Charles Sumner's More Excel¬
lent Way.
BY EDWIN D. MEAD.
Charles Sumner began his public life by what he himself
called a declaration of war against war. His great oration in
Tremont Temple on "The True Grandeur of Nations" marked,
his biographer rightly observes, the most important epoch in
Sumner's life. " Had he died before this event, his memory
would have been only a tradition with the few early friends who
survive him. The 4th of July, 1845, gave him a national, and
more than a national, fame." Epoch-making in Sumner's own
life, we think it may be safely said that no oration which he
ever gave has greater intrinsic importance, and that no other
will be read so long. Of all pleas made by American men for
the rule of peace on earth, it is by far the noblest and most
comprehensive. There is almost no argument against war
which it does not somehow make use of; and the advocate of
peace in all the years returns to it, and returns again, for
support and inspiration.
There was nothing upon which Sumner dwelt with greater
emphasis in this famous oration than upon the cost and waste
of war and the incalculable advantage that would result from
the diversion of these misapplied resources to purposes of
education and the real development and progress of society.
Passing from the fearful cost of war itself, he discussed the
regular, permanent expense of the war footing,— the prepara¬
tions for war in time of peace. His survey of the armies and
navies and fortifications of Europe is interesting to-day chiefly
as revealing how startlingly the burden has increased in the
fifty years between then and now. In the United States he
found that the average annual appropriation for military and
naval purposes was 80 per cent, of the total annual expenses
of the government. " Yes, eighty cents in every dollar were
applied in this unproductive manner. The remaining twenty
cents sufficed to maintain the government in all its branches,
Reprinted from the "Editor's Table" of the New England Magazine, October, 1898.
This leaflet may be procured for JSr.so per hundred copies, or $10 per thousand, from the
Peace Crusade Committee, 14 Bedford Street, Boston.
2
executive, legislative and judicial, the administration of
justice, our relations with foreign nations, the post-office, and
all the light-houses which, in happy, useful contrast with the
forts, shed their cheerful signals over the rough waves, beating
upon our long coast." In the years from the formation of our
government, in 1789, down to the time when Sumner spoke,
almost twelve times as much was sunk under the sanction of
the national government in mere peaceful preparations for war
as was dedicated by the government during the same period
to all other purposes whatever. Of the military expenses of
the United States from that time to this, all of us know
something.
But " the passage which was most striking at the time,"
says Sumner's biographer, " according to the testimony of
hearers still living, was the one where, treating of the immense
waste of war defences, he compared the coast of the ' Ohio,'
a ship-of-the-line lying in the harbor and, on account of its
decorations, a marked spectacle of the day, with that of
Harvard College."
" Within cannon range of this city," he said, " stands an institution of
learning which was one of the earliest cares of our forefathers, the con¬
scientious Puritans. Favored child in an age of trial and struggle, care¬
fully nursed through a period of hardship and anxiety, endowed at that
time by the oblations of men like Harvard, sustained from its first founda¬
tion by the parental arm of the commonwealth, by a constant succession
of munificent bequests, and by the prayers of good men, the University
at Cambridge now invites our homage, as the most ancient, most interest¬
ing, and most important seat of learning in the land."
He spoke of its library, the oldest and most valuable in the
country, its museums, its schools of law, divinity, and medi¬
cine, its body of professors and teachers, "many of whose
names help to keep the name of the country respectable in
every part of the globe where science, learning, and taste are
cherished, and its distinguished president, Josiah Quincy, who
had rendered such high public service in so many fields.
" Such," he said, "is Harvard University; and as one of the
humblest of her children, happy in the memories of a youth
nurtured in her classic retreats, I cannot allude to her without
an expression of filial affection and respect. It appears," he
added, " from the last report of the treasurer, that the whole
available property of the University, the various accumulations
of more than two centuries of generosity, amounts" —1845
was still the day of small things at Harvard — "to $703,175."
" Change the scene," said Sumner, " and cast your eyes upon another
object. There now swings idly at her moorings in this harbor a ship of
3
the line, the'Ohio,' carrying ninety guns, finished as late as 1836 at an
expense of $547,888, repaired only two years afterwards for $233,012, with
an armament which has cost $53,945, making an aggregate of $834,845,"
—1845 was still the day of small things in battle-ships,—"as the actual
outlay at this moment for that single ship, more than $100,000 beyond all
the available wealth of the richest and most ancient seat of learning in
the land! "
He referred to the " Ohio " because that ship happened to
be in the harbor, not because it afforded the strongest case.
The expense of the "Delaware," in 1842, had reached $1,051-
000. He pursued the comparison further. The expenditures
of the University during the preceding year had been $47,935.
The cost of the "Ohio" for one year of service was $220,000.
" For the annual sum lavished on a single ship of the line,
four institutions like Harvard University might be supported."
The pay of the captain of a ship like the "Ohio" was $4,500:
the salary of the president of Harvard University was
$2,235.
"If the large endowments of Harvard University," he continued, "are
dwarfed by comparison with a single ship-of-the-line, how must it be with
other institutions of learning and beneficence, less favored by the bounty
of many generations? The average cost of a sloop of war is $315,000,—
more, probably, than all the endowments of those twin stars of learning
in the western part of Massachusetts, the colleges at Williamstown and
Amherst, and of that single star in the east, the seminary at Andover.
The yearly expense of a sloop of war in service is about $50,000, — more
than the annual expenditures of these three institutions combined."
" Take all the institutions of learning and beneficence," so Sumner con¬
cluded his arraignment, "the crown jewels of the Commonwealth,— schools,
colleges, hospitals, asylums,— and the sums by which they have been pur¬
chased and preserved are trivial and beggarly compared with the treasures
squandered within the borders of Massachusetts in vain preparations for
war,— upon the navy yard at Charlestown, with its stores on hand, costing
$4,741,000, the fortifications in the harbors of Massachusetts, where untold
sums are already sunk, and it is now proposed to sink $3,875,000 more, and
the arsenal at Springfield, containing, in 1842, 175,118 muskets, valued at
$2,099,998, and maintained by an annual appropriation of $200,000,— whose
highest value will ever be, in the judgment of all lovers of truth, that it
inspired a poem which in influence will be mightier than a battle, and will
endure when arsenals and fortifications have crumbled to earth.
" ' Were half the power that fills the world with terror,
Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts,
Given to redeem the human mind from error,
There were no need of arsenals or forts.' "
At the Alumni dinner at Harvard in Commencement week,
last June, the attention of Harvard and of the country was
recalled to these old utterances of Sumner's in an emphatic
and surprising way. Charles Francis Adams, the president of
4
the Alumni, who spoke chiefly of the Civil War, observed, in
introducing President Eliot, after critical words upon the char¬
acter and tendencies of the war with Spain, that the cost of'the
war, estimated at $40,000,000 per month, would run three hun¬
dred and sixty-five universities of the size of Harvard. Taking
up this word in opening his speech, President Eliot said : —
I am not sure I shall be able to follow President Adams in the line he
has suggested. The quick capital of Harvard University is not more than
the cost of two battle-ships; but can we compute what those battle-ships
may win ? It was Charles Sumner, who looks down upon us from the
other side of this hall, who first made comparisons of that nature; and some
years after he had made them there came upon us the terrific struggle
which President Adams has been describing so eloquently. About that
time I came to the conclusion that the whole argument of Charles Sumner
was a fallacious one.
President Eliot said other things concerning war and patriot¬
ism, in his speech, upon which, were this a more general word
upon those subjects, we should have something to say. He
spoke with manifest approval and with warmth of those stu¬
dents who upon any call to arms "offered their lives and their
labor to their country without much thought except for love,—
just as a lover throws a rose at the feet of his mistress. The
educated youth," he said, "who loves his country, does not
stop to consider in what precise cause his country has gone to
war." We should have something to say concerning these
utterances because, while all who are familiar with President
Eliot's position upon public matters must know well how he
himself, speaking more leisurely and deliberately, would sup¬
plement and qualify them, we consider their primary and natu¬
ral significance and influence so vicious (to use the word
which, instead of fallacious, the newspapers attributed to
President Eliot in his characterization of Sumner's argument).
Their influence seems to us especially dangerous in a time like
that through which we have been passing. They do not de¬
scribe what seems to us the desirable or right state of mind
for "the educated youth." It may become the solemn duty of
the educated youth, as of each common citizen, to serve his
country, even on the battlefield, in a cause to which he does
not believe his country has been wisely or rightly committed,
because far more may depend upon his country's integrity and
welfare than upon anything balanced in a special policy. But
if the educated youth in our universities do not " stop to con¬
sider," if they do not ask questions, if they are not trained to
discriminate between causes, the causes in which their country
goes to war, determining soberly and rationally what cause
5
they can support zealously, what reluctantly, and what not at
all,#—if such be the case with'our educated youth, what will be
the case with the unlearned and the untrained, and what must
be the fate of the republic ?
^ No one surely knows better than President Eliot himself the
difference between causes and between the services which the
educated youth may be asked to render his government. Of
the Civil War and the war with Spain he declared distinctly, in
this same speech, " The two wars, in their origin and motive,
can hardly be compared " ; and no one would ever, suspect him
of any general spirit of jingoism or militarism. Two news¬
papers lying on our table as we write quote trenchant words
from him of the sort necessary for these times. The first pas¬
sage is from the close of a recent address: —
After everything possible has been said in favor of martial virtues and
achievements, whenever our people really take up the question how best to
win glory, honor, and love for free institutions in general and the American
Republic in particular, whether in our own eyes or in the eyes of other
nations and later times, they will come to the conclusion that more glory,
honor, and love are to be won by national justice, sincerity, patience in
failure, and generosity in success than by national impatience, combative-
ness, and successful self-seeking, by as much as the virtues and ideals of
civilized man excel those of barbarous man.
The second passage is from his address at the Washington
Conference in 1896 in the interest of a permanent arbitration
treaty with England. In that address he spoke of the recent
jingoism in this country as " a detestable thing," " an offensive
foreign importation," " a delusion than which a more complete
cannot be imagined."
" What other powerful nation," he asked, "has dispensed with a standing
army ? What other nation with an immense seaboard has maintained but
an insignificant fleet ? It has been our glory to be safe, though without
fortresses, fleets, or armies." " I, too," he exclaimed," believe that this
nation has a mission in the world, a noble mission; but it is not that of
armed force. It is not by force of arms that we may best commend to the
peoples of the earth the blessings of liberty and self-government, but
rather by taking millions from various peoples into our own land, and
here giving them experience of the advantages of freedom. . . . There is
only one other means by which we should teach these principles to men.
It is by example,— by giving a persuasive example of happiness and pros¬
perity, arrived at through living in freedom and at peace. Never should
we advocate the extension of our institutions by force of arms, either on
sea or land."
We believe, says the writer who recalls this Washington ad¬
dress of President Eliot's, that Sumner would have called it a
consummate practical statement of his argument, and would
6
have recognized his own voice in the noble passage quoted.
"We appeal from President Eliot, the Alumni dinner oratof in
time of the excitement and delirium of war, to President Eliot
in time of peace and sobriety."
With President Eliot, therefore, we should be slow to believe
that we have any long or fundamental controversy. But with
his word at Harvard in June, with any reflection upon Sum¬
ner's argument in "The True Grandeur of Nations," we do
have controversy. We can think of nothing more dangerous
or deplorable, especially at this time in America, than encour¬
agement to our educated youth to view that great argument and
vision as vicious or fallacious. We believe that in the line of
Sumner's thought lies the hope of the world; and we believe
that those who think as Sumner thought, should, without
recourse to any generalities, to anything remote in time or
place, apply that principle firmly and sweepingly to the situa¬
tion through which the republic has been passing and the
situation which confronts us to-day.
We have spent $300,000,000 in a war with Spain. We are
in the outer circles of the maelstrom of a policy which means
larger armies, larger navies, costlier forts, and more of them,
and all the paraphernalia of the Old World militarism which
we have prided ourselves on being free from,— with the corre¬
sponding burdens of taxation, the devotion to waste and de¬
struction of the immense resources which might otherwise go
to development and progress. The man who does not see
that we are in the outer circles of this maelstrom is a fool ;
and the man who, seeing it, has no forebodings, is not a stu¬
dent of history. Is this way of spending money, which is now
proposed to the republic,— to put Sumner's question directly
to ourselves,— a wise way? Is it protective, is it constructive,
is it good business, is it common sense, does it pave a good
road into the future, is it the economical and promising way
to secure the results we claim to aim at, will it make us a
truer and safer democracy, and will it help the world ? Was
Sumner right, was Longfellow right, or was he not, in claiming
that, if half the wealth bestowed on camps, given to maintain
armies and navies, were given to redeem the human mind, to
educate the human race, there would soon be no need of
armies and navies?
We have spent $300,000,000 in a war with Spain. Have
we spent it well ? Have we done the most that could be done
with $300,000,000 to accomplish what we claimed to want to
accomplish ? Our object in going to war with Spain was to
make Cuba free, to make it a better place to live in, to insure
7
it better government, and make its people comfortable and
happy. Have we done it? Have we got our money's worth?
Has our way of spending our $300,000,000 been best, or
would Sumner's way have been best ? If in the midst of last
April's perplexities the senator who sits in Sumner's seat had
addressed words like the following to the senate and the
nation, would they have been vicious or fallacious words?
We are clearly drifting towards a war with Spain in behalf of Cuba.
In a month, unless we show wisdom greater than the past has shown, we
shall be in the midst of war. That war will cost us $300,000,000. Is
there not a better way of spending $300,000,000 ? Is there not a better
way of achieving what we aim at,— the freedom, good government, and
development of Cuba? I propose that we submit to Cuba and to Spain
this offer and request: Let us establish at Havana a university as well
equipped as Harvard University, with an endowment of $10,000,000, free
to every young man and woman of Cuba, with the best professors who
can be secured from America and Spain and England and France and
Germany. Let us establish at Santiago and Matanzas and Puerto Principe
colleges like Amherst and Williams, with a total endowment of $10,000,-
000; and in each of the twenty largest towns a high school or academy,
at a cost of $10,000,000. Let us devote $20,000,000 — $1,000,000 a year
for twenty years — to the thorough planting in Cuba of our American
common-school system; $10,000,000 to the promotion of a system of free
public libraries, making books as accessible and common in each Cuban
town and village as in Barnstable or Berkshire; and $6,000,000 for the
maintenance in each of the six provinces of a newspaper conducted by
the best men who can be enlisted in the service, bringing all Cuban men
and women into touch with all the world, giving them those things which
will feed them, and not giving them those things which would poison them.
Let us build a Cuban Central Railroad through the whole length of the
island, from Mantua to Maysi; and let us devote the balance of $100,000,-
000 to the scientific organization, by proper bureaus, of Cuban agriculture,
industry, and commerce. Let there be a truce for ten years, till these
things are done and begin to show their fruits; and then let the represen¬
tatives of the United States and Spain meet at Havana to settle the
" Cuban question" as it then exists. This, fellow-citizens of America,
seems to me worth trying. If it succeeds, we should at least have saved
$200,000,000; and it would be, I think, a kind of success more pregnant
with good for Cuba and Spain and America and humanity than the suc¬
cess which we may be celebrating next September. I spent the still hours
of last night, leaving all this hurly-burly, reading Charles Sumner's solemn
words on "The True Grandeur of Nations"; and his message has com¬
manded me to submit this proposition to you at this hour. There are
those of you who will laugh and scoff, and say the thought is all chimeri¬
cal, vicious, and fallacious; but I say unto you, in the name of the God
of our fathers, that with those of you who do not think so lies the hope
of the world. I say that the kingdom of God can come in this world,
that peace and justice and fraternity can come among men, that democracy
itself has a safe future, only as some elect people, with sublime abandon,
in a great opportunity, does this thing, — taking, in this world of undenia¬
ble and conflicting risks, the heroic risk, — the risk which alone has in it
hope for the world and relish of salvation. And our opportunity is now.
8
We wish that these considerations might sink deeply into
the heart of every member of Harvard University and into the
hearts of all the educated youth of America. If our republic
is to be true to itself, if we are to help civilization forward and
not backward, then the young men of our universities and all
of us who look at war and national defence and national
grandeur in the old way have got to be born again,— nothing
less than that,— baptized with the spirit wherewith Charles
Sumner was baptized, and have our eyes opened to see that
his way is the only right or sensible or efficient way, and that
now we are wasting our substance and defeating ourselves.
The revolution in the point of view is as radical as the differ¬
ence between Ptolemy and Copernicus; but, when we go
through it, things fall at once into order, we find ourselves in
a rational world with right means for right ends, and our old
notions of what is wise and prudent and necessary for the
defence and upbuilding and influence of the nation instantly
dissolve, stamped all as vicious and fallacious. Our thoughts
on what it is that makes a nation strong need almost all of
them to be turned inside out. Our economics and generosities
are all Ptolemaic. We boast of public and private munifi¬
cences in education and philanthropy. We need to under¬
stand that we are yet in the kindergarten of munificence as
concerns aJJ. positive, constructive, and real things. It would
sometimes seem as if, were the devil privileged to organize
the world so as to thwart struggling men most effectually,
wasting their accumulations and cutting forever the margin of
civilization, he would choose precisely what he now sees,— the
dominance of false political ideals and of gross unintelligence
as to how men and nations should spend their money. If an
eleventh commandment were to be added to the decalogue, it
should be one addressed to nations, and should be : Thou
shalt not waste thy substance. Last spring, as the war with
Spain began,— a war whose aim and motive we justified and
praised, although we held with the President and the Secretary
of State and the minister to Spain that it was wholly unneces¬
sary for the attainment of its aim,— we wrote in these pages
the following words: as the war ends, we repeat them, as an¬
other statement for this time of Sumner's argument, the eco¬
nomic argument, which our educated youth and all of us who
wish to see the world get on need to ponder upon in a far
severer and more serious way than most of us are wont to do :
Every war gives new life to that old notion which died so hard, but
which is responsible for so much mischief in the world, that patriotism is
9
somehow bound up with war,— the patriotic man, the man who fights or
wants to fight for his country. Congress, " in a great wave of patriotism,"
we read, appropriates fifty million dollars for gun-boats and torpedoes. No
"wave of patriotism" is reported when Massachusetts appropriates a mill¬
ion dollars for good roads, when New York appropriates five millions for
new school-houses or Chicago ten millions for an exposition, when Boston
builds a library, when the Adirondack forests are secured, when the college
is endowed, and when good wages are paid in the factory. There may be
exigencies when the appropriation of fifty million dollars or five hundred
millions for national defence or for national offence is the duty imposed
upon the patriot; but the man who votes for guns and gun-boats with a
glow and an excitement which he does not feel when he has opportunity to
help on the great interests of education, science, art, and industry, may be
very sure that his glow is not the honest glow of patriotism, but is very
likely the excitement of the tiger and the savage, which still lives on in
good society and dies so hard in half-civilized and even civilized men. It
happens every day that a council, a legislature, or a congress, will buoy¬
antly — without computation, without protest, and without debate — vote
the people's thousands or millions of money for some great waste, some
great destruction — new cruisers and new forts — when some poor pittance
is grudgingly doled out or grudgingly denied — each dollar pinched and
challenged — for the measure of philanthropy, of conservation, of construc¬
tion, of education, of relief, of encouragement or high emprise, whose
generous and bold advancement would do so much to hasten the day when
forts and cruisers shall be unnecessary and obsolete. Society is zealous
and lavish on its displays and its defences,— its dams and sewers and
police and armament,— and blind and niggardly a thousand times as to the
things which affect its fountains and its real vitality, the interests of the
discipline and the construction which make protection needless.
The lifelong position of Charles Sumner upon the subject
of armies and navies and forts and wars is to be commended
to the educated youth of America at this time as a position
peculiarly worthy of their adoption, imperatively worthy of
their earnest thought. Sumner was not a non-resistant, not
a man of " peace at any price." We know how warmly and
efficiently, in his place in the Senate, he supported the govern¬
ment in the Civil War; and \fre know how otherwise he ap¬
pealed to force when that appeal was necessary and just. We
know how he believed in strong government and hated imbecile
police, how he spoke of "the sword of the magistrate" in
the very record of his services for peace. But the great prin¬
ciples of his " True Grandeur of Nations " were the principles
of his whole life, from a time long before that oration to the
last hour, when he bequeathed a thousand dollars to Harvard
University for an annual prize for the best essay on Universal
Peace. We do not remember any autobiographical passage
in his writings so impressive as that in which, replying to
unfriendly criticism, he gives an account of his devotion to
the peace movement. We do not remember any passage any¬
where which we would commend so earnestly at this time to
IO
the students of Harvard University as one worth striving to be
able to parallel in their own autobiographies.
" My name," he wrote, "is connected somewhat with two questions,
which may be described succinctly as those of peace and slavery. That
which earliest enlisted me, and which has always occupied much of my
thoughts, is the peace question. When scarcely nine years old, it was my
fortune to listen to President Quincy's address before the Peace Society,
delivered in the Old South Church. It made a deep and lasting impression
on my mind; and though, as a boy and youth, I surrendered myself to the
illusions of battles and wars, still, as I came to maturity, I felt too keenly
their wickedness and woe. A lecture which I heard from William Ladd,
in the old court-house at Cambridge, shortly after I left college, confirmed
these impressions." He tells how he expressed his ripened convictions to
his friends, and how, going to Europe, he often dwelt upon them there.
In Paris, when M. Victor Foucher submitted for his criticism the manu¬
script of his treatise upon the law of nations, Sumner, observing that he
had adopted, among his fundamental principles, that war was recognized
as the necessary arbitrament between nations, ventured to discuss this
dogma, and, while admitting that it was accepted by every publicist up to
that time, suggested to him to be the first to brand it as unchristian and
barbarous and to declare that the institution of war, defined and sanctioned
by the law of nations as a mode of determining justice between them, was
but another form of the ordeal by battle, which was once regarded as a
proper mode of determining justice between individuals. Returning to
Boston after his two years and a half in Europe, he tells of the little meet¬
ing of the American Peace Society to which he found his way in the very
month of his arrival. "The Rev. Henry Ware was in the chair. I think
there were not more than twelve persons present. We met in a small
room under the Marlboro Chapel. On motion of Doctor Gannett, I was
placed on the executive committee." He tells of his humble efforts for the
cause in the next few years; and then he comes to the oration on the 4th
of July, 1845. "The position taken by me on this occasion has drawn
upon me not a little criticism,— perhaps I might use a stronger expression.
Convinced of its intrinsic propriety and importance, I have been drawn, on
subsequent occasions, by an inevitable necessity, to sustain and fortify it.
I hope that I shall always be willing to maintain it."
Universal peace, the methods by which war may be perma¬
nently superseded,— these were ever the burden of his thought
and study, of addresses to the public and letters to friends;
and ever the economic argument is at the front. " I wish our
country would cease to whet its tusks," he writes to Doctor
Howe in 1843. "The appropriations of the navy last year
were nine million dollars. Imagine half — nay, a tithe — of
this sum given annually to objects of humanity, education and
literature ! I know of nothing in our government that troubles
me more than this thought." To his brother George in 1844:
" I would not vote a dollar for any engine of war. One war-
steamer costs more than all the endowments of Harvard
College. Nations keep standing armies and Paixhan guns —
sharpen their tusks—that they Inay be prepared for war.
II
Far better to be always prepared for peace." Again : " What
a boon to France, if her half million of soldiery were devoted
to the building of railways and other internal improvements,
instead of passing the day in carrying superfluous muskets!
What a boon to Paris, if the immense sums absorbed in her
fortifications were devoted to institutions of benevolence 1
She has more to fear from the poverty and wretchedness of her
people than from any foreign foe." No crime was to him so
great as that of the country which " entered into war for the
sordid purpose of securing a few more acres of land." No
letter that came to him among the many drawn out by " The
True Grandeur of Nations " was more welcome than that from
Theodore Parker,— his first letter to Sumner, the beginning of
their friendship,— defending him from the attacks of " men of
low morals, who can only swear by their party and live only in
public opinion," and exclaiming : " The Church and State are
both ready to engage in war, however unjust, if a little territory
can be added to the national domain thereby. The great
maxims of Christianity — the very words of Christ — are
almost wholly forgotten." Full of faith in the republic, con¬
fident in the influence its institutions were destined to exert
over the ancient establishments of Europe, he prayed " that a
race of men may be reared among us competent to understand
the destinies of the country, to abjure war, and to give extension
and influence to our institutions by cultivating the arts of
peace, by honesty, and by dignity of life and character." In
the cause of peace lay to him the hope of the world. "It is
destined," he said, "to a triumph much earlier than many
imagine. It is so necessary to meet the financial embarrass¬
ments of Europe and the humane aspirations of the age that
it must succeed. Let is be presented carefully and clearly, let
the incalculable good it has in store be unfolded, and people
must feel its practicability. ... I have full faith in a coming era
of humanity; but I believe it is to be brought about by remov¬
ing existing evils, by education, and especially by removing the
great evil and expense of war preparations or the war system.
If the friends of progress in Europe would aim at the armies
and navies, direct all their energies at these monster evils, all
else that can reasonably be desired will soon follow. Why not
sound the idea in the ears of Europe ? " It was to his brother,
then in Europe, that he wrote, in 1849. His call has been
heard, fifty years afterward, by the Czar of Russia.
In 1849, four years after the oration on "The True Grandeur
of Nations," he delivered an address on "The Abolition of the
War System in the Commonwealth of Nations," advocating;
12
instead of the arbitrament of arms a Congress of Nations with
a high court of judicature or arbitration ; and the next year, as
chairman of the Peace Congress for this country, he prepared
an address to the people of the United States, recommending
these methods. In 1870 he was still enforcing the truths which
he enforced in 1845. He gave in many places, in the autumn
of that year, a lecture on the war between France and Prussia,
pointing as its moral that the war system should be discarded
and the nations should disarm themselves. In 1873 he was
invited to be one of the speakers at the public meeting held at
Steinway Hall, New York, to stimulate a war spirit against
Spain at the time of the seizure of the " Virginius,"— a meet¬
ing at which Mr. Evarts presided, and made an inflammatory
speech; but he declined, and instead sent a letter of a spirit
directly opposite to that of the meeting, in which he insisted
on waiting for evidence and on considerate treatment of the
Spanish republic, and discountenanced the belligerent prepa¬
rations then under way in our navy yards, which involved bur¬
densome expenditure and encouraged an unhealthy war fever.
In 1873, also, in the last summer of his life, he sent a letter of
congratulation to Henry Richards, who had succeeded in car¬
rying through the House of Commons a motion in favor of
international arbitration. " It marks an epoch in a great
cause. There is no question so supremely practical; for it
concerns not merely one nation, but every nation, and even its
discussion promises to diminish the terrible chances of war.
Its triumph would be the greatest reform of history." At the
same time he wrote to his English friend, Robert Ingham: —
I have been cheered by the vote of the House of Commons on Mr.
Richard's motion. ... It cannot fail to exert a prodigious influence. I
know no reform which promises such universal good as the release of any
considerable portion of present war expenditures or expenditure on arma¬
ments, so that they can be applied to purposes of civilization. It is absurd
to call this Utopian. . . . Here is an open and incessant waste. Why not
stop it ? Here is something which keeps human thoughts on bloodshed,
and rears men to slay each other. Why not turn their thoughts to things
which contribute to human happiness ? Mr. Richard has done a great
work, and so has the House of Commons. . . . Such a presentation of
the case must have an effect on the continent as well as in England, teach¬
ing reason. I shall not live to see the great cause triumph. I often wish
I had been born a few years later, and one reason is because I long to wit¬
ness the harmony of nations, which I am sure is near. When an evil so
great is recognized and discussed, the remedy must be at hand.
But it was to Harvard University that Charles Sumner ad¬
dressed his first striking message and his last, in behalf of the
rule of peace. The first message was through Henry Ware.
Mr. Ware, a graduate of Harvard of the Class of 1843, writes :
13
I went with Professor Felton one day, just after our Commencement
parts had been assigned, into Sumner's office; and he, kindly asking what
I had got, and being told that I had to do a Latin oration, asked me what
subject I had chosen. I replied that I had not yet found a text to my
mind. "Then," said he, "I will give you one,— De imperio pads: talk
about that." And, says Mr. Ware, I did.
His last message "was through his will, the most memorable
provision of which was as follows : —
I bequeath to the President and Fellows of Harvard College one thou¬
sand dollars in trust, for an annual prize for the best dissertation by any
student of the College, or any of its schools, undergraduate or graduate, on
Universal Peace and the methods by which war may be permanently super¬
seded. I do this in the hope of drawing the attention of students to the
practicability of organizing peace among nations, which I sincerely believe
may be done. I cannot doubt that the same modes of decision which now
prevail between individuals, between towns, and between smaller communi¬
ties, may be extended to nations.
We cannot doubt that more and more, as days go on, the
attention of the students of Harvard University will be drawn
to Sumner's last solemn call and charge,— that this " most
ancient, most interesting, and most important seat of learning
in the land," to which in the sweep of his great oration he
could not allude without pausing to pay his tribute of filial
affection, will more and more become a centre where educated
and aspiring youth, with their hearts kindled by Sumner's gos¬
pel and with great visions of a better future, will provoke each
other to high argument, and in times of war prepare for peace.
Upon each student's desk shall lie, as a book of each student's
Bible, the great oration of the greatest son of Harvard who in
the memory of men now living has gone forth from Harvard's
halls into the councils of the nation. And no page of it will
be pondered more than that which sets forth how, if we would
transfer to the offices of education and development the mill¬
ions now appropriated so lavishly for destruction and defence,
the need of destruction and defence would quickly cease.
With two causes the name of the great Harvard senator
is identified,— the cause of freedom and the cause of peace.
From the wall of the memorial hall which Harvard built
to commemorate the services of her sons in the cause of
freedom, Sumner's face looks, down upon the hundreds of
students gathering daily in that most holy place, and upon
the hundreds of alumni who, " in the memories of a youth
nurtured in her classic retreats," come up to the ancient Uni¬
versity as each Commencement week comes round. As that
face looks down on them in the years to come, may it not
14
speak chiefly to them of the past, of the victory of the cause
of freedom, whose fruits we enjoy to-day, but of the future, the
triumph, which he so longed to live to see and which the edu¬
cated youth of American can do so much to hasten, of the
cause of universal peace. Ever and ever may Harvard con¬
sider wherein the true grandeur of nations lies, and ever and
ever hear the first and last message of her great statesman
giving a new burden and new power to her great singer's gos¬
pel: —
" Were half the power that fills the world with terror,
Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts,
Given to redeem the human mind from error,
There were no need of arsenals or forts."
THE TRUE GRANDEUR OF NATIONS.
By Charles Sumner. 75 cents. Sold by all
booksellers. Sent, postpaid, by Lcc and Shepard,
Boston.
ORGANIZE THE WORLD.
By Edwin D. Mead. A Leaflet uniform with this
on " Charles Sumner's More Excellent Way."
3 cents per copy, $1.50 per hundred copies, $10 per
thousand. Peace Cmsade Committee, I p. Bedford
«
Street, Boston.
The Federation oj the IVorld.
By Benjamin F. Trueblood, LL.D., Secretary of
the American Peace Society. i6mo, $1.00.
This is a small book on a very great subject; and it is
only just to say that it treats this subject adequately, with
large intelligence, with vigorous thought, and with a strenuous
appeal to all who cherish high aspirations for the future of
mankind.
The ten chapters treat: The Solidarity of Humanity ; Soli¬
darity Unrealized; The Causes of the Disunity; The Devel¬
opment of the War System; The Influence of Christianity in
restoring the Federative Principle; War Ethically Wrong;
War Anti-Federative; The New World Society; The Growing
Triumph of Arbitration ; The United States of the World.
An Appendix contains the Czar's Rescript, calling for a
Conference on Reduction of Armaments; and seven pages are
given to a Bibliography of the most important publications
relating to The Federation of the World.
The Boston Advertiser says: "Whether one may think the
author's idea a vague and impossible dream, he can neverthe¬
less ill afford to remain unacquainted with what there is to be
said in its favor. Some form of unity among the nations is
certainly a ' consummation devoutly to be wished,' and whatever
points in that direction is of the utmost interest to people of
intelligence. Mr. Trueblood undertakes to show that Tenny¬
son's dream of 'the parliament of man, the federation of the
world,' is something more than poetic fancy, is, in fact, a
rational prophecy of an actual condition to be realized in the
future."
Sold by all Booksellers. Sent, postpaid, by
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.,
BOSTON.