavery,
although he never condoned the use of violence in the anti-slavery
cause.
He pressured President Lincoln to emancipate the slaves.
After all the slaves in the United States had been freed in 1865,
he resigned and retired.
Click below to watch and listen to Sanderson Beck's audio recording of Emerson and Thoreau.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was born on May 25, 1803
in Boston, Massachusetts as the son of a Unitarian minister.
He graduated from Harvard
College in 1821.
Emerson married in 1829, but his wife died less
than a year and a half later.
At this point he doubted his beliefs
and profession as a minister, and he decided
to resign, stating
that it was because of the Eucharist.
In 1832 he went to Europe,
where he met such
noteworthies as Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Carlyle.
Emerson gave public lectures, and in 1836 he published Nature.
He had become the sage of Concord, and the literary colleagues
gathering around him became known as the Transcendental Club.
Emerson's inspiring lectures, essays, and poems elucidated a philosophy
of life based
on the inner resources of the self and revelation
from the divine presence of the soul.
"Trust yourself,"
he would say, and live spontaneously and freely in harmony with
nature.
He described the spiritual laws of life in great essays
such as "Compensation,"
"Spiritual Laws,"
"Love," "Self-Reliance," and "The Over
Soul."
He found his own insights echoed in the Hindu scriptures
and the Romantic poets.
He urged an American renaissance of culture
and influenced writers such as
Thoreau, Whitman, Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, and
the Alcott family.
He believed that culture was a way of modulating
violence,
which is not power, but the absence of power.
He concluded
"Self-Reliance" with these words:
"Nothing can
bring you peace but yourself.
Nothing can bring you peace but
the triumph of principles."
In 1832 Emerson heard the "very good views" of Channing
at a peace meeting.
Emerson criticized the Mexican War, which
he felt was caused chiefly by the
interests of the slave states,
and he prophesied that there would be retribution
for the nation
just as there is for any private felon.
In a discussion with Thomas
Carlyle at Stonehenge a few years later,
Emerson put forward the
pacifist philosophy of nonresistance and non-cooperation
with
governments which institutionalize violence as an indigenous American
conviction;
this idea was championed by the abolitionist William
Lloyd Garrison and others
who would not compromise on this point
as Channing had.
Emerson gave one or two anecdotes, which made
an impression on Carlyle
and concluded, "'Tis certain as
God lives, the gun that does not need another gun,
the law of
love and justice alone, can effect a clean revolution."11
For Emerson the soul transcends all conflict and has no enemies;
soldiers he considered to be ridiculous.
War is "abhorrent
to all right reason" and against human progress.
From the
perspective of spiritual oneness he spoke of
"the blazing
truth that he who kills his brother commits suicide."
He
looked at the Civil War as a retribution to purge the nation of
the evil of slavery,
and he detested the lack of freedom during
the war.
In 1865 he vowed that if martial law came to Concord,
he would disobey it or move elsewhere.
He foresaw "that dream
of good men not yet come to pass, an International Congress."
Prophetic also was this: "As if the earth, water, gases,
lightning and caloric
had not a million energies, the discovery
of any one of which could change
the art of war again, and put
an end to war by the exterminating forces man can apply."12
In 1838 Emerson delivered an address to the Boston meeting
of the American Peace Society which has been published
under the
title "War" and contains his thinking on the issues
of war and peace.
He described war as "an epidemic insanity,
breaking out here and there
like the cholera or influenza, infecting
men's brains instead of their bowels."13
He could see that
violence was dangerously contagious.
For Emerson war is part of
wild and primitive societies,
and the primitive stages of religion
lead to religious wars.
"It is the ignorant and childish
part of mankind that is the fighting part."14
Cruelty and
violence are juvenile, and the mature spirit renounces them.
Like
others, Emerson noted that trade works against war
because it
gives people contact, knowledge, and familiarity with their enemies.
The development of learning, art, and religion make war
seem like
fratricide, and he added that it is.
History depicts the slow
mitigation and decline of war.
Yet the doctrine of the right of
war still remains.
Emerson asked the perennial question:
Cannot we have love instead
of hate, peace instead of war?
This idea, he pointed out, was
not invented by Saint Pierre nor Rousseau,
but it is "the
rising of the general tide in the human soul, - and rising highest,
and first made visible, in the most simple and pure souls,
who
have therefore announced it to us beforehand; but presently we
all see it."15
Societies have been formed on this thought,
and the hopes and prayers for peace are preparing for its actualization.
Though it appears to be visionary to most,
the idea is growing
in influence and is inevitable.
"War is on its last legs;
and a universal peace is as sure as is the prevalence
of civilization
over barbarism, of liberal governments over feudal forms.
The
question for us is only How soon?"16
What is good and true will eventually prevail.
The wise learn
to trust ideas over circumstances,
for appearances depend on the
mind.
"Every nation and every man instantly surround themselves
with a material apparatus
which exactly corresponds to their moral
state or their state of thought."17
Our war establishments
"only serve as an index to show where man is now;
what a
bad, ungoverned temper he has; what an ugly neighbor he is;
how
his affections halt; how low his hope lies."18
However, friendly
attitudes can change all this and make weapons things of the past
to be displayed only in museums.
Emerson delineated three stages
of cultivation in regard to war and peace.
At a certain stage of his progress, the man fights,
if he be of a sound body and mind.
At a certain higher stage, he makes no offensive demonstration,
but is alert to repel injury, and of an unconquerable heart.
At a still higher stage, he comes into the region of holiness;
passion has passed away from him;
his warlike nature is all converted into an active medicinal principle;
he sacrifices himself,
and accepts with alacrity wearisome tasks of denial and charity;
but, being attacked, he bears it and turns the other cheek,
as one engaged, throughout his being,
no longer to the service of an individual
but to the common soul of all men.19
Emerson answered the common criticism of nonresistance even
to the extent of
not defending oneself or one's family against
robbers and assassins.
This, he said, only looks at the passive
side of the friend of peace.
Lovers of peace obviously do not
choose to be plundered or slain;
if they accept martyrdom, it
is for
some active purpose, some equal motive, some flaming love.
If you have a nation of men
who have risen to that height of moral cultivation
that they will not declare war or carry arms,
for they have not so much madness left in their brains,
you have a nation of lovers,
of benefactors, of true, great and able men.
Let me know more of that nation;
I shall not find them defenseless,
with idle hands swinging at their sides.
I shall find them men of love, honor and truth;
men of an immense industry;
men whose influence is felt to the end of the earth;
men whose very look and voice
carry the sentence of honor and shame;
and all forces yield to their energy and persuasion.20
A peaceful nation is protected by its spiritual power because
everyone is its friend.
In individual cases it is extremely rare
that a person of peace ever attracts violence.
Yet Emerson added
that the wise do not decide in advance how to respond,
and they
follow the guidance of Nature and God.
Emerson observed that organizing societies, passing resolutions,
and publishing manifestoes are not too effective, especially when
the participants do not practice what they preach when put to
the test.
He preferred private conviction to public opinion;
our
hope is in "increased insight,
and it is to be accomplished
by the spontaneous teaching,
of the cultivated soul in its secret
experience and meditation."21
Thus humans can expel their
devils, transmute their bestial nature,
hear the voice of God
and go forward in their right minds.
Nor is fear the right motive
for peace; nothing great can be attained by cowards.
Courage must
be transferred from war to the cause of peace.
Individuals are
responsible for themselves
and should not ask for protection from
the state.
The person of principle cannot be coerced into any
wrongdoing
and will not compromise one's freedom and integrity.
The cause of peace is not for the cowardly preservation
of the
safety of the luxurious and the timid.
Peace must be maintained
by true heroes, who are willing to stake their lives
for their
principle and who go beyond the traditional hero
in that they
will not threaten another person's life -
who have, by their intellectual insight
or else by their moral elevation,
attained such a perception of their own intrinsic worth
that they do not think property or their own body
a sufficient good to be saved by such dereliction of principle
as treating a man like a sheep.22
Emerson placed his faith in "the search of the sublime
laws of morals and the
sources of hope and trust in man and
not in books, in the present and not in the past,"23
and
he hoped that these would bring war to an end.
The way this happens
is of little importance, although he predicted that
society and
events point toward a Congress of Nations.
Once the mind accepts
the reign of principles the modes of expression are easily found.
At the end of this excellent essay on war
Emerson asked his readers
if it shall be war or peace.
After his friend Thoreau went to jail for failing to pay his
poll tax,
Emerson wrote in his journal that the abolitionists
give much time to denouncing
the Mexican War but pay their tax;
he suggested they
"ought to resist & go to prison in
multitudes on their known
& described disagreements from the
state."24
He also noted that the state tax does not pay for
the war
but that imported goods such as coats, sugar, foreign
books, and watches do.
Later in his life Emerson proposed boycotting
all goods produced by slave labor.
In an address in Concord on
August 1, 1844, the tenth anniversary of the
slaves' emancipation
in the British West Indies, he suggested that the United States
could follow the British example by buying
the freedom of the
slaves from their plantation owners.
See the top of this page to watch and listen to
Sanderson Beck's audio recording of "Emerson and Thoreau."
Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts on July
12, 1817
and died there peacefully on May 6, 1862.
He was educated
at Harvard (1833-37) where he developed his love
for Greek and
Roman poetry, Oriental philosophy, and botany.
He earned his living
doing odd jobs, teaching school, and making lead pencils.
He spent
little time working at these though;
having few wants, he made
free time his greatest wealth.
He loved nature, and his preoccupation
four hours each day was exploring the
woods and ponds making detailed
observations of plants and creatures.
Emerson was his close friend,
and he lived in Emerson's house for a time.
Henry led a singular
life, never marrying, and marching to his own drummer, as he put
it.
From 1845 to 1847 he lived alone in a small cabin
he built
by Walden Pond near Concord.
He described this unique experiment
in natural living in his great book Walden.
Despite all
the superfluities of customary society, he believed,
"The
mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."25
Thoreau lectured
occasionally and struggled to get his writings published.
His
personal independence and straightforward manner was abrasive
to some people,
and he gained very little recognition during his
lifetime.
He lectured and wrote against slavery, particularly
when the Fugitive Slave Law
was passed in 1850, compelling northern
law enforcement
officials to capture and return runaway slaves.
Thoreau was known to have helped some runaways, and he thought
it
absurd for a court to try to decide whether a person ought
to be free.
He defended the radical abolitionist John Brown.
By his personal example Thoreau put into practice the Transcendentalist
principles
of self-reliance, personal integrity, and spontaneous
intuition.
About the uplifting spiritual energy within he wrote,
"I know of no more encouraging
fact than the unquestionable
ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor."26
He stated, "Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep."27
For Thoreau philosophy was not clever logic or formulating a doctrine,
but loving wisdom by living according to its dictates
in simplicity,
independence, magnanimity, and trust.
He exhorted people to explore
themselves and love life.
We must learn to obey the laws of our
own being which
will never be in opposition to a just government.
Thoreau's great innovation was in the ways he suggested for opposing
an unjust government in order to be true to the higher laws of
one's own being.
One day in late July of 1846 while he was living at Walden,
he walked into Concord to get his shoe repaired.
He was met by
his friend Sam Staples, who was
the local tax collector, constable,
and jailer.
Thoreau had not paid his tax for several years.
Staples
offered to pay Henry's tax for him or get it reduced;
but Thoreau
declared that he did not intend to pay it as a matter of principle.
When Staples asked what he should do about it,
Thoreau suggested
that he resign his office.
However, Staples replied, "Henry,
if you don't pay,
I shall have to lock you up pretty soon."
Thoreau answered him, "As well now as any time, Sam."
So Staples took him to jail.
The tax was paid by someone, probably
Thoreau's Aunt Maria,
and Henry was released the next morning.
According to Staples, Thoreau was "as mad as the devil"
and did not want to leave jail, but Staples made him.
He wanted
to stay so he could call attention
to the abolitionist cause and
the Mexican War.
People in Concord wanted to know the reasons
for his going to jail;
so Thoreau wrote out an explanation and
gave it as a lecture twice in 1848.
It was published in 1849 as
"Resistance to Civil Government"
and posthumously in
1866 as "Civil Disobedience."
Thoreau began his essay with the well-known motto-
"That
government is best which governs least."28
This carried to
its natural conclusion is no government at all,
which he said
will happen when people are prepared.
He objected particularly
to a standing army and the current
"Mexican war, the work
of comparatively a few individuals
using the standing government
as their tool."29
Yet Thoreau realized that the immediate
need is not
for no government but for better government.
"Let
every man make known what kind of government
would command his
respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it."30
Majorities usually rule because they are the strongest physically;
but their policies are based upon expediency.
Thoreau asked whether
it is not better to decide
right and wrong by conscience, which
everyone has.
"It is not desirable to cultivate a respect
for the law, so much as for the right.
The only obligation which
I have a right to assume,
is to do at any time what I think right."31
But a corporation has no conscience, although conscientious people
may be a corporation with a conscience.
Undue respect for
law leads to soldiers marching to the wars
against their wills,
common sense, and consciences.
Such men have let themselves become
machines,
serving the state with their bodies.
Others, like lawyers
and politicians, serve the state with their heads.
A few, reformers
and martyrs, serve the state with their consciences also,
but
they are usually treated as enemies.
Thoreau declared that he could not associate with the American
government
because it was a slave's government.
He appealed to
the right of revolution and the case of 1775.
He lamented, "A
sixth of the population of a nation
which has undertaken to be
the refuge of liberty are slaves."32
It has become a military
state, and honest men ought to rebel.
He criticized not only southern
slave-owners but northern merchants and farmers,
who care more
about commerce and agriculture than they do about humanity.
Thousands
are against slavery and the war, but they do nothing about it.
Voting, he said, is like playing a game with right and wrong.
Voting for the right does nothing for it if the majority passes
the expedient instead.
Thoreau accurately predicted that by the
time the majority abolished slavery
there would be no slavery
left to abolish.
Although it is not necessarily a person's duty
to work to eradicate a wrong,
it is one's duty not to support
practically a wrong.
We must not only refuse to fight in an unjust
war but also refuse to support
the unjust government which conducts
the war.
Thoreau suggested that individuals refuse to pay their
quota into the treasury.
"Action from principle, the perception and the performance
of right,
changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary."33
When unjust laws exist, there are three choices:
1) obey them,
2) obey them while working to change them, or 3) transgress them
at once.
Yet the evil resulting from breaking an unjust law is
the fault of the government.
Thoreau wondered why government resists
reform.
"Why does it always crucify Christ, and excommunicate
Copernicus and Luther,
and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?"34
Thoreau advised us to let minor injustices pass if the remedy
is worse than the evil.
But if it is of such a nature that it requires you
to be the agent of injustice to another,
then, I say, break the law.
Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.
What I have to do is to see, at any rate,
that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.35
If a person is truly in the right, one has God on one's side
and constitutes a majority of one.
His contact with the tax collector
was Thoreau's only association with the government
and therefore
his best means of protest.
The action of one honest man can do
more for reform
than all the words in the world.
"Under a
government which imprisons any unjustly,
the true place for a
just man is also a prison."36
The person who has experienced
a little injustice
for the sake of justice is more effective,
as truth is stronger than error.
Thoreau exhorted us:
Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely,
but your whole influence.
A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority;
it is not even a minority then;
but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.
If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison,
or give up war and slavery,
the State will not hesitate which to choose.37
Thoreau treated of imprisonment instead of the seizure of property
because he believed that people of principle are usually poor;
the rich have sold themselves to the institution,
and they enjoy
Caesar's government and neglect God.
It is not necessary to rely
on the protection of the state.
When the state is corrupt, it
is no shame to be poor;
then disobedience is more worthy than
obeying.
In prison Thoreau thought of the absurdity of confining his
body
when his mind and spirit are free; he pitied the state for
trying
to punish his body because they could not get at him.
They
used superior physical strength against his body,
but moral force
comes from a higher law.
When a government says, "Your money
or your life," it is playing the thief.
Why should one give
in to that?
Thoreau described his stay in prison and the changed
attitude
of the townspeople to him when he came out.
He also mentioned
that he never refused to pay the highway tax
or support the schools,
but he must refuse allegiance to the state.
Those whose taxes
support the state at war are helping injustice.
Thoreau expressed
an eagerness to conform to the laws of the land
so long as there
is no moral principle to be violated.
He was willing to obey those
who know more than he;
yet the authority of the government depends
upon the consent of the governed.
There will never be a really free and enlightened State,
until the State comes to recognize the individual
as a higher and independent power,
from which all its own power and authority are derived,
and treats him accordingly.38
Thoreau's essay had little impact in the nineteenth century,
but in the twentieth it has become a manual for social protest.
Leo Tolstoy noticed it and asked Americans why they did not pay
more attention
to Thoreau's ideas instead of their financial and
industrial millionaires
and their generals and admirals.
Mahatma
Gandhi put civil disobedience into practice
on a mass scale in
South Africa and India;
Martin Luther King used the techniques
in the civil rights movement,
and anti-war activists have also
applied these principles,
as we shall see in later chapters.
1. Discourses on War by William Ellery Channing, p.
33.
2. Ibid., p. 95.
3. Ibid., p. 103.
4. Quoted in Radical Pacifists in Antebellum America by
Peter Brock, p. 72.
5. An Essay on a Congress of Nations, p. xlix-l by William
Ladd quoted in
Plans for World Peace through Six Centuries
by Sylvester John Hemleben, p. 106.
6. A Review of the Mexican War by Philip Berry, p. 53 quoted
in
Radical Pacifists in Antebellum America by Peter Brock,
p. 192.
7. "Passive Resistance" by Elihu Burritt in Nonviolence
in America:
A Documentary History, p. 103.
8. Ibid., p. 108.
9. Quoted in Black Freedom by Carleton Mabee, p. 21.
10. Ibid., p. 84.
11. "Stonehenge" by Ralph Waldo Emerson in Complete
Writings, p. 509.
12. "The Fortune of the Republic" by Ralph Waldo Emerson
in Complete Writings, p. 1186.
13. "War" by Ralph Waldo Emerson in Complete Writings,
p. 1139.
14. Ibid., p. 1140.
15. Ibid., p. 1142.
16. Ibid., p. 1142.
17. Ibid., p. 1143.
18. Ibid., p. 1144.
19. Ibid., p. 1144.
20. Ibid., p. 1145.
21. Ibid., p. 1146.
22. Ibid., p. 1147.
23. Ibid., p. 1147.
24. The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo
Emerson, IX, 446.
25. Walden by Henry David Thoreau, p. 5.
26. Ibid., p. 61.
27. Ibid., p. 60.
28. "Civil Disobedience" by Henry David Thoreau.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid.
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