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!
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 reëlect 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.
Well, we have got a new territory, enough to make one hundred States of the size of Massachusetts. That is not all. We have beaten the armies of Mexico, destroyed the little strength she had left, the little self-respect, else she would not so have yielded and given up half her soil for a few miserable dollars. Soon we shall take the rest of her possessions. How can Mexico hold them now—weakened, humiliated, divided worse than ever within herself. Before many years, all of this northern continent will doubtless be in the hands of the Anglo Saxon race. That of itself is not a thing to mourn at. Could we have extended our empire there by trade, by the Christian arts of peace, it would be a blessing to us and to Mexico; a blessing to the world. But we have done it in the worst way, by fraud and blood; for the worst purpose, to steal soil and convert the cities of men into the shambles for human flesh; have done it at the bidding of men whose counsels long have been a scourge and a curse—at the bidding of slaveholders. They it is that rule the land, fill the offices, buy up the North with the crumbs that fall from their political table, make the laws, declare hostilities, and leave the North to pay the bill. Shall we ever waken out of our sleep; shall we ever remember the duties we owe to the world and to God, who put us here on this new continent? Let us not despair.