Put together the products of all the mines in the world,--the glistening ore of California, the accumulated treasures of Mexico and Peru, with the diamonds of Golconda,--and the whole shining heap will be less than the means thus diverted…
Charles Sumner
The Public Record
Charles Sumner was an American lawyer and statesman who represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1851 until his death in 1874. Before and during the American Civil War, he was a leading American advocate for the abolition of slavery, and after the war he was a key figure in the Reconstruction era, during which he and other Radical Republicans successfully fought to end slavery and ensure basic rights for Black Americans. He continued advocating for racial equality until his death, lobbying in his final days for a civil rights bill that served as a model for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Historians credit Sumner with coining the phrase "equality before the law," which he first used as part of an early attempt to integrate Boston's public school system.
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Then at last our aims would be accomplished; then at last Peace would be organized among the Nations.
The complete overthrow of the War System, involving the disarming of the Nations, would follow the establishment of a Congress of Nations, or any general system of Arbitration.
By formal treaties between two or more nations, Arbitration may be established as the mode of determining controversies between them.
The idea of a Congress of Nations with a High Court of Judicature is as practicable as its consummation is confessedly dear to the friends of Universal Peace.
From the experience of history, and particularly from the experience of the thirty States of our Union, we learn that the occasion for any executive arm will be rare.
The most complete and permanent substitute would be a Congress of Nations, with a High Court of Judicature.
This we are able to do; and so doing, we reflect new light upon the atrocity of a system which not only tramples upon all the precepts of the Christian faith, but defies justice and discards reason.
Recognizing these things, men must cease to cherish War, and will renounce all appeal to its Arbitrament.
They must see clearly that it is a monster of their own creation, born with their consent, whose vital spark is fed by their breath, and without their breath must necessarily die.
Above all, men must no longer deceive themselves by the shallow thought that this System is the necessary incident of imperfect human nature, and thus cast upon God the responsibility for their crimes.
Strip away all its presumptuous pretences, its specious apologies, its hideous sorceries.
To be hated, it needs only to be comprehended; and it will surely be abolished as soon as this is accomplished.
The true character of the War System must be exposed.
To arouse this public will, which, like a giant, yet sleeps, but whose awakened voice nothing can withstand, should be our endeavor.
Will it, and War is chastised from the Commonwealth of Nations, as Slavery has been chastised from municipal jurisdictions by England and France, by Tunis and Tripoli.
Will it, and War hurries to join the earlier institution of Cannibalism.
Will it, and War passes among profane follies, like the ordeal of burning ploughshares.
Will it, and War fades away like the fires of religious persecution.
Let it be impressed upon the heart of every one of you, impress it upon the minds of your children, that this total abolition of War upon earth is an improvement in the condition of man entirely dependent on his own will.
In the light of reason and religion there can be but one Law of War,--the great law which pronounces it unwise, unchristian, and unjust, and forbids it forever, as a crime.
Like the Laws of the Duel, they should yield to some arbitrament of reason.
Their existence is a disgrace to civilization; for it implies the common consent of nations to the Arbitrament of War, as regulated by these laws.
Persons occupied on land exclusively with the arts of Peace cannot be molested.
Poison and assassination can no longer be employed against an enemy.
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