“The Law of War can no more wholly dispense with retaliation than can the Law of Nations, of which it is a branch. Yet civilized nations acknowledge retaliation as the sternest feature of war. A reckless enemy often leaves to his opponent no other means of securing himself against the repetition of barbarous outrage.”[54]
Such is the general principle, officially declared. And now, Sir, I shall read the commentary of this same learned publicist on these very Instructions in a private letter which I have received from him this morning. Bear in mind, Sir, that the writer is a student of the Laws of War, that he vindicates their exercise, and that in proper cases he asserts the right of retaliation; and now allow me to present his criticism on the retaliation proposed.
“I am unqualifiedly against the retaliation resolutions concerning prisoners of war. The provision that the Southerners in our hands shall be watched over by national soldiers who have been in Southern pens is unworthy of any great people or high-minded statesman. I am not opposed to retaliation because it strikes those who are not or may not be guilty of the outrage we wish to put an end to. That is the terrible character of almost all retaliation in war. I abhor this revenge on prisoners of war, because we would sink thereby to the level of the enemy’s shame and dishonor. All retaliation has some limit. If we fight with Indians who slowly roast their prisoners, we cannot roast in turn the Indians whom we may capture. And what is more, I defy Congress or Government to make the Northern people treat captured Southerners as our sons are treated by them. God be thanked, you could not do it; and if you could, how it would brutalize our own people! I feel the cruelty as keenly as any one; I grieve most bitterly that people whom we and all the world have taken to possess the common attributes of humanity, and who, after all, are our kin, have sunk so loathsomely low; I feel the hardship of seeing no immediate and direct remedy, except conquering and trampling out the vile Rebellion; but I maintain that the proposed (yet unfeasible) retaliation is not the remedy. Indeed, calmly to maintain our ground would do us in the end far more good. Revenge is passion, and ought never to enter the sphere of public action. Passion always detracts from power.
“I believe that the ineffable cruelty practised against our men has been equalled in the history of our race by the Spanish treatment of the Indians, and by the Inquisition; but counter cruelty would not mend matters. Those who can allow such crimes would not be moved by cruelties inflicted upon their soldiers in our hands. These cruelties, therefore, would be simply revenge, not retaliation; for retaliation, as an element of the Law of War, and of Nations in general, implies the idea of thereby stopping a certain evil. But no mortal shall indulge in revenge.
“I am, indeed, against all dainty treatment of the prisoners in our hands; but, for the love of our country and the great destiny of our people, do not sink, even in single cases, to the level of our unhappy, shameless enemy.”
I have read this letter, and I quote it as authority, because it is by the very pen which embodied retaliation in the Instructions to the Armies of the United States.
There is another authority which I quote. It is Phillimore, the accomplished publicist, whose elaborate work on the Law of Nations has a learning second only to that of Grotius in treating the same subject. Recording excesses of war by the French, this Englishman says:—
“At the beginning of the wars of the first French Revolution, the French general announced his intention of giving no quarter to English prisoners. The English did not retaliate, and the Laws of War upon this subject were soon restored.”[55]