Outside of our country it is not a cheering prospect that, despite Hague Conferences and all efforts to promote peace between nations, the opening years of this Twentieth Century witness a disastrous and bloody war between great empires of the West and East, and upon questions that seem to involve little else than extensions of territory at the expense of other nations. However sympathies may be divided between the two contending parties, we must all hope that the war may not be of long duration, and that the awful waste, sacrifice, and slaughter may tend to discourage such barbarous methods and to spread the principles of peaceful arbitration.
The military spirit prevailing everywhere, even in our own country, and the apotheosis of force, requiring such enormous military and naval appropriations, give food for thought, and in this connection we may well consider whether the alarming increase of crime, the lynchings at the South and West, and the disregard of law in many high quarters, are not the natural result of such a spirit. The Devil’s advocates are uncommonly busy, and if Christian preachers believe in the Gospel of Peace, they have a wide field for Christian work. He who talks of war as anything but a curse to a nation and a crime against humanity should remember these words of General Sherman, who knew what war was: “I confess without shame that I am tired and sick of the war. Its glory is all moonshine. Even success, the most brilliant, is over dead and mangled bodies, the anguish and lamentation of distant families appealing to me for missing sons, husbands, and fathers. It is only those who have not heard a shot, nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded and lacerated (friend or foe), that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation.”
The Peace Conference, to be held in Boston in the Fall, is a hopeful sign; for this Republic above all others should stand for peace, and this Association and all patriotic societies which venerate the Founders of this Republic and believe that the principles they advocated lead to peace and amity between nations can contribute to the hastening of the time when armaments shall be reduced and the reign of peace in the world be brought nearer.
To that end, in the short space of time allotted me to-day, I desire to call your attention to what our Fathers believed as illustrated by their own words, and I turn back by way of text to the interview I once before referred to, which our late member Judge Chamberlain narrated that he had with Captain Preston, who fought at Lexington, and who, when over ninety years of age, could recall no reason for going into the fight other than that America had always governed herself and always meant to.
We may seek for hidden causes of the Revolution—we may ascribe it to this or that violation of rights or liberties, but reduced to its ultimate the old soldier probably summed it up pretty much as it presented itself to the ordinary mind at the time, and expressed in a general way the feeling that actuated the masses of the revolutionists. Few had the time, the power, or the desire to reason the matter out, or to form definite ideas of what the trouble was or what they wanted.
We are all familiar with the stated causes for revolt, but they were the excitement of the moment as compared with the pride of conscious strength and the desire America had to be left alone to work out her own problems.
The special grievances, the principles in dispute brought forth the great leaders, but probably their minds were less influenced by them than they imagined, and back of all was the feeling only partially recognized that America was a nation and needed no instruction or guidance from abroad. Of course they did not say that, they were honest in the beginning in disclaiming any idea of independence; they did, with rare exceptions, honestly look forward to a reconciliation with the mother country; but all the while, though they did not see it then, the terms of reconciliation formulated in their minds were impossible of attainment in any other way than by independence.
It does not impugn their good faith or wisdom that like all great leaders of revolutions they failed to estimate the force of the current bearing them on; but it is plain to our eyes that a revolt in the name of the King against the Parliament to establish rights that King and Parliament alike desired to withhold was a fiction which in the nature of things could only be temporary, and which the first clash of arms was certain to dissipate into thin air. Events moved too fast for men’s control, and independence came because no other result than that of absolute submission was possible.
Consider for a moment how rapidly at last America drifted towards revolution and separation, and how each step forward, as usual, lopped off the hesitating and timid, and made it more and more difficult for the bolder leaders to retrace their path.
In 1761 James Otis struck the keynote in his great argument against the writs of assistance,—the general principles of independence which operated later were then so clearly enunciated that the people caught the breath of freedom, and the unrest and turmoil and frequent outbreaks during the nine years following showed that the lesson could not be unlearned.