With sorrow and solemnity, not with gladness and pomp, they should proceed to their melancholy office.
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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If War be a Christian institution, those who act as its agents should shroud themselves in colors congenial with their dreadful trade.
They belong to a system so essentially irrational, that all the admitted virtues of many of its agents cannot save it from judgment.
Again I repeat, so long as the War System prevails under the sanction of International Law, these painful incongruities will be apparent.
Controlled by such a code, employing such representatives, sustained by such agencies, animated by such Furies, and producing such fruits of tears and bitterness, it must be open to question.
As a people is known by its laws, as a man is known by the company he keeps, as a tree is known by its fruits, so is the War System fully and unequivocally known by the Laws of War, by its diabolical ministers, typical of its preparations…
But so long as War exists as an Institution this terrible inconsistency must appear.
The Constitution of our own country furnishes an illustration remarkable as a touch-stone of the whole system.
I might exhibit this character by an examination of the Laws of War, drawn from no celestial fount, but from a dark profound of Heathenism.
From a general comprehension of the War System, we perceive the unchristian character of the preparations it encourages and requires, nay, which are the synonyms of the system, or at least its representatives.
Still further, it will yet be seen, that, sustaining these, we wastefully offend against economy, and violate also the most precious sentiments of Human Brotherhood,--taking counsel of distrust, instead of love, and provoking to rivalry…
Only recently have men learned to question these preparations; for it is only recently that they have opened their eyes to the true character of the system, in which they are a part.
If War were not sanctioned by the Commonwealth of Nations, as the means of determining international controversies, then forts, navies, armies, military display, military chaplains, and military sermons would not exist.
If justice were not to be administered, these would not exist.
The component parts of the War System may all be resolved into PREPARATIONS FOR WAR,--as court-house, jail, judges, sheriffs, constables, and posse comitatus are preparations for the administration of municipal justice.
The cautious sword of the magistrate is unlike--oh, how unlike!--the ruthless sword of War.
If the sword, in the hand of an assaulted individual, may become the instrument of sincere self-defence, if, under the sanction of a judicial tribunal, it may become the instrument of Justice also, surely it can never be the Arbiter of…
The example of the Great Teacher, the practice of the early disciples, the injunctions of self-denial, love, non-resistance to evil,--sometimes supposed to forbid Force in any exigency, even of self-defence,--all these must apply with…
Admitting the necessity of Force for such purpose, Christianity revolts at Force as the substitute for a judicial tribunal.
But if War be thus odious, if it be the Duel of Nations, if it be the old surviving Trial by Battle, then must its unquestionable barbarism affect all its incidents, all its machinery, all its enginery, together with all who sanction it…
Surely all must unite in condemning the Arbitrament of War.
It is because men see War, in the darkness of prejudice, only as an agency of attack or defence, or as a desperate sally of wickedness, that they fail to recognize it as a form of judgment, sanctioned and legalized by Public Authority.
Its citadel, churches, houses, were shattered, and peaceful families at the fireside torn in mutilated fragments by the murderous bursting shell; but the English, the universal charities, which helped to restore Lisbon, were not offered to…
But War shakes from its terrible folds all this desolation, without its attendant charity.
Such was the desolation, and such the charity, sown by the earthquake at Lisbon,--an event which, after the lapse of nearly a century, still stands without a parallel.
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