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THE GREAT TRIAL
O1 THIH


Nineteenth


Century.
A......,.s wzt,  <,S1" *?-'.


BY
SAMUEL C. PARKS, A.M.
Kansas City, Mo.:
HUJDSON-KIMBERLY PUBLISHING CO.
1900.




Copyright 1900, by
CHARLES K. WILES.
All Rights Reserved.




CONTENTS.
Page
Preface..............................................  5
Dedication....................................... 
Trial.......................................... 11
Speech of Aristides..............               17
Speech of Alfred the Great........................... 20
Speech of Cincinnatus..........................         23
Speech of Mr. Clay.................................24
Speech of Gen. Grant............................... 39
Speech of Mr. Jefferson............................. 47
Speech of Mr. Lincoln.............................. 50
Speech of Iafayette.........................69
Speech of Mr. Madison...........................        75
Speech of Count Tolstoi.............................. 92
Speech of Gen. Washington....................  102
Speech of Bishop Simpson......................... 104
Conclusion......................................... 119
Appendix..........................................121
Intemperance in Manila............................     121
Webster on the Mexican War......................... 126
Extracts from Speech of Mr. Clay, 1818............135




I




PREFACE BY THE PUBLISHERS.


The author of this book, Samuel C. Parks, was born in
Middlebury, Vermont, in 1820. Was educated at the Indiana State University, and located in Springfield, Illinois, in
1840, and while a young man he became acquainted with
Mr. Lincoln and was always his ardent admirer and close
personal and political friend. He was a member of the Illinois Legislature in 1855. Was a delegate from the Springfield district (Illinois) to the first Republican National Convention, held in Philadelphia in 1856, when Fremont was
nominated for President. Was at the Republican National
Convention held in Chicago in 1860, and assisted in nominating Mr. Lincoln for President. He was appointed associate
justice of the Supreme Court of Idaho by President Lincoln
in 1862. Was on the Grant electoral ticket in Illinois in
1868. Was a member of the Illinois Constitutional Convention in 1870. Was appointed associate justice of the Supreme Court of New Mexico in 1878 by President Hayes.
Was transferred to the Supreme Court of Wyoming in 1882
by President Arthur.




PREPACE.
In the preface to his treatise on International Law,
William E. Hall says: "Since it has come into existence, it
has often been quietly ignored or brutally disregarded."
The history of the world from the time of Grotius, "the
father of International Law," to the present day proves this
to be true. Nearly every great nation has violated that law,
"quietly" or "brutally." Great Britain has perhaps been
more guilty than any other nation. That the United States
has been guilty of the same offense within the last two
years is shown by the speeches in this book.
From about one to three pages of the speeches herein
ascribed to Mr. Clay, Gen. Grant, Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Madison,
Count Tolstoi, and Bishop Simpson, respectively, are taken
almost literally from their published works. And all of the
sentiments and opinions ascribed to the twelve speakers are
believed to be in harmony with their respective characters,
and to correspond with what they have either done, said, or
written.
The greater part of the book was written six months
ago. Its completion and publication have been unavoidably
delayed till the present time.
June, 1900.




DEDICATION TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN.


In the summer of the year 1860, at my request and for
me, you examined and corrected a biography of yourself
which I wished to use in the pending presidential campaign.
Nothing in that book was of more interest and importance than that parltf your speech in Springfield, on the
26th day of June, 18W, in which you expressed your view of
the meaning and object of that part of the Declaration of
Independence which declares that "all men are created
equal."
In this "view," as given by the book in question, you
made but one correction, substituting the preposition "in"
for "with." This was done three years after the speech was
written and delivered. So that "view" is your well-considered and deliberate opinion of the most important question affecting the human race, outside of its eternal destiny.
The following is the passage referred to, taken from the
copy of the speech in the book as it was corrected by you
for me:
"I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include all men, but they did not intend to declare
all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all
were equal in color, size, intellect, moral development, or
social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness
in what respects they did consider all men created equal
-equal in certain inalienable rights, among which are 'life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' This they said,




8


Dedication to Abraham Lincoln.


and this they meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were then actually enjoying that
equality, nor yet that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact, they had no power to confer
such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so
that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit.
"They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all, and revered by all;
constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even
though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated,
and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all
people of all colors everywhere. The assertion that "all
men are created equal" was of no practical use in effecting
our separation from Great Britain; and it was placed in the
Declaration, not for that, but for future use. Its authors
meant it to be as-thank God! it is now proving itself-a
stumbling-block to all those who, in after times, might seek
to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism. They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant when such should reappear in this
fair land and commence their vocation, they should find left
for them at least one hard nut to crack."
This view was the view of the Republican party. It
was the fundamental principle of your administration, and
was not seriously questioned for thirty-six years after your
election as President. Indeed, the fact that your election
vindicated your view of the Declaration was, as you well
know, one principal reason why the writer and so many of
your friends rejoiced in your election.




Dedication to Abraham Lincoln.         9
But a great change has taken place in this country
within the last three years. The attempt which was made
forty years ago to fritter away the Declaration, and to leave
it no more, at most, than an interesting memorial of the
dead past, shorn of its vitality and practical value, and left
without the germ or even the suggestion of the individual
rights of man in it, as described by you in the speech referred to, has been renewed by men professing to be your
followers.
This book is written with the hope that it will tend to
expose the folly and madness of this second attempt to destroy the great Declaration of the rights of man. If that
hope should be realized, it will be a very great gratification.
The Author.








THE TRIAL
"I had a dream, but 'twas not all a dream."
-Lord Byron.
The thoughts that came into my head upon my bed were
these: I dreamed that I was on a visit to a strange city, and
while there, was taken to see a new and great court-housethe largest in the world. This building had been erected
for the use of a new court, which had been created, organized, and established recently for the trial of great criminal
cases. Its jurisdiction extended over all countries and
through all ages. This great court was now holding its first
session. The building was situated on a lofty eminence,
commanding a fine view of all the neighboring country, and
was surrounded by noble forest trees, a large variety of
evergreens, and a great abundance of beautiful flowers. It
was built of the finest marble, was admirable in its proportions, workmanship, and finish, and had a larger seating capacity than any building, ancient or modern, except the Flavian amphitheatre. Its acoustic properties were so perfect
that Mr. Clay could be heard in it by forty thousand people.
When I entered the court-room, two cases had already
been disposed of. In one Edward, the Black Prince, son of
Edward the Third, King of England, had been tried for the
murder of three thousand men, women, and children, inhabitants of the city of Limoges in France, in the year 1370.?he
facts in this case had been admitted by the defense.




12              The Great Trial of the
Mothers, with their infants in their arms, had begged the
enraged conqueror for the lives of themselves and their children; but he had put them all to death and made their city
a desolation.
The only defense the attorneys of the Prince attempted
was an impassioned appeal to the jury, founded on his
hitherto high character as a man, and the glory he had won
for himself and his country by the wonderful victories of
Cressy and of Poictiers. But the appeal was vain. The jury
brought in a verdict of "Guilty of murder in the first
degree."
The second case tried was an indictment against Napoleon Bonaparte for the murder of five hundred thousand Egyptians, Spaniards, and Russians, at various times
charged in the indictment.
In this case also the facts were admitted. The defendant had waged wars of invasion and conquest against the
nations aforesaid, and therein had caused the death of half
a million of men, including a great many thousands of the
French.
A very determined and confident effort was made by
the defense to prevent a verdict of guilty, by urging upon
the jury that Napoleon was a great statesman as well as a
great warrior; that he had done more for the elevation and
glory of France than any other man that ever lived; and
that four years' confinement to the island of St. Helena was
an all-sufficient atonement for any evil he may have done.
But the instructions of the court upon the subject of
murder were too full and clear to be disregarded by the
jury, and they brought in a verdict of guilty as charged in
the indictment.




Nineteenth Century.


13


All pertaining to the first two trials I learned
afterwards from a friend who witnessed both. The third I
saw and heard myself. It was an indictment against William McKinley for murdering twenty thousand Filipinos
and two thousand Americans, many of whom were boys betweet sixteen and twenty-one years of age.
In this case nothing was admitted. The prosecution
were required to prove their entire case. The defense disputed every inch of ground. They omitted nothing that
was admissible as evidence or argument in favor of their
client. In fact, the high position of the defendant, the circumstances and the surroundings, were calculated to rouse
both parties to almost superhuman efforts. It was the most
imposing scene I ever witnessed.
The presiding judge was Chief Justice Marshal, and associated with him were John Jay and Chancellor Kent. The
jury were Aristides of Athens, Cincinnatus of Rome, Lafay
ette of France, Alfred the Great of England, Count Tolstoi
of Russia, Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln and Grant, Henry Clay and Bishop Simpson.
The vast audience of more than twenty thousand persons was composed of men from nearly all countries and all
ages; nearly every foreign ambassador, nearly every United
States senator, a majority of the House of Representatives,
prominent men from every State, and from the adjacent
country, men from every profession and pursuit. This
mighty audience was completed and adorned by the largest
array of intelligent and brilliant women ever assembled under one roof in the United States.
The great court-room was crowded when I entered and




The Great Trial of the


forced my way up to the bar, but at a hint from Mr. Lincoln,
one of the bailiffs gave me a seat where I could hear and see
all that was said and done.
The attorneys for the prosecution were Boutwell of
Massachusetts, Reed of Maine, Edmonds of Vermont, and
others of less note. For the defense, Senators Hanna,
Chandler, Depew and Morgan, Col. Watterson of Kentucky,
and two or three preachers who, by courtesy, were called
"Christian ministers."
It was proved, that "at the time the United States declared war against Spain, the Filipinos had been fighting
for liberty and independence for several years, and had
nearly attained their freedom; that upon the arrival of the
United States forces at the Philippine Islands, the Islanders
became allies of the United States in their war against
Spain; that at the close of that war the Filipinos still
claimed their independence and their right to govern themselves, and denied the right which was claimed by the defendant, as Commander-in-chief of the Army cnd Navy of
the United States, to govern them and exercise proprietary
rights in their country; that, to enforce his claim, the President made war upon them, and by that war had caused the
death, in battle and by wounds and disease, of twenty
thousand Filipinos and two thousand Americans whom
he had ordered there to fight, and that some of the latter
were boys under twenty-one years of age."
The defense was, that "by the treaty of peace with
Spain the United States had gained the sovereignty of those
Islands, and that the President could not surrender it; that
he had a right to enforce his claim to them to the extent of




Nineteenth Century.


15


the extermination of the inhabitants if they would not
otherwise submit to his authority."
For a further defense it was pleaded that, "in prosecuting the war upon the Filipinos, the defendant was seeking to establish peace, humanity, civilization, and Christianity among them; that the war was for their own good, and
no matter how much it cost in blood and treasure, it would
finally result in peace, prosperity, and happiness."
For a further defense it was claimed, "that the United States needed the Islands in their business; that they
were very, very rich, and would be a source of great profit
to American speculators, traders, merchants, agriculturists,
cotton-raisers, and office-holders; that it was the true policy
of the United States to expand and create a colonial empire
after the fashion of Great Britain; that it was the manifest
destiny of the Anglo-Saxon race to control the world; that
honor and patriotism demanded that the American flag
should wave to the end of time wherever it had once been
planted; and that to stop the Philippine War inow would
make our country an object of ridicule for a hundred years."
The trial lasted several days, the case being very ably
and thoroughly argued on both sides. The Court was absolutely impartial. The motto of Chief-Justice Marshal il
this case, as in the trial of Aaron Burr, was "Fiat justitia,
ruat coelum." His instructions covered the whole doctrine
of murder and were the most admirable specimen of that
kind of literature I ever heard ot read.
The case was given to the jury at ten o'clock in
the morning, and at six o'clock in the evening they brought
in their verdict. George Washington was the foreman. As
-2




The Great Trial of the


he arose and handed the verdict to the clerk of the court to
be read his appearance was majestic. All eyes were now
upon the clerk. The stillness was intense and the interest
and suspense painful. The verdict was, "Guilty as charged
in the indictment."
Up to this time, and during his long trial, the prisoner
had borne himself with a firmness (perhaps I should rather
say hardihood) worthy of the man who made that terrible
speech at Pittsburg, presaging the conquest of the Filipinos. Now, as all eyes were turned to him, upon the reading of the verdict, he started as if he had received a violent
electric shock, then turned deadly pale and had to be supported in his chair by his attendants.
A motion for a new trial was made by his attorneys,
and ten o'clock the following day was set for hearing it, and
the court adjourned.
The argument of the motion the next day was lengthy,
and, upon the part of some of the attorneys for the defense,
very abusive. The Court took a recess of one hour to consult, and at the end of that time they returned, overruled
the motion, and again adjourned.
Then ensued a most extraordinary scene. Mr. Clay, the
boldest and most self-reliant public man of this century,
arose and requested all the people to remain till he made an
announcement.
He stated that the trial which had just closed was the
most important that had ever occured in the history of this
country. The verdict had been severely criticised and he
thought the jury owed it to themselves and to the people




Nineteenth Century.


17


of the United States to make a public statement of the
grounds of their verdict; he had consulted with the jury
during the recess, and they all agreed with him, that, as
there was to be no court to-morrow, they would meet in the
court-room for that purpose at ten o'clock the next morning.
At the hour appointed the court-room was, if possible,
more crowded than during the trial. General Washington
was elected president of the meeting, by acclamation; Mr.
Lincoln vice-president, and Mr. Clay secretary. The president directed the secretary to call the names of the jury in
alphabetical order, beginning with Aristides.
SPEECH OF ARISTIDES.
"It is plain, from the evidence, that the killing in this
case was done by the order of the defendant; but it is contended that as it was done in a state of war, it cannot be
murder. This would be true if the war was just or necessary, but this war was neither. On the contrary, the circumstances under which the war was made aggravate the
offense, for the Filipinos were, or had been, the allies of
the Americans in their war against Spain.
"It has always been my opinion that war never was justifiable except in necessary self-defense, such as the wars of
Greece against Persia, and the wars of America against
England. Offensive wars always injured Greece, and the
Peloponnesian war was ruinous to Athens. It was not
merely by war that Greece became the admiration of the
world, and Athens the most wonderful city that ever ex



The Great Trial of the


isted; it was more by the success of their great men in the
works and arts of peace.
fI am proud of the heroic deeds of the warriors of my
country, but I am still more proud of those greater exhibitions of superior mental power which still shine with such
lustre in the works of her poets, orators, statesmen, and
sages; and of those edifices and monuments which still attest
the skill and taste of her artists, architects, and builders.
Who can tell how much they have done for the civilized
world in the last two thousand years? Bright was the glory
and green were the laurels which they won at Marathon,
Salamis, and Platsea; but dim is that glory and faded
are those laurels when compared with the honors and blessings which will ever rest on the poets and orators, philosophers and statesmen of my native land.
"My countryman Themistocles was a man of superior
genius, and rendered great services to his country in the
Persian war, and the failure of the fearful invasion of
Xerxes was, in large measure, due to him; but he was ambitious, selfish, and corrupt. After the defeat of the Persians
at Marathon and Salamis, and when Xerxes had retreated to
Persia, Themistocles proposed to the Athenians to destroy
the ships of their allies, and thus secure the naval supremacy of Athens. The Athenians rejected the proposal as unjust and perfidious, and they were clearly right in so doing.
"In the present case, the defendant has done worse
with the allies of the Americans in the war against Spain
than Themistocles proposed to do with the allies of the
Athenians. He has attempted to appropriate their country
to the use of the Americans, unjustly; and, because they re



Nineteenth Century.


19


fused to yield to his demands (as they had a perfect right to
do), he has caused thousands of them to be slaughtered. In
my opinion this was a clear case of wholesale murder. The
verdict was right in itself, and necessary to deter other
rulers from similar crimes."
The next speaker was Alfred the Great. Of this prince
it has been said: "He lived solely for the good of his
people. He is the first instance in the history of Christendom of the Christian king; of a ruler who put aside every
personal aim or ambition, to devote himself to the welfare
of those whom he ruled. So long as he lived he strove 'to
live worthily'; but in his mouth a life of worthiness meant
a life of justice, temperance, self-sacrifice. The Peace of
Wedmore at once marked the temper of the man. Ardent
warrior as he was, with a disorganized England before him,
he set aside, at thirty-one, the dream of conquest, to leave
behind him the memory, not of victories, but of 'good works,'
of daily toils, by which he secured peace, good government,
education for his people. His policy was one of peace."
This is a very high eulogy, but it is just and true. In
the moral grandeur of his character, Alfred never had an
equal among the kings of England, and perhaps never had
a superior among the rulers of the world in all countries
and all ages. And who is that ruler now living (if any)
who, in this respect, is his equal?




20


The Great Trial of the


SPEECH OF ALFRED THE GREAT.
The appearance of Alfred created great interest, and his
remarks made a deep impression upon the andience.
He said that his experience in war had been so long and
so severe that he had very decided convictions on that subject. When he came to the throne of England his country
long had been, and then was, subject to the incursions of
the Danes, who made frequent and destructive invasions
and wars against his people. He was forced to fight them
for years, to save his countrymen from utter ruin. At one
time they pressed him so hard that he was obliged to seek
safety in a little island in a swamp and remain concealed
for a year. At last he succeeded in quietly raising a new
army, defeated the Danes in a great battle, besieged them
in their camp, and reduced them to the last extremity. He
then gave them their lives and liberty upon condition that
they would settle in and cultivate that part of the kingdom
which they had laid waste and depopulated and become quiet, useful, and Christian people. This they agreed
to do, and, to their credit be it spoken, they gave him but
little trouble for many years. (This is what historians call
"The Peace of Wedmore.") This settlement with the Danes
gave him the opportunity to improve his own people in all
the works of peace, and to devote himself to science, learning, and law; to restore order, educate his countrymen, and
to encourage men of learning, wisdom, and piety.
The Anglo-Saxons and the Danes were very ignorant and brutal, and he esteemed what he did to raise them
from their low intellectual and moral debasement of far




Nineteenth Century.


21


more value to his country than his services in war. In order to educate his people, he was obliged to improve himself
in science and literature, and he had come to the conclusion
that education was the noblest work in which man or woman could engage. He said:
"It was much easier to subdue the Danes than to conquer the ignorance of the Saxons, the Angles, and the Jutes,
who by brute force had driven out the ancient Britons and
taken possession of their country.
"Nearly all wars are the offspring of ignorance and rapacity. It was the rapacity of the English kings and the ignorance of the English people that caused the Hundred
Years' War to conquer France. Besotted by ignorance,
poverty, and vice, the deluded people did not know any better than to desire this conquest, and they committed fearful
crimes and cruelties to that end, although themselves,
as well as the rulers whom they followed and obeyed, were
nominally Christians. They were too ignorant and brutal
to realize the wickedness and cruelty of their invasion of
and ravages in the country of another professedly Christian
people; and it might be said with truth, as a reason for forgiving them, 'They know not what they do.'
"The war against the Philippines was very much like
the war of the Anglo-Saxons against the ancient Britons, in
its origin and objects. The Saxons and Britons had been
allies in a war against the Picts and Scots, and had driven
those fierce marauders out of Britain. The Saxons then demanded the country of the Britons for themselves, and, because the Britons refused to yield to their demand, waged a




22


The Great Trial of the


war of extermination against them, conquered them, and
took possession of their country. The people who committed this atrocity have always been considered robbers and
murderers, and the English historians call them 'pirates.'
"In like manner the Americans and the Filipinos had
been allies in the war against Spain. At the end of the war,
the rulers of America demanded the Philippine Islands for
themselves; and, when their demand was refused, the
defendant in this case made war upon them and committed
the crimes charged in the indictment.
"If the people of the United States who favor the war
made by the defendant really believe in it, they need education in the ways of truth and justice as much as those re
mote Anglo-Saxon ancestors from whom they are said to be
descended.
"I will leave with the speakers who are to follow me to
answer the many defenses and excuses which have been
made for this war. There was one, however, so remarkable
that I will notice it. It was said that such wars always had
been and always would be. And, to support this argument,
the saying of Solomon had been quoted to this effect: 'The
thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and
that which is done is that which shall be done.'
"If this reasoning is good to sustain one evil, it is good
to sustain many others. Its general adoption and application would prevent any improvement in morals, or any
amelioration of the condition of the mass of mankind. The
better doctrine is that whatever 'has been' that is wrong
should be righted; and that neither time, nor custom, nor
authority can 'blazon evil deeds, or consecrate a crime.'




Nineteenth Century.


23


"The war against the Filipinos was a crime; the
deaths caused by it were properly charged to the author of
that war, and were correctly characterized in the indictment as murder. The verdict should be sustained by the
people, as it has been by the Court, and all such wars should
be put under the universal ban of the civilized world."
SPEECH OF CINCINNATUS.
Cincinnatus said that he had been obliged to leave his
farm twice and go to war, but he had done so with reluctance, and as soon as the emergency was over, gladly returned to his plow. That he was opposed to all wars of aggression and conquest as unnecessary, criminal, and ultimately ruinous to the country that made them, though at
first apparently an advantage. Such wars had ruined Rome.
The spoils of the conquered nations corrupted the Romans,
made them luxurious, profligate, and brutal, and an easy
prey to the barbarians of the North. War is the worst occupation of human life, and farming is the best. The first
is for the destruction of the human family, and the last for
its preservation. He would advise every soldier to leave
the army as soon as he could and go to farming or
some other useful employment. He continued:
"It may be true, as Alfred says, that the work of education is the noblest employment of man, but few soldiers are
capable of becoming teachers. General Washington set an
excellent example to his countrymen after the close of the
Revolutionary War, in resigning his commission, retiring to




24


The Great Trial of. the


his farm, and engaging in its cultivation and improvement.
General William Henry Harrison did the same after the War
of 1812. It would tend to the betterment of society if half
of the prominent military men of the world and threefourths of the rank and file of all its armies would follow
the example of Washington, Harrison, and myself: engage
in the noble pursuits of agriculture, in producing from the
earth the means of sustenance and of procuring the necessaries and comforts of life. The world needs no wars and
not many soldiers, and the day is coming when he will be
esteemed the greatest patriot and philanthropist who has
done the most to put an end to war.
"In this case the plea that the defendant killed the
Filipinos and the Americans in war is no defense, for he
made the war, knowing and intending that result, and for
the purpose of acquiring territory to which he had no right,
and of making serfs of a people who had been fighting for
many years to be free and to govern themselves, and who
had nearly attained their freedom."
SPEECH OF MR. CLAY.
Mr. Clay was the next speaker. He has been described
by Mr. Seward as "the greatest, the most reliable, and the
most faithful of all our statesmen."  The great interest
which his appearance excited was intensified as he proceeded, and he held the vast audience for more than an
hour, as if bound by a spell. He said:
"I regard the questions growing out of the war with




Nineteenth Century.


25


the Filipinos as the most important that I have ever
been called upon to consider. The doctrines advocated by
the President-the author of that war-and by his defenders, are utterly subversive of the principles upon which
this government was founded. I thank God that He has permitted me to address my countrymen on this great occasion,
and I invoke His blessing upon my effort, and humbly implore Him to lend to His unworthy servant the power, intellectual, moral, and physical, to rouse my countrymen to
immediate, determined, and successful opposition to such
pernicious and destructive principles."
Mr. Clay had an eagle eye, a voice of amazing sweetness and power, and a commanding presence and manner.
No one could doubt his entire sincerity, and this exordium
which I have given so briefly and imperfectly, and this ap
peal to the Almighty for aid by the most self-reliant and
imperious orator in the world, had an effect which I will not
attempt to describe. From this time the audience was, to
all appearance, entirely en rapport with him.
"The principal defense in this case," Mr. Clay continued,
"was, 'that the killing,' done by order of the President, 'in
the Philippine Islands was done in war'; but that is no defense unless the war was necessary. A nation, or rather
the commander-in-chief of the forces of a nation, has no
more right to kill a thousand or ten thousand men in an unnecessary war than an individual has to kill another individual without sufficient cause. Nations are but collections
of individuals. They pursue the same objects, are governed
by the same motives, and are amenable to the same moral
laws; and the moral guilt of murder attaches to every na



The Great Trial of the


tion, or to the executive of any nation, for the death of
every man who is deliberately killed, on either side, in any
war which that nation or its executive has unjustly made.
"War is one of those dreadful scourges that so shakes
the foundations of society, overturns or changes the character of governments, interrupts or destroys the pursuits of
private happiness-in short, brings misery and wretchedness
in so many forms, and at last, in its issue, is so doubtful and
hazardous that nothing but dire necessity can justify an appeal to arms.
"War is the voluntary work of our own hands, and
whatever reproaches it may deserve, should be directed to
ourselves. When it breaks out, its duration is indefinite and
unknown, its vicissitudes are hidden from our view. In the
sacrifice of human life and in the waste of human treasure,
in its losses and its burdens it affects both belligerent nations; and its sad effects of mangled bodies, of death and
desolation, endure long after its thunders are hushed in
peace.
"War unhinges society, disturbs its peaceful and regular industry, and scatters poisonous seeds of disease and
immorality which continue to germinate and diffiuse their
baleful influences long after it has ceased. Dazzling by its
glitter, pomp, and pageantry, it begets a spirit of wild
adventure and romantic enterprise, and often disqualifies
those who embark in it-after their return from the bloody
fields of battle-from engaging in the peaceful vocations
of life. Upon the nation itself wars waged for the purpose
of conquest, to add to its territory, trade, and wealth,




Nineteenth Century.


27


are always, sooner or later, destructive of its prosperity
and happiness.
"Of all the dangers and misfortunes which could befall
this nation, I should regard that of its becoming a warlike
and conquering power the most direful and fatal. History
tells the mournful tale of conquering nations and conquerors. Assyria, Babylonia, Chaldea, Media, and Persia were
all warlike and conquering nations, and all perished by the
sword. Greece and Macedon took the sword to conquer Persia, and their great leader, Alexander, founded a more
mighty empire upon the ruins of the kingdom of Cyrus; but
he died an early and miserable death, which originated in
his own great successes and the consequent prostitution
of his great powers to ignoble ends; and his empire passed
away like the baseless fabric of a vision.
"Rome was the great conquering nation of antiquity.
But the fruit of her conquests, the spoil of the nations,
enriched, corrupted, enervated, and debased her; and the
northern barbarians put her to a long, lingering, and ignominious death of more than three hundred years' duration.
"France, under her great captain, Napoleon, was the supreme conquering power of modern times, but her very success ruined her. 'The demon of conquest allured her too far.'
She became a suppliant at the feet of assembled Europe for
her own existence, and has sunk to be a second-rate power
among the nations.
"The Anglo-Saxons waged a war of extermination
against the Britons for one hundred and fifty years, with
some intervals, and conquered them; but three hundred and
eighty years after, the Norman punished the Saxon with




The Great Trial of the


terrible severity for his cruelty to the Briton, and ruled him
with a rod of iron. Centuries passed away and the Saxons,
the Danes, and the Normans became blended into one homogeneous people; but still retaining the Saxon characteristic
propensity for piracy and waging war throughout the world
upon any weak people from whom they desired to obtain
territory, trade, or tribute.
"Hitherto their insular position has saved them from being overrun by any of the great nations of Europe; but the
time, foretold by Macaulay, when 'some traveler from New
Zealand, in the midst of a vast solitude, will sketch from a
broken arch of London Bridge the ruin of St. Paul's,' will
surely come and may come soon.
"Spain, in the time of Charles Fifth, was the dominant
power of Europe-a great, wealthy, conquering, cruel power
-but for many years she has been on the decline, and to-day
she is almost contemptible. As a prominent power in the
world she has perished from her own conquests, avarice,
corruption, and cruelty.
"It is the law of this world-proved by the experience
of three thousand years-that any nation which makes
an unnecessary and destructive war upon another shall
herself, sooner or later, be punished for her wickedness.
Generally the punishment grows out of the original wrong,
and often it is inflicted in the same form as the original
wrong.
"Our war with Mexico was unjust and unconstitutional,
made by the President of the United States to acquire territory for an unrighteous purpose. In that war we murdered
thousands of Mexicans and at its close took one third of her




Nineteenth Century.


29


territory for one-tenth of its value-a mere nominal sumin a vain attempt to cover up the real robbery. Seventeen years afterwards we were punished for that outrage by
being plunged into a terrible civil war, which grew directly
out of the question of slavery in the territory acquired from
Mexico. It is only necessary to allude to the horrors of that
war. It cost the loss of a million lives, the waste of thousands of millions of money, and the destruction of thousands
of millions of property, and filled this land with sorrow and
mourning.
"The war against the Filipinos was also commenced
by the President in the same way as the Mexican War, unjustly and unconstitutionally, and in order to deprive those
people of their liberty and property, and to force upon them
a foreign government, to which they did not consent, and to
which they rightfully refused to submit. None of the pretenses upon which the President made and is carrying on
this war will bear examination, and some of them are hardly
worth notice. There is no possible way in which we can acquire sovereignty over them except by their own consent,
which they have utterly refused to give from the beginning.
'They are a part of the human race, as capable as we are
of pleasure and pain, and invested with as indisputable a right as we have to judge of and pursue their own
happiness.'
"In fighting them we are warring against the Constitution of the United States, the Declaration of Independence,
the fundamental principles of our own government, and are
laboring to bring down upon our country the terrible punishment which always follows such great national sins.




The Great Trial of the


"It is possible that if Congress repudiates the war of the
President, the country may escape its impending doom. But
if Congress approves it and changes the war from an executive and personal one to a national one, our fate is sealed.
How soon our punishment will come is known only to
Omniscience.
"That Mighty Hand which formed and regulates the machinery of the moral world seems at times to increase its
speed and at times to retard it; sometimes to hasten the
punishment of great national crimes and at others to postpone it. England has not yet been punished for some of her
outrages upon the nations; but the United States was punished within a few years after its commission for the spoliation of Mexico. All the signs of the times indicate that our
next chastisement may come soon. It is possible that it
may be postponed to after-times.
"It was argued in this case that 'honor and patriotism
required the President to make and continue this war to the
extermination of the Filipinos if that were necessary to
subdue them.' Few words in our language are more abused
than the words 'honor' and 'patriotism.' False notions of
honor have led to the murder of thousands of men in duels
-many of them great and useful men like Hamilton and
Decatur-false notions of honor have led to the slaughter of
millions of men in war.
"A great writer defines honor as: 'The finest sense of
justice the human mind can frame.' Nothing is honorable
that is not just, and everything is dishonorable that is unjust. By this standard the acts of nations as well as of individuals must be measured, and their record must be made.




Nineteenth Century.


31


If it is a record of blood shed in an unjust (or an unnecessary war, which is substantially perhaps the same), all the
waters of the ocean cannot wash it out, and it will be a rec
ord of dishonor to the end of time.
"Nor has the word 'patriotism' any proper application
as here intended. Patriotism in war requires us to fight for
our own country in a just war. It does not require us to
fight against any country in an unjust war, for unjust wars
ruin the country that makes them.
"One of the ablest writers living has said: 'The
greater part of the bloody deeds which disgrace history and
make of it such immoral reading were committed in the
name of patriotism.'
"Many of the greatest tyrants, traitors, and hypocrites
who ever lived had a great deal to say about patriotism.
They chose the livery of heaven to serve the devil in;
for true patriotism is a heaven-born virtue. It is founded
in justice and truth; it draws its inspiration from the God
of truth and justice, and is ever faithful to the source from
which it sprung. True patriotism has been called the noblest of human virtues; but there is no nobility in fighting for injustice and falsehood or robbery or murder. The
true patriot labors in war and in peace for those things,
and those things only, which will redound to the real and
lasting good of his country. He rejoices in her success in
every just and useful enterprise; weeps over her errors and
misfortunes; burns to avenge her injuries; labors for her
universal prosperity; and dies, if necessary, for her preservation. It is to such a patriotism in the hearts of our
fathers, animating them alike in the council and on the bat-8 -



32


The Great Trial of the


tie-field, that we are indebted for these inestimable institutions; and if posterity ever enjoys them, it will be indebted
to the same spirit so animating and so directing this
generation.
"But the words 'patriotism,' 'honor,' and 'glory,' as applied to this most lamentable war against the Filipinos,
are entirely out of place. As so used, they are merely what
Shakespeare calls 'springes to catch woodcocks.'
"It was said in the argument that 'the Filipinos are
barbarians, and that the President's war against them is a
war for civilization, and, as such, should be sustained
by Congress and the people.' Exactly the contrary is the
fact. Wars of conquest, such as this, are the very highest
expressions of barbarism. The object of the party that carries on the war to subdue the other and make it submit to
its authority, is to conquer it by inflicting upon it an
intolerable amount of wounds, disease, starvation, misery, and death. Such a war means murder, robbery, arson,
drunkenness, gambling, and crimes that strike the soul with
horror but to name them. General Sheridan said, 'War is
hell.' Such a war as this is the very pit of that deplorable
region.
"To say that civilization can be spread by the barbarism of such a war is like saying that truth can be spread by
falsehood, knowledge by ignorance, or light by darkness.
In such a war the aggressor is the greater barbarian of the
two, no matter what his superiority may be in other respects, nor what his professions and pretenses may be.
"But it is said by the defense that 'no matter what the
merits of the contest may have been originally, neither the




Nineteenth Century.


33


President nor Congress can stop it now. It must go on till
the Filipinos are subdued. That any other course would
be a lasting injury to our country and make us the laughingstock of the world.'
The answer to this is, that some of the greatest nations
and wisest statesmen and most 'successful warriors have,
when the occasion demanded it, done this very thing, and
always with good results. Alexander the Great commenced the conquest of India and was loth to give it up;
but his soldiers convinced him that it would be a foolish thing to persevere in such an undertaking, and he
reluctantly led them back to Babylon, the capital of his empire, and was stronger and more popular for it.
Augustus Csesar fixed the boundaries of the Roman
Empire at the Danube on the north and the Euphrates on
the east. One of his successors, the Emperor Julian, undertook to spread Roman civilization beyond these rivers by
war and to enlarge the boundaries of the empire. In this
attempt he lost a large part of his army and his own life.
His successor, Hadrian, restored the boundaries of Augustus and settled all questions with the nations concerned
peacefully and to the benefit of his country and to his own
honor.
"William the Conqueror, in the zenith of his power,
undertook the conquest of Brittany, a province in France,
and made some advances in that direction. But he found it
a very difficult and doubtful job; and, notwithstanding his
characteristic determination and stubbornness, he had the
good sense to give it up and retire to his own country.
"Edward the Third and Henry the Fifth and his suc



34


The Great Trial of the


cessors attempted to reduce France to a state of vassalage
to England, and did conquer a large part of it and gain
some great victories. But the labors of a century were vain.
A patriotic and enthusiastic girl broke the power of England,
and the invader was compelled to abandon every foot of land
acquired in France after a hundred-years war. The English
historians inform us that this result was a great benefit
to their country and laid the foundations of her future
greatness.
"Great Britain tried, wickedly, to reduce her North
American colonies to subjection; failed, after a seven-years
war, and acknowledged their independence. Macaulay informs us that 'his country was more powerful after she lost
those colonies than before.'
"These and other instances which might be adduced
show that it is mental weakness, not strength, which causes
rulers to persevere in a wicked or foolish war for fear of
ridicule.
"It is too late for Mr. McKinley and his supporters in
the Philippine business to try to avoid ridicule. They have
run the whole gamut of absurdity from 'criminal aggression' to 'benevolent assimilation.' They have attempted to
prove that barbarism is civilization, that slavery is freedom,
that wrong is right, and that black is white. In the meantime they have murdered many thousand men and are vigorously preparing to do much greater slaughtering in the
same line.
"These things have made the President and his supporters not only ridiculous, but odious, and it is a ridicule and
odium whinh will last.




Nineteenth Century.


35


"'Derision shall strike them forlorn,
A mockery that never shall die.'
"It was said in the argument, that 'the time had come
for the United States to be a world power, and to that end
this nation should imitate the example of the other great
Anglo-Saxon nation, and adopt the colonial system, and extend her territories and dominion around the globe.'
"The answer to this is, that the example of England is
a bad one. She has been the great robber nation of the
world for 1450 years. The Anglo-Saxons landed on the
coast of Kent in 449 A. D., and according to the English historians they were pirates then; and, in dealing with weaker
people, whose territory or trade they coveted, they have
been pirates and robbers and murderers ever since. They
started in England as the allies of the Britons, but in a
short time they demanded the country of its possessors and
owners; and, because the Britons denied their demand, they
waged a war of extermination against them, with short intervals, for one hundred and fifty years, and finally conquered them.
"Then they turned their weapons against one another
and, off and on, were engaged in civil wars of great atrocity for nearly two hundred years, until the advent of the
Danes compelled them to attend to these new robbers, who
pillaged the country from time to time for about two hundred years more, till William the Conqueror crushed them
altogether.
"The English robbed and murdered the Irish for centuries. An English historian says: 'They made Ireland the
abode of wretchedness for five hundred years.' The Irish




The Great Trial of the


patriot Emmet told the judge who condemned him to an
infamous death for seeking the freedom of his country, that
'if all the blood he had unrighteously shed was collected in
one vast reservoir, his Lordship could swim in it.' The Irish
soil has been enriched by the blood of thousands, shed by
the remorseless Englishman.
"The principality of Wales was harried for centuries
by the English pirates; and their so-called 'greatest king,'
Edward the First, put the Welsh prince David to an ignominious death, and had him drawn and quartered for his devotion to the liberties of his country.
"The Scottish patriot Wallace suffered the same fate
at the hands of this king. Scotland was for ages the scene
of British oppression and cruelty, and even William the
Third caused one of the Scottish clans to be massacred at
Glencoe, with such circumstances of treachery, perfidy, and
cruelty as caused the ear of humanity to tingle and left an
indelible stain on the escutcheon of the English king.
"England tried for more than one hundred years to conquer France. The bones of myriads of Frenchmen slaughtered to gratify the ambition of English kings and of the
English people are mingled with the dust throughout half
the provinces of the country of Lafayette.
"India is a fair specimen of the English colonial system. The country has been bled for ages to satisfy the insatiate greed of the Anglo-Saxon for territory, trade and
tribute, and it takes an army of 75,000 soldiers to keep the
natives of that country from rising against their oppressors
and in vengeance driving them into the Indian Ocean. Burke
described the men who managed the affairs of the East In



Nineteenth Century.


dia Company as 'men whom no treaty would bind and
against whom the laws that held the world together were
no protection.'
"In 1840 the Chinese authorities determined to stop the
English traders from selling opium to their people, and, by
agreement with the English envoy residing in that country,
twenty thousand casks of opium were destroyed. For this
England made war upon China, took several of her cities,
and compelled her to pay an indemnity of about $20,000,000.
This was done by a Christian nation to a pagan nation, because the pagans wished to stop the Christians from demoralizing their people by an accursed drug.
"For years past England has been waiting for a favorable opportunity to dismember China and appropriate all
she can get of her territory. She is encouraging our war
against the Filipinos because it gives countenance and
support to her Asiatic and African colonial policy of conquest, territorial subjugation, expansion, and tribute; and at
present she is endeavoring to blot out the South African
republics and put their territory into her capacious maw.
"The history of England for a thousand years is largely
a history of robbery and murder. Considering the great advantages she has possessed during the greater part of that
time, it is a most sickening portion of the history of the
human race. It is in a great measure the history of an intelligent and progressive barbarism.
"To the United States, Great Britain has been an unnatural step-mother. She tried to reduce us to slavery in
the Revolution. She employed the Hessians and the Indians
against her own children. She was against us in our late




The Great Trial of the


fearful struggle for national existence, and secretly favored
and assisted the Southern Confederacy. She encourages
us in our present unhallowed war for selfish purposes, and
will turn against us whenever her interest demands it.
"There have been many great and good men in England
and the world is indebted to them in every department of
science, literature, and art. Pitt, Burke, and other great orators and statesmen opposed the government of their country
in its oppression of our fathers before the Revolution and in
the war it made to subdue them, and their names should be
honored and revered forever. England has produced many
philanthropists who have been benefactors of mankind.
"But the greatness of England in dealing with other
nations, and especially. with weaker ones than herself,
has been an intellectual and not a moral greatness. In this
respect she has ever been an oppressor and will be so held
till her foreign policy is changed. Distant, far distant be
the day when this country shall be misled by the baleful
light of her example; but that example, and the new and
strange doctrines by which it was attempted to defend this
Philippine War, must be repudiated by the American people.
The war upon the Declaration of Independence, the attempt
to overthrow or undermine it, must cease. The effort to suppress the freedom of speech and establish a military despotism in the name of patriotism must be put down. The
government of this country must return to the principles and practice of the men who founded it. It must stop
its mad career of war and conquest. While claiming, defending, and preserving the right of the people of the United States to liberty, independence, and self-government, it




Nineteenth Century.


39


must concede the same rights to all other nations and peoples. Thus only can it secure the confidence of the people,
the respect of mankind, and the favor of that Almighty
Power who holds the destinies of men and nations in the
hollow of His hands.
"It will be a glorious day for our country when it can be
said with sincerity and truth that all its rulers and all its
people are in favor of liberty for all nations, and opposed to
forcing any form of government upon any people. May God
speed the coming of that day."
SPEECH OF GENERAL GRANT.
General Grant's speech was a surprise to me. I knew
the General personally and considered him the most quiet,
reticent public man I had ever known. Great interest was
felt in what he would say, but it was not expected that he
would say much. On the contrary, he made what, for him,
was a long speech. This may have been caused by the
speech of Mr. Clay, who preceded him, and to whom he referred. It is highly probable that he was led to speak so
freely of the Mexican War by what Mr. Clay said on that
subject. He says, in his "Memoirs," that he "was a great admirer of Mr. Clay."
He begun by stating that although he had served in two
wars, the Mexican War and the war to put down the Rebellion, the military profession was not his choice. When he
was a student at West Point his highest ambition was to be
a professor in some college or university. A military life




40


The Great Trial of the


had no charms for him, and he had not the faintest idea of
staying in the Army, even if he should be graduated, which
he did not expect. His going to West Point was his father's
arrangement, not his. The first year he was there a bill was
introduced into Congress to abolish the Military Academy,
and he was in hopes it would pass, as he saw in this an honorable way to obtain a discharge. But the bill failed, and he
remained a cadet at that institution.
It was in this way that he became a soldier in the Mexican War. He had always considered that this was a political and an unholy war. He was bitterly opposed to the annexation of Texas, and to this day he regarded the war
which resulted as one of the most unjust wars ever waged
by a stronger against a weaker nation. It was an instance
of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire to acquire
additional territory.
Even if the annexation itself could be justified, the manner in which the subsequent war was forced upon Mexico
cannot. The fact is, annexationists wanted more territory
than they could possibly lay any claim to as part of the new
acquisition.
In taking military possession of Texas after annexation,
the army of occupation, under General Taylor, was directed
to occupy the disputed territory. The army did not stop at
the Nueces, and offer to negotiate for a settlement of the
boundary question, but went beyond, apparently in order
to force Mexico to initiate war. He was satisfied that General Taylor looked upon the Mexicans as the aggrieved party,
but he was obliged to obey his instructions. This is one of




Nineteenth Century.


41


the greatest objections to the military profession-that the
soldier is obliged to obey his orders, no matter how unjust
they may be. Practically, the soldier is a machine, having
no use for either conscience or principle, as against his
orders, and must run as the machine master directs, even if
he runs himself and his country to perdition.
The presence of United States troops on the edge of the
disputed territory furthest from the Mexican settlements
was not sufficient to provoke hotilities. We were sent to
provoke a fight, but it was essential that Mexico should
commence it. It was very doubtful whether Congress
would declare war; but if Mexico should attack our troops,
the Executive could announce, "Whereas, war exists by the
act of Mexico," etc., and prosecute the contest with vigor.
Once initiated, there were but few public men who would
have the courage to oppose it. As a rule, American soldiers
are brave; but American politicians are not. And it often
happens that a brave soldier, when he is turned into a politician, is, by that very act, turned into a coward. The history of our country has furnished some striking examples of
this truth. As to politicians, he had heard of very prominent ones who were strongly opposed to the Philippine War
(while the Administration was in suspense whether to make
it or not), as unjust to the Filipinos and ruinous to our
own country; but who, after it was brought on by our management, denounced as traitors those who continued true to
their convictions, and still held and expressed their original
and honest sentiments. Such men sacrifice their country to
their party, and are unsafe counsellors for a free people.
This war is a good illustration of the trite saying that




The Great Trial of the


"history repeats itself." We were exploited into a war with
the Filipinos in the same way, substantially, as the Mexican War was brought about. The management was about
the same in each case. And the object of the war in each
case was the same. Primarily, it was in one case to extend
slavery, and in the other to establish serfdom. But the ultimate object in each case was to make money out of the labor of other men; and, to that end, to govern them and their
country as we pleased.
He said that he had given his views of slavery and war
briefly, in another place, but he would avail himself of this
occasion to give them more fully, for the times, he thought,
demanded it.
He concurred entirely with Mr. Clay in the opinion that
nothing but "dire necessity" would justify a nation in making war. It might seem strange to some that, as he had
served in two wars, he should be so much opposed to what
seemed to be his own profession; and he thought, perhaps,
that the present occasion would justify him in giving some
of the reasons for his opposition.
His natural dislike to war was very much developed
and strengthened by a sermon upon that subject which he
heard when he was a young man. It was very much
increased by reading history; and his own experience had
made it so odious to him that he would do anything that was
right to avoid it.
The sermon referred to was a remarkable effort, and
made such an impression upon him that he still remembered
a considerable part of it. The text was a verse in Isaiah,
which he had often heard quoted, and which he had sometimes read:




Nineteenth Century.


43


"4. And He shall judge among the nations, and shall
rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into
plowshares and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation
shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall
they learn war any more."
In explaining this text the preacher first described war,
and illustrated it by word-pictures drawn from the siege of
Jerusalem by Titus, from the retreat of Napoleon from Moscow, and from the horrible cruelties practiced by the successful party during the civil wars in England.
"I have never," the General said, "heard anything equal
to the description this preacher gave of the siege and
destruction of Jerusalem. Titus was naturally cruel, though
he afterwards became apparently humane, from policy. The
history of that siege, as some historian has truly said, is a
story of 'incredible horrors.' It is too dreadful to be more
than alluded to here: famine, fire, pestilence, murder, unnatural and vile brutality before the city was taken, and the
giving of it up to slaughter and destruction by an inhuman
soldiery afterwards.
"As this man drew this picture with a master hand, I
could almost see the wretched victims of Roman ferocity,
and of their own folly, dying of disease and starvation; I
could almost hear the cries and groans of helpless mothers
and their starving children, making the city of David and
Solomon a sardonic mockery of its former pride and glory.
"With the same powerful memory and imagination,
this man described the retreat of the great army of Napoleon from Moscow. He painted, almost to the very life,
the destruction of hundreds of thousands of men on that fa



44


The Great Trial of the


tal retreat. All of them, he said, had a right to life and to
the blessings of life; they all perished the miserable victims
of the towering ambition of a man of transcendent genius,
but whose heart was as hard as the nether millstone.
"In like manner he depicted the cruelties inflicted by
the successful party in the many civil wars of England, occurring from time to time during the long period of nearly
a thousand years. He said and proved, from English histories, that for hundreds of years the tender mercies of our
English ancestors to their enemies of their own race
and country was cruelty. As he described these enormities
I seemed to "hear the cries of vengence and the shrieks of
torture." And I wondered then, and wonder now, how
such things could be done, so continuously, in a professedly
civilized and Christian nation. To me it is incomprehensible.
"Before closing his sermon, the preacher stated that
there were two forces in our country which, properly directed and exercised, could, in a few years, render an unjust or unnecessary war on the part of the United States impossible. Those forces were the influence of women and the
influence of the clergy. And it was peculiarly their province
and duty and interest to use every effort to put an end to this
greatest scourge of mankind.
"Throughout the entire history of our race women had
been subject to outrage from the demon of war. They had
been, and still are, liable to lose their husbands, fathers,
brothers, sons, and near and dear friends, killed in battle or
by disease; to have their homes ruined, their property destroyed; to be reduced to poverty, want, and misery. It is
their duty to teach their children the true nature and char



Nineteenth Century.


45


acter of war, and never to have anything to do with it unless
forced by stern necessity. It is their duty to use all their
influence, everywhere, against it, and to teach that military
glory is a delusion and a snare.
"As to the clergy, there is nothing in which they are so
derelict as in this. It is as much their duty to preach
against war as against robbery and murder, for war is robbery and murder combined.
"There is no necessity for the United States having any
more wars. It can get all that it is entitled to without. We
had a war with Mexico lately, not because it was necessary,
but because we wanted and sought war and did not want
and seek peace. It is a very unfortunate thing to be
obliged to take the life of a man in a just cause; but to shed
the blood of thousands in an unjust war is a fearful crime.
And yet, a majority of the preachers of this country, either
tacitly or openly, encourage such crimes.  Some do their
duty and preach openly and boldly against it, but their
name is not legion.
"The preacher said, in conclusion, that he did not see
how any rational being could be a true Christian and believe
in war. To say that such a thing is possible seemed to him
like saying that the same body could fill two entirely different spaces at the same time.
"We hear and read of the way of life and the way of
death, and the road to ruin and the road to Heaven. The
broadest and most comprehensive road to ruin, individual
and national, is war. There ought to be hung on high an
enormous guide-board, with the inscription in characters of




The Great Trial of the


living light: 'War-this is the way to Hell, going down to
the chambers of Death.'
"Running in the opposite direction is the road to
Heaven. It is not so broad, but it is lighted by the presence
of the Prince of Peace and cheered by the voice of the God of
love; a voice sweeter to the ear than all the songs of the
sirens of war.
" 'It speaks of peace, it speaks of love,
It speaks as angels speak above;
For, oh, it is a father's voice,
That bids a trembling world rejoice.'"
Continuing, General Grant said that he had endeavored to reproduce, from memory and notes taken at the time,
some points of the discourse which had contributed so much
to the formation of his opinion of the folly and wickedness
of war; but the discourse was a lengthy one, and he must
omit the greater part of it.  His subsequent study of history and his experience in two wars confirmed the opinions
then formed.
He was not much of a theologian himself, but if, as the
preacher had quoted, all the nations that forget God are to
be cast into hell, the nation that makes unrighteous wars
will surely not escape. In the light of history as well as of
revelation, such wars put the guilty nation that makes them
on the direct road to moral, financial, and political destruction. On the other hand, "the way of peace" is the true
road to the heaven of nations.
The preacher was right in his estimation of the enormous responsibility of the clergy and the women of our
country in this matter of war. If they had done their duty




Nineteenth Century.


47


since the Rebellion, there would have been no Philippine
War. If they will do it in the future, we will have no more
such wars to offend the Deity and to disgrace our country.
In closing his speech, the General said that he went into the War of the Rebellion voluntarily, but that was a necessary war for the salvation of our country. But it was a
fearful lesson, and should teach us the necessity of avoiding
wars in the future. It grew out of the Mexican War and
was the penalty we paid for the wrongs which preceded,
accompanied, and followed that war. The Philippine War,
though worse than the Mexican, had, as already stated, a
similar origin. If it is continued to the end and the objects
of its authors are attained, we cannot hope to escape a similar punishment.
Since the sermon which he had cited was preached, our
country, in conquering the Rebellion, has exhibited to all
the nations such vast resources and such overwhelming
power that none of them, unless governed by madmen, will
ever give us just cause for war. If without such cause we
make war against any of them, as in the present case, it is
murder, and the blood we shed, like the blood of Abel, will
cry to heaven against us.
SPEECH OF MR. JEFFERSON.
"I have never been in the habit of public speaking," said Mr. Jefferson, "and only arise now to correct two
mistakes into which some of the advocates of the President
have fallen.
4




48


The Great Trial of the


"They have represented that the Declaration of Independence was made only for a special occasion; that it had
no general application; was obsolete, and could not properly be quoted against the war the President had made, and
was carrying on, to force the Filipinos to submit to the
military power of the United States. This was a mistake.
That Declaration, it is true, had its origin in the contest between Great Britain and her thirteen North American colonies in 1776; but it was intended to declare, and did declare,
the right of all mankind, of every age and of every nation
and of every color, to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that the object of governments was to secure
these rights, and that the 'consent of the governed' was
a condition precedent to the rightful authority of any
government.
"According to the Declaration, as it was intended and
always understood by the men who made it and by the people for whom it was made, the humblest, poorest, and most
obscure man in any nation is as much entitled to the rights
enumerated in it as any king, emperor, or president. These
rights can only be forfeited by crime. There is not, as has
been contended, any 'principle of international law' under
which the Filipinos can be deprived of their rights. The
teachings of that law and of the Declaration are substantially the same upon the rights of 'all men.' Both require
'the consent of the governed' to the 'just powers' of governments. And if they did not, the Declaration would still be
the supreme law to the government and people of the United States, and binding upon them in their dealings with
other governments and peoples.




Nineteenth Century.


49


"The other mistake I wish to notice is, that 'the example of the Louisiana purchase is a justification of the purchase of the Filipinos and their subsequent treatment by
the President and Congress.' There is no analogy between
the cases. If the Louisiana Territory at the time of its purchase had contained eight or ten million inhabitants; if they
had been fighting many years for freedom, independence,
and self-government, and part of that time as allies of the
United States; if, at the time of the purchase, they had
nearly achieved their independence; if they never consented
to the purchase, refused to acquiesce in it, and declared
their determination to be free and independent and to gov
ern themselves, there would be considerable similarity between the cases. But none of these conditions were present in that case, and it fails entirely as a precedent for the
other. It is a clear case of abandonment, in the face of the
nations of the world, of the principles upon which our government was founded, and of an unrighteous claim supported by a murderous war.
"Not a man who signed the Declaration or the Constitution would have tolerated such a claim as that. The government and the people would have scouted it as a disgrace
and shame. I tremble for my country when I remember that God is just and that my countrymen are struggling
to take by a bloody war from millions of people those
inalienable rights with which He has endowed all His
children.
"Congress should promptly concede the independence of the Filipinos, and the longer that act of justice is
delayed the worse it will be for our country. In a paroxysm




The Great Trial of the


of rapacity worthy of the Anglo-Saxon, we have done a
great wrong, been guilty of great oppression, and forfeited
the confidence of mankind. We can only regain that confidence by a return to the paths of justice and freedom.
"Our army should be recalled and at least three-fourths
of it disbanded. We need no large standing armies for any
purpose. Such armies eat out the substance of the people,
and are often used to enslave them.
"As to the trial which has led to this meeting and
caused this discussion, I wish to say that, in common with
all the members of the jury, I very much regretted to be
obliged to find a verdict of guilty, but that, under the evidence and the instructions of the Court, no other verdict was possible."
ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S SPEECH.
Mr. Lincoln said: "Although nearly every allegation
of fact in this case has been contested, there are some
things about which there is no dispute, and those are,
that twenty thousand Filipinos and two thousand Americans came to their deaths in the Philippine Islands since
the close of the war with Spain, and that the war against
them was begun and is being carried on by the defendant
as Commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy of the United States. Nor has there been, nor can there be, much contest over the proposition that, if the war so inaugurated and
waged by the President was and is unjust, he is guilty
as charged in the indictment.




Nineteenth Century.


51


"The great contention and principal defense has been,
and still is, that the war is just and that it was the right and
duty of the President to wage it till those people submitted
to the authority of the United States and accepted whatever government the President set up over them temporarily, and afterwards the permanent government established by Congress. That by the treaty of peace with
Spain, the United States acquired the sovereignty of the entire Philippine Archipelago, and that it was the duty of all
the inhabitants of those islands to submit to its authority;
that, on the contrary, they resisted it, claimed that they
were, and of right ought to be, free and independent, and
that they became rebels whom it was necessary to subdue,
and that the deaths that followed were justifiable and right.
"This contention by implication denies the self-evident
truths of the Declaration of Independence, 'that all men are
created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights
governments are instituted among men, deriving their just
powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these
ends it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and to
institute a new government, laying its foundation on such
principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them
shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness;
that when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing
invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them
under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to




The Great Trial of the


throw off such government and to provide new guards for
their future security.'
"Spain, by a long train of abuses, had forfeited any
right she may have had to hold, possess, and govern the
Philippine Islands, or any part of them, and those people had rightfully thrown off her government and set up one
of their own before the ratification of her treaty with
the United States. According to the Declaration, this
ended all the rights Spain ever had in the Philippine Archipelago, and in that respect she conveyed nothing and
the United States acquired nothing by the treaty. So far
as the Filipinos were concerned, it was absolutely null
and void.
"I think that this is the natural and inevitable conclusion which follows the admission of the truths of the
Declaration.
"The real question in this case is whether we shall sustain the Declaration or trample it under foot. In my opinion, the salvation of the country depends upon sustaining it.
To abandon it is to abandon the only hope for the preservation of our free institutions. Whenever we deny the right
of any people to freedom and independence and self-government, and force upon them a government against their consent, we forfeit the right to those blessings ourselves.
Sooner or later that forfeiture will be enforced against us,
as sure as there is a just God who rules in the armies
of Heaven and among the habitations of men.
"Our fathers labored and fought and suffered through
a seven-years war to make good that Declaration. They
endured hunger, cold, sickness, wounds, and death; they




Nineteenth Century.


S3


marched in the winter over the frozen ground to find
the enemy, and their bloody foot-prints upon the snow told
of their naked feet. That Declaration was baptised in the
blood of the Revolution and dedicated forever to the freedom, not of any one people, but of the human race. Its
authors meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be familiar to all and revered by all, constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and, even though
never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and
thereby constantly spreading and diffusing its influence,
and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere.
"The assertion that 'all men are created equal' was of
no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain, and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but
for future use. Its authors meant it to be as, thank God! it
is now proving itself, a stumbling-block to all those who, in
after-times, might seek to turn a free people back into the
hateful paths of despotism.  They knew the proneness of
prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant that when such
should reappear in this fair land and commence their vocation they should find left for them at least one hard nut to
crack.
"It has been said in the argument of this case that by
the war to put down the Rebellion we forced upon the
Southern States a government to which they did not consent. To this I answer that they had consented to it long
before, had lived under it many years, had participated in
it, had enjoyed its protection and benefits, and had furnished many of its presidents.




The Great Trial of the


"Several of those assisted in making the Declaration of
Independence, in forming the Constitution, and in setting
the government in motion. Jefferson was the author of the
Declaration and Madison has been called the 'father of the
Constitution.'
"Many of the rebellious States had been consenting to
and participating in the government of the United States for
nearly half a century. They seceded because they wished
to repudiate their own work and to found a new empire whose chief corner-stone should be slavery-exactly the
opposite principle to that of the Declaration.
"No analogy can be found between this case and that of
the Filipinos. It is not easy to understand how reasonable men can seriously attempt such an argument as that.
With all the facts against them, their logic seems to indicate some kind of hallucination by which things seem exactly the opposite of what they really are. Such reasoners
seem to me to be turned upside down, and to be standing on
their heads with their heels dangling in the air.
"But it is attempted to plow round the Declaration of Independence by saying that the very object of conquering the
Filipinos is to give them the blessings of free government.
It is astonishing that men should deceive themselves or undertake to deceive others by such a fallacy as that. Freedom and force are opposites. The very fact that any government is forced upon a people makes it, as to them, a despotism. In the very nature of things, no government can
be free to which the people to be governed do not freely and
voluntarily consent. This attempt to get rid of the Declara



Nineteenth Century.


55


tion is absurd on its face, and the defense that the 'killing
was done in a state of war' is no defense at all.
"This Philippine War is in some respects like the Mexican War. Both were unjustly and unconstitutionally made
by the President, and both, at first, seemed to be popular. In the Mexican War the attempt was made to render
those who were opposed to the action of the President unpopular and odious by ridicule and denunciation, and
by calling them traitors, etc., etc.
"The bitterness of the advocates of that war was extreme. Governor Reynolds, who was a member of the Illinois Legislature during the war, said in the House of Representatives that he 'almost had the hydrophobia upon that
subject,' and there were many other members nearly as
rabid as he. They were, like Saul with the Christians, 'exceedingly mad' against the opponents of the war, and they
did not confine their abuse to politicians. The Rev. Albert
Hale, pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church of Springfield, Illinois, as chaplain of the House of Representatives,
appealed to the Almighty against the war and in favor of
peace. For this he was severely criticised by some of the
fire-eating members; but Judge Stephen T. Logan, who at
that time stood at the head of the bar of that State, defended Mr. Hale and held that it was not only the right, but the
duty of the chaplain, as a professed follower of the Prince of
Peace, to use the influence of his profession and position in
favor of peace. The rabid war-hounds were not satisfied by
his argument, but they were kept at bay and Mr. Hale was
sustained.
"But the pulpit of the United States was far more out



The Great Trial of the


spoken against war at that time than at present. This is the
worst sign of the times. The influence of Christianity seems
to be on the wane. Originally one of its principal objects
was to put an end to war, but now a very large proportion
of its professors and preachers are in favor of war, and, for
reasons, directly opposed to the teachings of Christ.
"As a member of Congress from the Springfield district
in Illinois, I felt it my duty to make a speech against
the actions of President Polk in bringing on that war. For
this I was denounced and ridiculed and made so unpopular-while the glamour of our victories over the Mexicans blinded the people-that my own county of Sangamon
was opposed to my renomination. There were but two delegates in the congressional convention-Briggs of Tazewell,
and Parks of Logan-who were in my favor. All the delegates from Sangamon (including my law partner, Billy
Herndon) were against me, and my name was not brought
before the convention.
"Mr. Clay also, for the great speech he made against the
war at Lexington in 1847, was at first abused and denounced. It was not long, however, till the sky cleared so
that the people could see and understand his arguments and
appreciate his patriotism, and the next year he was elected
United States senator by an almost unanimous vote of the
Legislature of Kentucky. It is hardly necessary for me to
refer to my own history after the false, glaring light of the
Mexican War had passed away. I will only say that few
men have been more bitterly denounced, and perhaps no
man was ever more triumphantly vindicated.
"The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous alto



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gether. Our country was terribly punished by the Civil War,
not only for sustaining slavery so long, but also for the
Mexican War, which was made and waged principally for
the purpose of extending and perpetuating it. There is
reason to fear a still greater punishment if we continue this
Philippine War till we conquer and enslave that unhappy
people.
"But it is said that to abandon the attempt to conquer
them now would make our country ridiculous. This reminds
me of a story I once heard or read. In the time of that great
Anglo-Norman king, Henry the Second, it was the fashion
in London for the sons of considerable citizens to form themselves into bands and to break into rich houses and plunder
them and rob and murder the inmates. A band of these
worthies once broke into a rich house which they expected
to make an easy prey. On the contrary, they met with such
fierce resistance that they stopped to consult whether to advance or recede. The captain took the ground that if they
retired, all London would laugh at them. So they proceeded
with their raid till one-half of them were killed and the rest
driven into the street, wounded, crippled, and conquered, to
the great joy of all peaceable and law-abiding citizens.
"The moral of this story is that ridicule is a poor argument, and those who are governed by it are apt to do wicked
and foolish things.
"It has been clearly intimated by the President and
plainly said by some of his supporters that those who are opposed to his Philippine War are disloyal. Those who are in
favor of it are constantly called patriots-those who are opposed are frequently called traitors. But those words have




58


The Great Trial of the


no just and proper application as here intended. True patriotism requires a man to do all he can for his country in a
just and unnecessary war, as the American Revolution, the
War of 1812, and the war to preserve the Union in
1861-1865. But patriotism does not require a man to support such wars as the Mexican and the Philippine. Those
wars were unjust in themselves and were unconstitutionally
made by Presidents Polk andMcKinley. Those wars were
disgraceful and injurious to the country, and calculated to
bring upon the nation the punishment which, in the order
of Providence, always follows great national crimes. Patriotism requires all good citizens to oppose all wars which,
in their ultimate effects and consequences, will injure
their country. If there is any treason in the matter, it is
in those who make and encourage such wars, and thus
call down upon their country the wrath and curse of God.
"But it is said, as a reason for the conquest of the
Philippine Islands, that we need them in our business; that
they would be a benefit to our cotton-growers and various
other interests, and that their trade and wealth would furnish occupation and support to many of our speculators, traders, and people generally.
"That was the argument used by the robber to Alexander the Great. He was brought before the mighty conqueror for execution, on account of a great haul he and his
band had made from some wealthy Persians who were
traveling to Babylon. Alexander, when not drunk or in a
passion, had considerable sense of justice, and consented to
hear the man before ordering him to execution. The robber told the king that he and his band had families to sup



Nineteenth Century.


59


port and that they must live, and could make more by robbery than any other profession or pursuit. That he, Alexander, was in the same business-the only difference being
that he confined himself strictly to the retail trade, while
the king carried on the largest and most extensive system
of wholesale robbery that had ever existed. That, while it
was true that Alexander devoted much of the proceeds of
his conquests to the building of cities and other improvements, it was also true that he and his band gave all they
made, except a comfortable living, to the poor.
"This speech satisfied the king that he was in the same
business with the robber, and he ordered his attendants to
take off his chains and treat him well.
"Alexander was right. All robbers and all conquerors
who carry on war for territory or trade or tribute are morally equal. Their trade is the same their character is the
same, and their treatment, whether of reward or punishment, should be the same.
"I have been surprised to see many of those who admit
that this war was originally 'a blunder and an outrage' assume that, by the ratification of the treaty with Spain, the
Philippine Archipelago became annexed to the United
States; that we thus acquired sovereignty over them; and
that, by insisting upon their right to freedom and independence and refusing to submit to our government, the inhabitants of those islands became rebels.
"At the time the Congress of the United States declared
war against Spain it declared also that the Cubans were,
and of right ought to be, free and independent. The inhabitants of the island of Cuba and the inhabitants of the Philip



60


The Great Trial of the


pine Islands at the time this declaration was made had been
fighting Spain for years to obtain freedom and independence. The Filipinos were far more numerous than the
Cubans; had more nearly acquired their independence, and,
according to Admiral Dewey, were more 'capable of selfgovernment.' Certainly they had as good a right lo freedom and independence as the Cubans. How could a treaty
between the United States and Spain, to which they were
not parties and to which they did not consent, abrogate that
right? The declaration of Congress, the Declaration of Independence, and the law of nations are all against such an
assumption, and it seems to me downright impudence
to make it. The treaty conveyed no more title to the Philippine Islands than a worthless quit-claim deed.
"With the failure of this assumption, its corollary, that
'the war must go on till the rebellion, as it is called, is put
down,' also falls to the ground. To continue the war only
aggravates the 'blunder' and 'outrage' of beginning it. No
strength is given to the fallacy I am exposing by calling the
Filipinos rebels. People cannot rebel where they do not
owe allegiance, and by no law, human or divine, did these
people ever owe allegiance to the United States.
"But it is said as a reason for continuing this war, that
'the American flag must never be hauled down after it has
once been set up in any country.' This is mere clap-trap.
The flag should be kept wherever it properly belongs, and
nowhere else. If, by accident or mistake or wrong, it is
planted where it has no right to be, it should be removed.
The United States never having acquired any rightful
sovereignty over the Philippine Islands, its flag as an em



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61


blem of sovereignty never had any business there, and Congress should order its removal. This, so far from being derogatory to the United States, would have a tendency to restore the confidence of the world in our justice and in our
fidelity to the rights of men.
"The flag of our country has been desecrated in this war
by being used to crush a people who were contending for
freedom, independence, and self-government, and the sooner that desecration ceases, the better it will be for all
concerned.
"It is further objected against granting independence
and self-government to the Filipinos, that if we do this,
Russia, Germany, or Great Britain will gobble them up.
This objection is purely imaginary. Those nations have
their hands full elsewhere and are not likely to interfere in
this quarter. They have neither the soldiers nor the money
to spare for that speculation. If they should manifest
symptoms of that kind, a plain and positive hint from the
United States would soon settle any of them. But, however
that may be, this objection is, at best, no better than that of
the thief who says, 'If I don't take that man's watch, some
other thief will, and so I will take it just to save it.' It is
remarkable how all thieves and robbers, whether individual
or national, use the same arguments to reason money
or property out of other people's pockets into their own.
"The claim of the United States to conquer, hold, and
govern the Philippine Islands rests upon the theory that we
are vastly superior to the people of those islands, and therefore have a right to subdue them and to provide such government for them as we think is suitable. I am very sorry




62


The Great Trial of the


that there is so little foundation for this theory. Experi
ence has proved that we do not manage very well the people
within our own proper limits. We have taken very poor
care of the Indians and negroes in several of the States of
this Union. Since we began the war against Spain 'in the
interest of humanity,' the Indians have been robbed in
several of the States-in Minnesota alone, according to high
authority, of at least $300,000 in a few years. It is notorious
that in some of the States negroes have been tortured, then
murdered, and their bodies mutilated after death. In some
of the States we have had bloody riots, and upon such an
extensive scale as to threaten anarchy and widespread
civil war.
"Since our occupation of Manila we have very greatly
increased the number of its saloons and given 'the heathen
Chinee' largely increased opportunities to exercise his peculiar 'ways that are dark and tricks that are vain' upon
our soldiers and others. In other respects, perhaps, we have
been equally 'short on morality' since our advent among thi
Filipinos.
"It is no pleasure for me to refer to our shortcomings
either at home or abroad. But it is necessary in order to
show how baseless are our claims in this war and to set the
truth clearly before the people. If we ever had a 'mission,'
as some claim, to civilize barbarians and extend the blessings of liberty throughout the world, we threw away our credentials when we made war upon Mexico. Our condition at
home and abroad shows that we have no right to any such
'mission.' We must take the beams out of our own eyes be



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fore we can see how to take the motes out of the eyes of
other nations and peoples.
"I have said that at present it seemed to me that Christianity was a failure. The Good Book tells us of a time
when 'evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.' That time appears to be upon
us now. The government of the United States has fallen
into the hands of evil men and seducers, who deceive the
people and are themselves deceived. They are the agents,
tools, and puppets of a vast money power which made
and controls them. There is a passage in the Apostle
James which is full of meaning and is peculiarly applicable
to the rich men who have been so long exploiting the government and people of the United States. It should be pondered well by them and by every man who loves his country.
"'1. Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your
miseries that shall come upon you.
"'2. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments
are moth-eaten.
"'3. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of
them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh
as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the
last days.
" '4. Behold the hire of the laborers who have reaped
down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth:
and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into
the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.
"'5. Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been
wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of
slaughter.




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"'6. Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he
doth not resist you.'
"No words of mine can add anything to the force of the
lesson here given us by the Apostle. It is for rich and poor,
oppressor and oppressed, government and people. If the
rich men, speculators and politicians, who made or caused
to be made this Philippine War, would heed it, it might be
for the lengthening of their tranquillity.
"There is one view of this Philippine business which to
me is very humiliating, and that is the attitude in which it
places our country towards the subject of slavery.
"The civilized world made the slave trade felony seventy
years ago. The United States abolished negro slavery
thirty-five years ago. Now, the present administration says
it has purchased the Philippine Islands and owns them and
has the right to govern them as it chooses; that the inhabitants of those islands have no right to govern themselves,
but must submit, unconditionally, to the authority of their
purchasers. That is to say, the United States has revived
the slave trade and purchased ten million slaves. It is
no answer to say that the transaction between Spain and
the United States merely made the Filipinos serfs, for
serfdom is slavery. It differs in some respects from personal
vassalage, but it is slavery none the less.
"This condition was forced upon those people by
the United States after they had acted as allies at our request; had rendered valuable service to our forces in the
taking of Manila, and after General Otis, the officer in command of the United States forces in Luzon, had issued a
proclamation, in which he said: 'I will assure the people of




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65


the Philippine Islands the full measure of individual rights
and liberties which is the heritage of a free people.'
"General Otis did this, knowing that his statement was
false, and having at the time in his possession a proclamation of the President claiming 'sovereignty' over the Islands
and directing their 'immediate occupation.' This was done
to deceive the Filipinos. The Administration sanctioned
this act of General Otis by retaining him in command, and
thus became a party to the fraud. I know of no greater act
of dishonor and perfidy in history than  this.  It is
worse than that practiced by Hengist and Horsa upon the
ancient Britons and deserves universal execration."
Mr. Lincoln rarely indulged in invective or denunciation. I was familiar with his speaking, both at the bar
and the forum, for nearly twenty years. Twice only in that
time did I hear him abandon his usual method of fair but
earnest argument and illustration. But now, as the fraud
of Otis and the revival of the slave trade and the establishment of a slave empire in the Pacific by the United States
met in his mind, he seemed to lose his wonderful patience
and self-control and broke out in a denunciation of the
authors of these wrongs that almost lifted his hearers from
their seats. His defense and eulogy of the Declaration of
Independence was magnificent, far surpassing anything he
had ever said before. And his invective against those who
at the same time made war upon that Declaration and upon
the Filipinos and the fair fame of their country among the
nations of the earth was terrible in its directness, bitterness, and force. He declared:
"Those men are traitors to liberty, are leading their




66


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countrymen into the hateful paths of despotism, and are unfit to be the rulers of a free people. No man is fit to be a
ruler of a free people who does not believe in and advocate
freedom and self-government for all nations and peoples in
the world. These men are the agents and promoters of
slavery and despotism, and the enemies, not only of
their own country, but of the human race.
"It is in vain for them to endeavor to cover up their iniquities by professing a wish to extend freedom and civilization and religion to the Philippine Islands. Their freedom
is slavery; their civilization is barbarism; their religion is
hypocrisy. That hypocrisy is admitted by one of their own
ablest writers in an article from which I take the following:
" 'All this gabble about civilization and uplifting the benighted barbarians of Cuba and Luzon is mere sound and
fury, signifying nothing. Foolishly or wisely, we want
these newly acquired territories, not for any missionary or
altruistic purposes, but for the trade, the commerce, the
power, and the money there is in them. Why beat about the
bush and promise all sorts of things? Why not be honest?'
"The Philippine War has led to a greater development
of religious and political hypocrisy than was ever before exhibited in this country.
"These men endeavor to cover up their iniquities, their
treason to liberty and their promotion of slavery, by claiming that the Spanish and Philippine wars added greatly
to the prestige of the United States and made it one of
the greatest powers in the world. But the United States
had been one of the leading powers of the world long before.
It was the war to put down the Rebellion and preserve the




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67


Union that gave our country its commanding position as one
of the leading and most influential nations in the world.
That was a war of great armies and great generals on both
sides, of great battles and great victories and great defeats,
compared with which the Spanish and Philippine wars were
child's play-a mere puppet-show.
"This everlasting boasting on account of our victories
over the Spaniards and Filipinos is a small business for a
great nation. It reminds me of a gigantic policeman I once
knew in Springfield, Illinois. He picked a quarrel with a
small newsboy about something that was none of his business, and whipped the little fellow half to death. To justify
himself, he swore every day in the week that his honor required that he should whip the boy. And all the rest of his
life he boasted of what a wonderful victory he had achieved.
"If we are ever so unfortunate as to be forced into war
with one of the 'Great Powers' and are so fortunate as to be
victorious in that war, we will have something to boast of.
At present we had better keep quiet.
"The Philippine War has lessened the patriotism and increased the selfishness of the American people. It has reduced the courage and increased the immorality of American politicians. It has caused the nation to take a long
step on the downward road to national corruption, degeneracy, and ultimate ruin.
"Nothing can save us from the fate that always follows
wars of aggression and conquest and the consequent
national demoralization and decay, but reformation at home
and doing justice abroad to every nation and to every
people. 
- -                9. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~4'




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"It is no pleasure to me to say these things. But faithful are the wounds of a friend; and he is the best friend of
his country, who, standing as a sentinel upon the watchtower of liberty, warns his countrymen of the approach of
danger and shows them the way of escape."
Mr. Lincoln spoke an hour and a half, his usual time in
discussing great questions, though occasionally he far exceeded that time. He became more and more earnest, and,
if possible, engrossed and absorbed the attention of his audience more and more the longer he spoke. I never before so
fully realized the statement of Webster, that "when public
bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions, true
eloquence is in the man and in the occasion, and clearness
and force are the qualities that produce conviction."  In
defending the Declaration of Independence from the politicians, speculators, boodlers, and cranks who are fighting it,
and in returning their blows, he reminded me of the hurricane, which in its resistless force bears down everything before it.
He described with great clearness and force how the
Creator had endowed-i. e., permanently invested-the Filipinos, in common with all men, with the inalienable right
to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and self-government.
He then drew a picture of an army of Liliputians, the
right wing of which was led by President McKinley (pushed
on by Mark Hanna) and the left by President Schurman.
One wing was trying to take the Declaration by direct assault and the other to undermine it. He called this a "ridiculous attempt by a band of pigmies to defeat a magnificent
endowment of the Almighty."




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69


He then pictured a glorious being in the distance gazing from his home in the clouds upon the scene and smiling
upon their puny efforts. Then raising himself to his full
height, he pointed to the skies and cried out in a voice of exultation, "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the
Lord shall have them in derision."
While he was yet speaking, the enormous rock which
represented the Declaration, and which seemed to be embedded in the foundations of the earth, was moved by some invisible force. In a moment it overwhelmed its miserable assailants and buried them forever from human sight.
The effect of this amazing panorama so suddenly created by the magic wand of the Great Vindicator of the Declaration was so great as to require an immediate adjournment of the meeting. On motion of Mr. Madison, all further discussion was postponed till the next day at 10 o'clock
a. m.
LAFAYETTE'S SPEECH.
Lafayette said that he had been a soldier from his
youth. In his boyhood he had been taught that France was
the chosen home of chivalry and that the road to honor and
glory was war. So he joined the Guards; and; at the age of
nineteen became a captain of dragoons and was proud of
his skill in all military exercises.
Fortunately, the first war he became engaged in was
the American Revolution, a war for liberty and self-govern



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ment, and he never had the least inclination to favor an unjust war afterwards. The part he took in the Revolution
and subsequent wars in his own country was always in favor of liberty, justice, and good government. He had, in his
experience in the old and new worlds, throughout a long
life, learned a great deal about war. He had been in many
battles and was once a prisoner for five years in unwholesome dungeons.
The false teachings of his youth had yielded to the true
lessons of experience. The bright visions of military glory
in which he had indulged in early life had been dispelled
by the stern reality of the battle-field, the siege, and the
prison, with their accompaniments of wounds, mutilation,
disease, starvation, misery, and death to all ages, both sexes,
and the innocent and guilty alike. Upon this subject he had
learned to think and speak the truth. "The horrors of war"
was a true and correct expression; and there was little room
for charity for any ruler or any government, of any name or
nature, which made, or caused to be made, any war which
was not absolutely necessary to the national existence or to
the preservation of its freedom.
He said that he had adopted the views of a great philosophical writer, that "war originates in the selfishness of the
human heart, and is generally caused by ambition, avarice,
or revenge." The great exemplars of the spirit of war and of
its destructiveness were Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon.
They killed more men, made more widows and orphans, and
created more misery in the world than any other three de
stroyers of the race. And at the bottom of all the wars they




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71


waged was that selfish and deadly ambition which petrifies
the human heart. He said:
"France has been afflicted in this way by the selfishness
of her rulers throughout almost her entire history as a nation. Such kings as Francis the First, Louis the Fourteenth, and many others of the same character before the
Revolution, and the two Bonapartes after the Revolution,
were the worst enemies of their country and of mankind and
exhausted in their wicked wars the wealth and resources of
France; sometimes decimated her people and filled half her
homes with sorrow and mourning. The war made by Louis
Napoleon on the German Empire, less than thirty years ago,
was so wicked and foolish in its origin and so ruinous and
humiliating to France in its result that the only way to account for it is upon the theory that its author was under the
influence of an uncontrollable infatuation. Nearly all the
kings of France who had any ability were warriors; and
only one of them in nine hundred years was at once a great
king and a good man. Louis the Ninth, called in history St.
Louis, occupies alone this proud preeminence.
"How shall France attain the position to which she is
entitled among the nations? Not by war, for war has been
the incubus which has retarded her progress; but by peace
and the works of peace. By devotion to science, to literature, to agriculture, to manufactures, to all the arts of
peace, France may and will soon take her natural place
among the leading nations of the world. She is already taking a long step in that direction in her great Exposition. If
she will take for her motto in the future, "Peace is the true
glory of nations," and steadily adhere to it, she will, at




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no distant day, equal any nation in Europe in all that makes
a people truly great, prosperous, and happy, and her children, scattered all over the earth, will feel a patriotic and
exultant pride in the true and lasting glory of their native
land.
"As to the Philippine War, it should be regarded as another instance of the vicious influence which selfish ambition so often exerted over the rulers of the world. I cannot
conceive of the founders of the American Republic engaging in such a war as that. They would have considered it
treason to liberty and to the Declaration of Independence.
"On the 4th of July, 1776, when John Adams was advocating the Declaration of Independence from Great Britain,
he said: 'We shall make this a glorious, an immortal day.
When we are in our graves, our children will honor it.' He
said much more to the same effect, and all that he predicted
came to pass. In 1824, forty-eight years after the Declaration was made, I visited the United States and remained
more than a year, traveling all over the country as the guest
of the nation, and never in the history of this world was such
an ovation given to any mortal man. The whole people rose
up as one man to welcome me. Everywhere it was 'Welcome! Welcome!! Welcome!!! Lafayette!'
"I do not recall these scenes from vanity, but to show
the devotion of the American people to Liberty, for it was
Liberty they were honoring in their welcome to me. It is
impossible for me to express my gratification and pride at
hearing my name and Liberty repeated together all over the
United States. It was as the friend of Liberty that the
President received me. It was as the friend of Liberty that




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73


the great orator of the West, Mr. Clay, as Speaker of the
House of Representatives, welcomed me with his wonderful
eloquence. And that welcome was repeated all over the
land by old and young-by the survivors of the Revolutionary War and their children, and their children's children; from the venerable soldier, tottering on the brink of
the grave, to the infant in the cradle.
"These honors, which were far greater than I deserved,
were bestowed upon me by the rulers and people of the United States because they considered that I had been the lifelong friend, advocate, and defender of liberty, independence,
and self-government in the Old World and the New.
"I was invited to assist in laying the corner-stone
of Bunker Hill Monument on the 17th day of June, 1825. I
heard the oration pronounced on that occasion by the great
orator of New England, Mr. Webster. I heard him state the
objects of the erection of that monument. I heard him say
it was 'to show our own deep sense of the value and importance of the achievements of our ancestors; and, by presenting this work of gratitude to the eye, to keep alive similar
sentiments and to foster a constant regard for the principles
of the Revolution.' * * * * * *     lWe consecrate our
work to the spirit of national independence, and we wish
that the light of peace may rest upon it forever.' * * *
* * * 'We wish that labor may look up he;re and be proud
in the midst of its toil.' * * * * * * 'Let it rise-let
it rise till it meets the sun in his coming; let the earliest light
of the morning gild it and parting day linger and play upon
its summit.' I never can forget the intense earnestness of
the speaker as he turned to me and said: 'Sir, we are as



The Great Trial of the


sembled to commemorate the establishment of great public
principles of liberty and to do honor to the distinguished
dead.' Nor can I ever forget the closing sentence of the
great orator and his invocation that the United States
might become 'itself a vast and splendid monument, not of
oppression and terror, but of wisdom, of peace, and of
liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration
forever!'
"A great change has come over the rulers of this country since that day. They have abandoned the doctrines of
liberty and independence proclaimed by the Declaration, and
repeated by Webster, and are doing their utmost to crush
them in the Philippines. The President made war upon
them for that very purpose, and to force upon them a government they do not want, and is making of their country, not
'a monument of wisdom, of peace, and of liberty,' but 'a
monument of oppression and terror.'
"The relations between the Filipinos and the Americans at the close of the war with Spain were much the same
as those between France and the Americans at the close of
the Revolutionary War. France had as much right to purchase the Colonies from Great Britain as the United States
had to purchase the Philippines from Spain. But if she
had done so, I should have been tempted to renounce
my country, for I would have regarded the attempt as not
only unjust, but dastardly. The Filipinos had been fighting for liberty and independence for many years. For their
allies to turn against them when that independence was
nearly an accomplished fact, and destroy it by claiming
the right, under a purchase, to sovereignty over them with



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75


out their consent and to force them to abandon their liberty
and independence and accept a new and foreign government
against their determined opposition, made a very strong
case against the author of that war. In my opinion, the verdict of the jury could not have been different under the evidence and instructions."
SPEECH OF MR. MADISON.
Mr. Madison said: "The power to declare war was, by
the Constitution, conferred upon Congress. Notwithstanding this, two of our Presidents had made war without the
authority of Congress. The Mexican War was made by President Polk and the Philippine War was made by President
McKinley. Both cases were dangerous usurpations of power,
which it is to be hoped will never be repeated.
"It was no justification of the President in this case to
say that it was his right and duty to put down the rebellion
of the Filipinos, for there was no rebellion. As already
shown, a people cannot rebel against an authority to which
they are not subject, nor could they be subject to an authority to whose sovereignty they had never consented. Rebellion, in the proper sense of that term, presupposes the duty
of allegiance; and in this case there was no such duty. Sovereignty of one people over another cannot be acquired in any
way without the consent of both parties, except by conquest
in a just war.
"In the beginning this was a presidential war. Its sub



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The Great Trial of the


sequent ratification by Congress made it national, but did not
make it constitutional. The grant of the war power to Congress by the Constitution is general, but it is not unlimited.
It is limited by the objects for which the Constitution was
formed. These are 'to form a more perfect union, establish
justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common
defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.'
"None of these objects are promoted by the Philippine
War. It is antagonistic to most of them, and its continuance
is a great abuse of the war power. It is waged directly
against the most important right proclaimed in the Declaration-the right of every people to freedom, independence,
and self-government.
"It has been insisted in this case that the Philippine
Islands belong to the United States by the law of nations;
that this country acquired them, in accordance with that law,
by treaty with Spain. An examination of some of the leading authorities upon international law, and an application of
that law to the evidence in this case, will show that there is
no ground for this claim.
"Vattel says: 'The law of nations is the science which
teaches the rights subsisting between nations or states and
the obligations correspondent to those rights.'
"'Since men are naturally equal, and a perfect equality
prevails in their rights and obligations, as equally proceeding from Nature-nations composed of men, and considered
as so many free persons living together in a state of nature,
are naturally equal and inherit from Nature the same obligations and rights. Power or weakness does not in this re



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spect produce any difference. A dwarf is as much a man as
a giant; a small republic is no less a sovereign State than the
most powerful kingdom. By a necessary consequence of that
equality, whatever is lawful for one nation is equally lawful
for any other; and whatever is unjustifiable in the one is
equally so in the other.' (Vattel's Law of Nations, Sec. 18.)
"Wheaton says: 'A nation associating itself with the
general society of nations, thereby recognizes a law common
to all nations by which its international relations are to be
regulated. It cannot violate this law without exposing itself
to the danger of incurring the enmity of other nations and
without exposing to hazard its own existence. The motive
which induces each particular nation to observe this law
depends upon its persuasion that other nations will observe
towards it the same law. The jus gentium is founded upon
reciprocity of will.  It has neither law-giver nor supreme
judge, since independent states acknowledge no superior
human authority. Its organ and regulator is public opinion:
its supreme tribunal is history, which forms at once the ramnpart of justice and the Nemesis by which injustice is avenged.
Its sanction, or the obligation of all men to respect it, results
from the moral order of the universe which will not suffer
nations and individuals to be isolated from each other, but
constantly tends to unite the whole family of mankind in one
great harmonious society.' (Wheaton's International Law,
pp. 16 and 17.)
" 'The principal in the war, the sovereign in whose name
it has been carried on, cannot justly make a peace without
including his allies-I mean those who have given him assistance without directly taking part in the war.




The Great Trial of the


" 'But the treaty concluded by the principal is no further
obligatory on his allies than as they are willing to accede to
it, unless they have given him full power to treat for them.'
(Vattel's Law of Nations, p. 436.)
" 'Those treaties dictated by a conquering party which
have the effect to destroy the national existence of the vanquished state or deprive it of some essential right which is
necessary to separate political existence are not obligatory
any longer than the society affected thereby chooses to treat
them as such.' (Pomeroy's International Law, edited by
Prof. T. S. Woolsey, p. 348; and see pp. 350, 351, and 352, to
the same effect.)
"'A nation is an aggregate of individuals, and has all
the rights of attack and defense that a man in a state of
nature would have by natural law. Whatever is right in
itself such a one could lawfully do. Whatever is right in
itself a nation may lawfully do. There being no parliament
or tribunal of nations to agree upon rules of right, we may
say in general that the true law of nations, as of an individual person, is the law of God. Certainly both communities and individuals are bound to act justly, mercifully, and
reasonably. Morality is incumbent upon both. The law of
nations is summarily written in the Ten Commandments.'
(Waples on Proceedings in Ren, p. 372.)
"'Every true sovereignty is in its own nature inalienable. * * * * * * * Let us conclude, then, that as
the nation alone has a right to subject itself to a foreign
power, the right of really alienating the state can never belong to the sovereign, unless it be expressly given to him by




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the whole body of the people.' (Vattel's Law of Nations,
pp. 31 and 32.)
"In the case of Samuel A. Worcester vs. State of Georgia, Chief-Justice Marshall, delivering the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States, says:
"'These articles are associated with others recognizing
their title to self-government.  The very fact of repeated
treaties with them recognizes it; and the settled doctrine
of the law of nations is that a weaker power does not surrender its independence-its right to self-government-by
associating with a stronger, and taking its protection. A
weak state, in order to provide for its safety, may place itself
under the protection of one more powerful, without stripping
itself of the right of government, and ceasing to be a State.
Examples of this kind are not wanting in Europe. "Tributary and feudatory states," says Vattel, "do not thereby cease
to be sovereign and independent states, so long as self-government and sovereign and independent authority are left in
the administration of the state." At the present day, more
than one state may be considered as holding its right of self
government under the guarantee and protection of one oi
more allies.' (6 Peters, p. 560.)
"Chancellor Kent defines the law of nations to be 'that
code of public instruction which defines the rights and pre
scribes the duties of nations, in their intercourse with each
other.' (1 Kent's Corn., p. 1.)
"'Nations are equal in respect to each other, and enti
tled to claim equal consideration for their rights, whateve]
may be their relative dimensions or strength, or however
greatly they may differ in government, religion, or manners.
-— 6




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"'It is a necessary consequence of this equality, that
each nation is entitled to govern itself as it may think proper,
and no one nation is entitled to dictate a form of government,
or religion, or a course of internal policy, to another.
" 'No State is entitled to take cognizance or notice of the
domestic administration of another State or of what passes
within it as between the government and its own subjects.
* * * * We have several instances within time of memory of unwarrantable and flagrant violations of the independence of nations.' (Kent's Com., p. 22.)
"'In cases where the principal jurists agree, the presumption will be very great in favor of the solidity of their
maxims; and no civilized nation that does not arrogantly set
all ordinary law and justice at defiance will venture to disregard the uniform sense of the established writers on inter
national law. England and the United States have been
equally disposed to acknowledge the authority of the works
of jurists writing professedly on public law and the binding
force of the general usage and practice of nations, and the
still greater respect due to judicial decisions recognizing and
enforcing the law of nations.' (Kent's Com., p. 18.)
"'With respect to the cession of places or territories by
treaty of peace, though the treaty operates from the making
of it, it is a principle of public law that the national character of the place agreed to be surrendered by treaty continues as it was under the character of the ceding country
until it be actually transferred. Full sovereignty cannot be
held to have passed by the mere words of the treaty without
actual delivery. To complete the right of property, the
right to the thing and the possession of the thing must be




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81


united. This is a necessary principle of the law of property
in all systems of jurisprudence. There must be both the
jus in (ad) rem and the jus in re, according to the distinction
of the civilians, and which Barbeyrac (C) says they borrowed from the canon law. This general law of property
applies to the right of territory no less than to other rights.
The practice of nations is full of instances of this kind and
several of them were stated by Sir William Scott in the opinion he gave in the case of the Fama.' (Kent's Com., p. 178.)
"Sherston Baker, one of the latest and best writers on
this subject, says: 'International law or the law of nations,
jus inter gentes, may be defined to be "the rules of conduct
regulating the intercourse of States."' (See International
Law, by Sir Sherston Baker, p. 14.)
"On page 15 he says: 'It is said that the right and duties
of states, which require an international law for their regulation and enforcement, result from the law of Nature, or
by the will of God, and that the rules of the law, whether
resulting from compact, custom, or usage, outwardly express
the consent of nations to things which are naturally-that is,
by the law of God-binding upon them.'
"On page 19 he says: 'The first source from which are
deduced the rules of conduct which ought to be observed
between nations is the divine law, or principle of justice,
which has been defined as "a constant and perpetual disposition to render every man his due."
"'Grotius lays down the broad principle that the positive laws of nations may add to, but cannot subtract from,
the law of Nature. Others say that human laws are only




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declaratory, but have no power over the substance of original
justice. The principle of justice, deeply rooted in the nature
and interest of man, pervades the whole system, and is discoverable in every part of it, even to the minutest ramification in a legal formality, or in the construction of an article
in a treaty.'
"On pages 37, 38, and 39 he says: 'The right of a sovereign state to the choice of its own rulers rests upon the
same foundation as its right to determine the form of its own
internal constitution; and the interference of a foreign state
in the one case cannot be justified except under the same
circumstances and upon the same grounds as the other-viz.,
the immediate and pressing danger of its own independence
and security.
" 'But this impending or contingent danger to the general peace of nations, or to the independence of particular
states, is more frequently appealed to as an excuse than as
a justifiable reason, for foreign interference in the internal
affairs of others. And instead of preserving peace, such unlawful interference has frequently been the cause of wars
the most cruel and bloody that have ever stained the annals
of history.'
"On pages 59, 60, and 61 he says: 'A state is regarded
in public law as capable of the same rights, duties, and obligations, with respect to other states, as individuals with respect to other individuals. Among the most important of
these natural rights is that of acquiring, possessing, and enjoying property. The property of the state, of whatsoever
description, is marked by the same characteristics relatively
to other states as the property of individuals; that is to say,




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it is exclusive of foreign interference and susceptible of free
disposition. * * * * * * A sovereign state has the same
absolute right to dispose of its territorial or other public
property, but it depends upon its own municipal constitution and laws how and by what department of its government the disposition shall be made. * * * * * *
Nevertheless, in order to make such a transfer valid,
the authority, whether de facto or de jure, must be competent
to bind the state. Hence the necessity of examining into
and ascertaining the powers of the rulers, as the municipal
constitutions of different states throw many difficulties in
the way of alienations of their public property, and particularly of their territory. Especially in modern times the consent of the governed, express or implied, is necessary before
the transfer of their allegiance can regularly take place.
"'Formerly what Grotius calls patrimonial kingdoms
were considered in the light of absolute property of particular families, who transferred them to others at their will,
sometimes by mortgage and sometimes by deeds of gift and
by bequests. * * * * * *
"'As the inhabitants of such kingdoms had, by their
blind submission to their rulers, become mere adjuncts of the
soil, the transfer of the sovereignty was considered to include not only the right of eminent domain and the absolute
property of the sovereign or state, but all private lands, and
the property and services of the subjects, who were transferred with the soil, in the same manner as a slave-holder
may transfer his slaves and all they may possess, together
with the title to his plantation.
"'But in modern times sales and transfers of national




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territory to another power can only be made by treaty or
some solemn act of the sovereign authority of the state.
And such transfers of territory do not include the allegiance
of its inhabitants without their consent, express or implied,
and a change of sovereignty does not involve any change in
the ownership of private property. The new sovereignty,
however, acquires the same right of eminent domain as that
held by the former.'
"On page 164 he says: 'But mere cession by treaty does
not of itself operate as an immediate transfer of the allegiance of the inhabitants of the ceded territory. They remain subjects of the power to which their allegiance was
originally due until the solemn delivery of the possession by
the ceding state and an assumption of the government by
that to which the cession is made. The actual delivery of
the possession and the actual exercise of the powers of gov
ernment must be clearly shown.'
"On page 157 he says: 'The obligation of a state to render justice to all others is a perfect obligation of strictly
binding force at all times and under all circumstances. No
state can relieve itself from this obligation under any pretext whatever.'
"On page 204 and 205 he says: 'War makes men public
enemies, but it leaves in force all duties which are not necessarily suspended by the new position in which men are
placed towards each other. Good faith is, therefore, as essential in war as in peace, for without it hostilities could not be
terminated with any degree of safety short of the total destruction of one of the contending parties. This being admitted as a general principle, the question arises, How far




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may we deceive an enemy and what strategems are allowable in war? Whenever we have expressly or tacitly
engaged to speak the truth to an enemy, it would be perfidy
in us to deceive his confidence in our sincerity. But otherwise we are justified in leading him into error, either by
words or actions.'
"On pages 350 and 351 he says: 'Military occupation
suspends the sovereignty and dominion of the former owner
so long as the conquered territory remains in the possession
of the conqueror, or in that of his allies. The temporary dominion of the latter completely excludes, for the time being,
the original dominion of the former. The vanquished
sovereign, therefore, has no power as against the conqueror
to alienate any part of his own territory which may be at
the time in the possession of the latter. If the conquest be
completed or confirmed, the title passes to the conqueror precisely as it was when the latter first acquired the possession.
No other party can claim any right over it arising from any
conveyance or transfer from the vanquished while it was in
the conqueror's possession. But if it be surrendered up to
the former owner or recovered by him, such conveyance
would become valid, for the alienor would not be permitted
to deny his own act. It is a principle of jurisprudence that
the jus in re (the possession of) and the jus ad rem (the right
to) the thing alienated are necessary in the grantor in order
to constitute a complete title. During military occupation
these exist together neither in the original owner nor in the
conqueror. The title conveyed by either is, therefore, imperfect; if by the former, it is made good by a restoration of




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the conquest; and if by the latter, it is completed by a confirmation of the conquest.'
"Prof. Woolsey, one of the highest authorities on this
subject says: 'A state's territorial right gives no power to
the ruler to alienate a part of the territory in the way of bar
ter or sale, as was done in feudal times. In other words, the
right is a public or political, and not a personal one. Nor, in
justice, can the state itself alienate a portion of its territory
without the consent of the inhabitants upon the same, and if
this is done after conquest, it is only the acknowledgment
of an unavoidable fact.' (Woolsey on International Law,
p. 65.)
"If we apply the rules of international law laid down
in the foregoing citations to the facts established in this
case, we will find that the cession of the Philippine Islands
to the United States by Spain in the treaty of Paris
conveyed no title for the following reasons:
"First-Spain did not, and could not, deliver to the United States possession of the territory ceded, nearly all of it
being then in possession of the Filipinos and held by them
adversely to Spain and for themselves.
"Second-The Filipinos had been the allies of the United
States in the war with Spain and were not parties to the
treaty, and therefore could not be bound by it.
"Third-They never consented to the treaty nor to the
sovereignty of the United States, but always claimed and insisted upon their right to freedom, independence, and selfgovernment, against Spain, the United States and all the
world.




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"It is clear without further argument, that in making
and waging war upon the Filipinos to acquire possession
and control of their country, the military power of the United States violated that 'perfect obligation of a state' which
Sherston Baker says is 'of strictly binding force at all times
and under all circumstances.'
"It is another proof of the statement of Prof. Hall, that
the rules of international law 'are often quietly ignored or
brutally disregarded.'
"In fact, this was virtually admitted by Senator Carter
when he said: 'This is a practical age. We are going to
deal with the question on the basis of dollars and cents.
Neither religion nor sentiment will have much influence in
determining the verdict. The great question will be, Will it
pay?'
"If there are any in this vast assembly who are not satisfied to have this question settled by the law of nations, it
may be said that there is for them and for all true Americans a higher law than this, by which they are bound to concede to the Filipinos the right to freedom, independence,
and self-government. That law is the Declaration of Independence. Its promulgation was the most solemn recognition of the rights of man ever made. Upon its truths this
nation was founded. In dealing with other nations and peoples we are absolutely concluded by its principles.
"Our fathers declared that 'all men' are endowed
by their Creator with the rights they enumerated. That endowment is universal and perpetual and binding always and
everywhere. Whoever attempts to deprive any nation or




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people of its benefits is opposed to the government of the
Great Author of the endowment.
"Our fathers built our system of self-government upon
that endowment of the Creator. Whoever, in any position,
high or low, private or official, attempts to overthrow
or undermine it, or in any way to defeat its operation, is an
enemy to his country, for he would destroy the foundation
upon which all of our institutions rest. That great boon is
a shield and protection to the rights of all men or of none.
We cannot justly claim it for ourselves and deny it to
others.
"The doctrine that the Constitution does not confer upon Congress or the President the power to make and carry
on wars of aggression and aggrandizement is supported by
the authority of the highest tribunal in our country. In the
case of Fleming & Marshall vs. Page (9th Howard, pp.
614-615), the Supreme Court of the United States says:
"'The country in question had been conquered in war.
But the genius and character of our institutions are peaceful and the power to declare war was not conferred upon
Congress for the purpose of aggression or aggrandisement,
but to enable the general government to vindicate by arms,
if it should become necessary, its own rights and the rights
of its citizens. A war, therefore, declared by Congress can
never be presumed to be waged for the purpose of conquest
or the acquisition of territory; nor does the law declaring
the war imply an authority to the President to enlarge the
limits of the United States by subjugating the enemy's
country.
"'The United States, it is true, may extend its




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boundaries by conquest or treaty, and may demand the cession of territory as the condition of peace in order to indemnify its citizens for the injuries they have suffered or to reimburse the government for the expenses of the war. But
this can be done only by the treaty-making power or
the legislative authority, and is not a part of the power conferred upon the President by declaration of war. His duty
and his power are purely military.'
"This seems sufficiently clear, for it was not necessary
for the United States to make war upon the Filipinos to
vindicate its own rights and the rights of its citizens. The
war was merely one of aggression and conquest and for the
acquisition of territory to which, as against the Filipinos,
the United States had no valid right whatever.
"What the Court says about the right of the United
States to extend its boundaries by conquest or treaty and to
demand the cession of territory as the condition of peace in
order to indemnify its citizens for the injuries they have suffered, etc., does not help the case as against the Filipinos,
for the United States had suffered no injury from them. On
the contrary, it had received much benefit. If the United
States had a right to indemnity against Spain, no treaty between these parties could bind the persons or property or
territory of the Filipinos. Spain had neither the possession nor the right to possess the one-hundredth part of those
islands, nor could the treaty give the United States title to
any part of them against the Filipinos without the consent of the latter, as already often stated in this discussion.
"I consider the question of the extent of the power of
Congress, under the Constitution, to declare and wage war




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so important that, with the indulgence of the meeting, I
would say something more on that subject before closing.
"Many years ago I gave in 'The Federalist' (No. 40) two
rules of construction, the application of which ought to set.
tle the question whether the power of Congress to declare
war is unlimited. The rules are these, and are dictated by
plain reason as well as founded on legal maxims: The one
is that every part of the expression ought, if possible, to
be allowed some meaning, and be made to conspire to
some common end. The other is, that where the several parts cannot be made to coincide, the less important
should give way to the more important part; the means
should be sacrificed to the end, rather than the end to the
means.
"Let the most scrupulous expositors of the delegated
powers answer whether itbis of most importance that the
rights enumerated in the Preamble to the Constitution
should be preserved, or that Congress should have unlimited
power to declare war, or to authorize the President to make
war upon any people. Let them answer whether the preser
vation of the enumerated rights and blessings for which the
Constitution was formed, or the unlimited exercise of the
war power by Congress, is the more important. Which is
the more important, the end or the means? Or rather,
which is the more important, the ends to be attained, or the
extreme and arbitrary exercise of one of the means provided
by the Constitution to attain them? There can be but one
answer to these questions.
"It is not intended to undervalue the war power, but to




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guard against its abuse. It is not intended to deny the
right and duty of Congress to exercise its discretion in declaring and waging war, but to insist that its discretion
should be reasonably exercised and that the wars declared
by it must be for objects contemplated by the Constitution.
"The power given the courts and judges to grant injunctions is a salutary one. But an arbitrary and unjust judge
or court may so abuse his discretion as to make what was intended as a benefit a curse and a terror to the people. That
would be an illegal exercise of a legal right.
"So the power of Congress to declare war may be
so abused as to become an unconstitutional exercise of a constitutional power.
"The executive of the nation is the natural, proper, and
constitutional commander-in-chief of its military force. But
if, in exercising that command, he so manages as to involve
his country in war with another people, he is guilty of usurpation and is liable for all the consequences which follow his
unconstitutional action. Such, as I understand from the evidence, is the situation in the present case.
"The foregoing view of the limit and proper exercise of
the war power under our Constitution is strengthened by a
consideration of the history and character of the men who
formed that Constitution. They were intelligent, patriotic
men, devoted to liberty and free government, and labored
long and earnestly to frame a constitution which would secure these blessings to themselves and their posterity forever. Several of them were signers of the Declaration of Independence, and most of them had been students of history




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and acquainted with the science and practice of government
for many years.
"It is not reasonable to suppose that such men would
confer upon any department of the government they framed
such a tremendous and dangerous power as unlimited discretion in making and waging war. Such a power would be uncontrollable and despotic, and could be used to defeat the objects for which the Constitution was formed. The logical
conclusion is that this power was not intended to be, and
was not, conferred upon Congress, and that its exercise
would be unconstitutional."
Mr. Madison's manner was earnest but unimpassioned.
He commanded the most profound attention, and I deeply
regret my inability to reproduce his argument entire, or to
give an adequate idea of its clearness and force.
COUNT TOLSTOI'S SPEECH.
Count Tolstoi said that he had been in the habit of giving his views upon the subject of war freely for many years.
That if any excuse or apology were necessary to justify him
in using great plainness of speech upon the present occasion, the extreme abuse of the jury indulged in at the political meeting held by some of the friends of the President
last night might furnish it.
"Last year," he said, "in answer to a letter, I again gave
my opinions upon the subject of war; a part of what I then




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said is applicable to the present occasion, and I will repeat
it substantially as it was then given:
"'Enlightened, sensible, good Christian people, who inculcate the principle of love and brotherhood, who regard
murder as an awful crime, who, with very few exceptions,
are unable to kill an animal-all these people suddenly, under those conditions when these crimes are called war, not
only acknowledge the destruction, plunder, and killing of
people as right and legal, but themselves contribute towards
these plunders and murders, prepare themselves for them,
take part in them, are proud of them.
" 'If a man act in accordance with that which is dictated
to him by his reason, his conscience, and his God, only the
very best can result for himself and for the world.
"'People complain of the evil conditions of life in our
Christian world, but is it possible for it to be otherwise
when all of us acknowledge not only that fundamental, divine law proclaimed some thousands of years ago, "Thou
shalt not kill," but also the law of love and brotherhood of
all men; and when, notwithstanding this, every man in our
European world practically disavows this fundamental divine law, acknowledged by him, and, at the command
of president, emperor, or minister, Qf Nicholas or William,
arrays himself in an idiotic costume, takes an instrument of
murder, and says, "Here I am, ready to injure, ruin, or kill
anyone I am ordered to."
"'Governments do not desire the settlement of misunderstandings; if there be none, they invent some in order
to have a pretext to keep up the army on which their power




The Great Trial of the


is based. Tribunals and arbitration serve but to divert the
attention of the workers and sufferers, etc., etc.
" 'International relations are purposely always more and
more complicated, which must bring about war; peaceful
countries are being ransacked without the least cause; every
year, in some place or other, plunders and murders take
place, and all live in constant dread of general and mutual
robbery and plunder.
" 'The plunderers of the world, in order to justify their
teachings that war-i. e., murder-is permissible, are loud in
proclaiming their adhesion to the Christian faith. But the
Christian religion is in its very nature opposed to murder
and violence. To overcome these seemingly grave discrepancies between their own teachings and those of Christ,
what better way is there than to cripple and distort Christ's
own religion, hiding its real meaning from the masses for
whom the Savior died?
" 'This barbaric distortion began in Russia as early as
the reign of Czar Constantine, that royal monster who, instead of being hung, was canonized. His posterity, our
present Czars, do their best, of course, to preserve this sacrilegious fraud. They stand as an impenetrable barrier between the people and the true meaning of Christianity, lest
there should come a time when the people-that big-hearted,
million-headed child-should discover that the government,
with its taxes, its soldiers, its prisons, its false priests, is not
only no such pillar of Christianity as it would like to be considered, but its bitterest foe.
"'This libel on Christianity is the mother of all the lies




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and base decoctions that bewilder our minds and all the
miseries our nation is suffering from.
"It is only necessary for the people to awake in order to realize all the whole horror and insanity of that
which they have been and are doing; and, having realized
this, to cease that evil which they themselves abhor and
which is ruining them. If only they were to refrain from the
evil which they themselves detest-i. e., supporting war by
paying taxes and by personal service-those ruling impostors who first corrupt and then oppress them, would, of themselves, naturally vanish like owls before the daylight; and
then would be established those new, humane, brotherly conditions of life for which Christendom-weary of suffering,
exhausted by deceit and lost in insoluble contradictionsis longing.'
"The letter to which I have referred was written principally with reference to the continent of Europe and Great
Britain. The last named nation is an anomaly in what is
called the civilized and Christian world. In the last three
hundred years that country has produced many men and women in the various professions and pursuits of life distinguished for learning, morals, or religion, and sometimes for
every accomplishment and every virtue, who have done much
for their country and their race. Among the common people
also there have always been many humane, good citizens.
"But the ruling classes, especially those who for the
time being governed that country, including nearly all of
their kings since Alfred the Great, who had any ability, have
always been cold-blooded, selfish, and brutal. England
adopted the Christian religion nearly twelve hundred years
— 7




The Great Trial of the


ago, and since Henry the Eighth her kings have been at the
head of the national church and often at the head of the
Protestant world; yet a large proportion of them were not
only unfit to rule, but were unfit to live.
"The crimes of these men were horrible! Their history
is sickening. It was their fashion, for hundreds of years, to
torture their enemies and those who opposed them, before
putting them to death, and to mutilate their bodies after.
They considered all weak nations, all over the globe, their
legitimate prey, and robbed and murdered them at will.
Since the revolution of 1688 they have ceased to practice torture and mutilation, but to this very hour they have continued to practice robbery and murder wherever they have
been opposed in their efforts to extend their territory and
trade.
"In spite of all the improvements she has made in
science, literature, and art, in spite of all her professions of
morality and religion, in spite of all the good and great men
and women whose names adorn her history, England remains to-day what she has been for nearly a thousand years
-the great robber nation of the world.
"A very discriminating French writer, in speaking of
the civilization of the English people and the barbarism of
the English government, expresses the contrast as 'that psychological paradox of the Anglo-Saxon race whose individual virtues are great and strong, but whose public hypocrisy
is abominable and whose national selfishness is next to villainy.' Twenty generations of English history prove that the
Frenchman is right and that rapacity is the predominating




Nineteenth Century.              97
feature of England's foreign policy. If any evidence were
needed that a sordid and soulless commercialism still rules
her, the war in South Africa to crush out small republics by
this nation, which boasts of being a land of freedom, would
be ample proof.
"I rejoice in the reverses she has received there,
and earnestly hope that her eventual failure may be so complete and overwhelming that she will abandon forever the
old barbarous policy she inherited from the Angles, the Saxons, the Danes, and the Normans. I say this without malice
and in the interest of humanity. Her being driven out of
France was a benefit to her and to the world. Her being
driven out of the thirteen North American colonies was better still. If she is driven out of South Africa, it will have a
powerful influence for good upon her and result in putting
an end to the unjust and cruel policy she has so long pursued.
It will certainly break her prestige and greatly reduce her
power to do mischief. She will then have all she can do to
hold India and her other remote possessions.
"The people of the United States are called AngloSaxons. It would be more nearly correct to call them AngloAmericans, for seventy years after their declaration of independence of England they manifested little of the piratical
and brutal nature which characterized the Saxon. They
founded their nation upon the right of all peoples to liberty,
independence, and self-government, and, till a few years
past, considered the truths of their great Declaration sacred.
They admitted that negro slavery, as it existed in nearly all
the States, was an inconsistency, but affirmed that it was




The Great Trial of the


planted here by England and the nations of Europe and that
it had taken such deep root that it could not be eradicated.
Their peculiar relations to the Indian tribes at and before the
formation of their national government was another condition to which, as they said, they were unable to apply in practice their doctrines of the rights of man. But they started
at the first moment of their national existence at a point of
political civilization which no other nation ever reached, and
for two generations they made no attempt to interfere with
the liberty and independence of any other people, or forcibly
to deprive any foreign nation of any part of its territory. But in 1846 President Polk, as commander-in-chief
of the United States Army, precipitated a war with Mexico
for the purpose of acquiring territory, and after the conquest
of that country under the thin disguise of a purchase the United States took from Mexico a very large and valuable territory, which was really the spoils of an infamous war. In
that transaction the Americans exhibited the rapacity of the
Saxon.
"The war against the Filipinos was begun in the same
way and for the same object, and is a worse exhibition of the
same spirit. In fact, as some American writer has well said,
'It is one of the worst cases of territorial piracy in the history
of the world. Shame, everlasting shame and contempt, upon any professedly Christian ruler who would deliberately
perpetrate such an outrage as that!
"I believe that the author of this war is guilty of the
willful and deliberate murder of every man and boy who has
been killed in it or who has come to his death by wounds or
sickness einsed by it. And I believe further, that now is the




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time to put a stop to such crimes, if ever they are to be
stopped.
"America has been the great example and great hope of
the lovers of liberty and humanity and self-government
throughout the world. She started gloriously on her high
career as a nation. Her great statesmen held her steadily to
the principles upon which she was founded. She had more
great and good chief magistrates in one hundred years than
Great Britain has had in five hundred, and it would be the
saddest picture in the book of time if she should continue in
the downward road upon which she has now entered. Nothing but the most determined effort can save her, for it is as
true of nations as it is of individuals, as the history of the
world has demonstrated that
"'The gates of hell are open night and day,
Smooth's the descent and easy is the way;
But to return and view the cheerful skies,
In this the task and mighty labor lies.'
"An English historian, in speaking of the despotism of
Henry the Eighth, says: 'All sense of loyalty to England, to
its freedom, to its institutions, has utterly passed away. The
one duty which fills the statesman's mind is a duty to his
prince, a prince whose personal will and appetite were overriding the highest interests of the state, trampling under foot
the wisest councils, and crushing with the blind ingratitude
of a fate the servants who opposed him.'
"The distinction here made by the historian between loyalty to one's country and devotion to an unprincipled ruler,
who would sacrifice the best interests of that country to
gratify himself, should never be forgotten. It is the sup



The Great Trial of the


port, both in war and in peace, of the highest interests and
most lasting good of the nation, and not the support of any
ruler, that makes a man a true patriot. It is a delusion to
suppose that, because the ruler or rulers of a country have
plunged it into an unjust, disgraceful, and ruinous war, its
citizens are bound to support them and are disloyal if they
do not. The makers and supporters of unjust wars use the
word'patriotism' as a ruse to wheedle the people into the support of bad measures, which, as good citizens, they are bound
to and would oppose if they were not frightened from their
propriety by the dread of being called traitors for their opposition. Traitor is a dangerous word and should be handled
very carefully. It is a two-edged sword and is applicable to
rulers as well as ruled, when the occasion demands it.
"I am a Russian and have denounced the arbitrary and
unjust measures of the Czars of my country for many years
-their war measures more than any others-and shall continue to do it as long as I live. If the words 'patriot' and
'traitor' are to be used here, the Czar is not the patriot and
I am not the traitor. Henry the Eighth had Sir Thomas
Moore beheaded for treason for refusing to support him in
one of his arbitrary measures, but Moore was the patriot and
Henry was the traitor. President Polk made the Mexican
War and Mr. Lincoln opposed it and was called a traitor. If
there was any treason in that business, I will submit the
question to the people of the United States to decide who
was the traitor.
"The present chief magistrate of the United States made
and is now prosecuting a war against the inhabitants of the




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Philippine Islands, because they claim the right to freedom
and independence and self-government and refuse to be governed by him. In doing this he is making war upon the Declaration of Independence, upon the constitution of his country, and upon the very principles upon which the government
was founded. There are millions of people in the United
States who believe that war is unjust and unconstitutional,
and that in its ultimate effects and consequences it will be
ruinous to their country.  They therefore oppose it. For
this the President, in his travels through the country, in his
numerous speeches, intimates and implies that they are traitors; and some of his supporters say it plainly. If I were an
American as I am a Russian, and the President should call
me a traitor for opposing his foolish and wicked war, I would
undertake, by word and pen, to make him carry to the end of
his days the mark of being himself a traitor as plainly as if
the word were branded upon his forehead.
"It seems to me almost impossible that any considerable proportion of the American people can be imposed
upon much longer by the enormous deceit, the stupendous
lie, that this war is in favor of their country. It is against
it and against everything good in the political, moral, and
religious world.
"It is understood that the President did not originally
intend to claim the Philippines, much less to take them by
what he called 'criminal aggression.' Their appropriation
was urged upon him by politicians who thought their seizure
would be popular, and by speculators and traders who expected to profit by it, and by well-meaning people who did




The Great Trial of the


not realize the enormity of the spoliation. It is also known
that many of his friends strongly opposed it and that one,
Senator Sewell, of New Jersey, begged him, 'For God's sake,
Mr. President, recall Dewey and let those islands alone!'
There is a world of meaning in that exclamation. It is also
believed, upon good evidence, that the robbery was finally
decided upon by the influence of the British government. If
this is true, it was a bad day for the world when that selfish
monarchy induced the great American republic to adopt her
cold-blooded and rapacious policy.
"The citizens of the United States are the most intelligent people in the world. It is reasonable to conclude that
the delusion under which many of them have been laboring,
that patriotism requires them to support a war begun and
waged for spoil and by the advice of another nation and for
her benefit, must pass away.
"It is to be hoped that their reason and sense of justice
will return to them, that the principles of those great Presidents, Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, will be reestablished in the government of the United States, and that all
its departments may be filled with men who will be faithful to their own country and devoted to the everlasting
truths of their Declaration of Independence."
GENERAL WASHINGTON'S SPEECH.
General Washington was the next speaker. He said:
"In discussing the importance of peace with all nations and
the danger of being hurried into war by passion and preju



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dice, in my farewell address I stated that the nation,
prompted by ill will and resentment, sometimes impels to
war the government contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national
propensity and adopts, through passion, what reason would
reject.
"That statement grew out of the relations of the United
States at that time to foreign nations, but was intended as a
general truth, and has been entirely applicable to this country since the beginning of the agitation against Spain. There
was, to use Mr. Clay's expression, no 'dire necessity' for our
war with Spain. Spain, England, or Russia had, upon principle, the same right to make war upon the United States for
the cruelty with which we treated the negroes and the robbery we practiced upon the Indians, that we had to make
war upon Spain for her robbery of and cruelty to the Cubans.
"The President, according to his own public and positive
statement, was opposed to that war. The quotation I have
made fits the origin of the war with Spain as well as it fitted the occasion for which it was made. That war, in my
opinion, was not the offspring of reason or principle or sound
policy. Its professed object was to secure to the Cubans the
blessings of freedom and self-government. There is not, at
present, very much probability of any other fate for Cuba
than a change of masters. But, however that may be, and
however specious and plausible may have been the reasons
for the war with Spain, and however much good citizens may
have been misled by them, I think it is perfectly clear that
the war upon the Filipinos, because they insist upon their




The Great Trial of the


right to freedom and self-government and refuse to submit
themselves and their country to the United States, is in direct conflict with our Declaration of Independence, with
natural right, and with the revealed will of the Governor of
the Universe.
"It was with great regret that I felt compelled to find a
verdict against the President of the United States. I still
think that it was right. If sustained by the people and Congress, it may avert from our country the punishment which
always follows great national crimes when unrepented of
and unatoned for."
BISHOP SIMPSON'S ADDRESS.
"The subject which the meeting had been called to consider has been so thoroughly discussed that I do not wish to
say much in conclusion, except upon one point. That point
was raised by Mr. Lincoln. He said: 'In discussing the
question of war, Christianity seemed to be a failure.'
"I had occasion many years since to preach a sermon upon that subject, and time has confirmed me in
the views I then expressed. It seems to me that I can do
nothing better in closing this meeting than to give the views
I then expressed, enlarged and ripened by subsequent
experience:
"'The advent of Christ was predicted 4,000 years before
He appeared. This prediction was repeated by the prophet
Isaiah long afterwards in perhaps the grandest prophecy




Nineteenth Century.


105


ever uttered. I will read a part of it for your instruction
and my own:
" '3. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and we hid as it were our
faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
"'4. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our
sorrows; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and
afflicted.
"'5. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he
was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace
was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
"'6. All we like sheep have gone astray; have turned
every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the
iniquity of us all.
"' 7. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet
he opened not his mouth; he is brought as a lamb to
the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so
he opened not his mouth.
"'8. He was taken from prison and from judgment:
and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out
of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people
was he stricken.
"'9. And he made his grave with the wicked, and with
the rich in his death; because he had done no violence,
neither was any deceit in his mouth.
"'10. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath
put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering
for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and
the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.




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"' 11. He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall
be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant
justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.'
"Nineteen hundred years ago, in fulfillment of this
prophecy, Christ came and performed His mission. He
spent his life in doing good and in teaching the best system
of morals and politics and religion ever known among men,
and sent His disciples to proclaim it throughout the world.
"All the suffering, sorrow, humiliation, and shame predicted by the prophet came upon him. He lived a perfect
life and died an infamous death. The greatest writers who
deny His divinity admit the grandeur and glory of His character, and that He was the greatest and best of created beings. Few have been so hardy as to deny that the rules
he left for the guidance of our race, if universally followed,
would transform the earth and lead to universal peace and
happiness.
"No level-headed man can deny this who considers well
the radical nature of the teaching of Christ and the solid and
eternal foundation upon which His religion is based. Its
foundation is love. Not the love of parent and child, of husband or wife, of relative or friend or country, but the love of
all mankind as brethren, having the same origin and the
same destiny.
'It is not easy to realize the far-reaching and revolutionary nature of the teaching of Christ, if carried, as He intended it should be, into every relation of life, including the
laws, politics, and diplomacy of every government. And unless it is in its influence thus all-pervading, it falls far short




Nineteenth Century.


107


of its mission, and is indeed, to use the expression of Mr. Lincoln, 'a failure.' The mission of Christ was to remove evil
from the earth, to spread abroad peace and truth.
"I need not take the time of such an audience as this to
prove that so far the gospel has not succeeded in removing
evil and spreading truth and peace throughout the world.
The world is full of evil, and two of the most unjust wars in
history are now being waged by the two greatest nations,
which are nominally Christian, and all the great nations
of the world are armed to the teeth for war. More than
sixty-two generations have passed away since Christ sent
His apostles to teach all nations, and yet how little has really
been accomplished in morals or religion!
"Take uncivilized countries where the gospel has been
preached: how little effect it has had among them! Come
to civilized lands where the gospel is heard: how little influence it has had! what corruption there is in high places!
Look at society: even among men who pretend to be Christians, how much selfishness there is! how much covetousness! See how wickedness reigns in the world! What is
the trouble? Why has the progress of the Gospel been so
slow?
"I answer that the strongest reason is that the men who
profess to be Christians are such imperfect specimens of
Christianity. Christ selected twelve apostles; what were
they? In the hour of danger one of them cursed and swore.
When Jesus rose from the dead, another doubted. See their
selfishness! Trying, some of them, to be greater than the
rest; wanting, some of them, to sit at His right hand, and




The Great Trial of the


others at his left. How little idea had they of the purity
and spirituality of His kingdom! They longed for a temporal power. Take the church organizations: the leading
men of the church, how inefficient! And there is so little
efficiency in the church as an organization. Go through it;
go into your stores and offices: how little is said of Christ!
how little faith is manifested! And they say, 'What can the
church accomplish?' How little faith that the work can be
done! We assemble in our congregations, but we have no
thought that the city can be conquered.
"Vice is running down our streets; degradation has its
home in our garrets and cellars. Ah! well, if it were confined to garrets and cellars; but vice in its most hideous
forms has its home in your brown-stone houses, your costly
residences.
"Take the literature: how obscene much of it is, and
how poisoning! Take the man who will be a true Christian,
a living earnest man in his shop, his business, his politics,
everywhere, who talks of Jesus and the triumphs of His cross
as he talks of business and trade: he is a singular man and
the world wonders at him.
"I have spoken of covetousness. Perhaps there is no
more general, all-pervading vice, and it leads to so
much crime. We are told that the love of money is the root
of all evil. The churches are full of covetousness and the
love of money. In fact, it has come to pass that money governs nearly every business, political, literary, and religious
organization in this country. Indeed, it controls the government itself and often decides state and national elections.




Nineteenth Century.


109


It elects United States senators and controls them after they
are elected.
"Money was at the bottom of the Philippine and Boer
wars and all the horrors and infamy they have brought in
their train. What did the church in England and America
do to prevent these wars? Nothing! On the contrary, their
influence was the other way, and the blood of thousands of
Filipinos and Americans shed in that unhallowed war is
crying to heaven against the churches as well as against the
speculators, politicians, and traders who made it. The Sermon on the Mount, Paul's sermon on the absolute necessity
of charity (or love), the exhortations of all the apostles, the
dying command of Christ to 'put up the sword, that all who
took the sword should perish by the sword,' have bezn so far
inadequate to the task of turning the so-called Christian churches against this wicked Philippine War.
"This state of things is partly the fault of the clergy, but
more the fault of the men upon whom the clergy depend. A
distinguished clergyman states the case as follows:
" 'Almost more than any other class, the men who minister from our pulpits are becoming the helpless victims of the
most brutal intimidations of money interests. If they preach
the truth which Jesus preached, they will disrupt their congregations, destroy their own reputations, and will be practically blacklisted by the churches. Long years of preparation are required for their calling, and the financial returns
to ability are small. Helpless economic dependence is not a
good school in which to train men for spiritual boldness and
liberty. With the doors of the church closed against him,
after years of preparation, and with a dependent family




The Great Trial of the


about him, it is not wonderful that the pastor seeks truth in
the terms of the existing order.'
"An illustration of the correctness of the foregoing statement occurred recently in one of our cities in a large congregation. In the forenoon the pastor preached against war.
Some of the leading members of the church interviewed him
during the day, and at night he preached in favor of war.
But illustrations are not necessary. The entire history of
Christianity proves the tremendous influence that pecuniary
interest has over the clergy and the people. That history is
darkened by the shadows of many apostates, great and small,
who for filthy lucre, popularity, or office abandoned the service of God and enlisted under the bloody banners of Mars
and Moloch.
"It is true that there have been in all ages, and now are,
noble examples of men who have not bowed the knee to these
blood-thirsty deities. There are men in this country who
would sacrifice their salaries and their lives, if necessary, before they would preach in favor of such an abomination as
this Philippine War, but they are sadly in the minority. At
present nearly every large and popular church organization
goes with the multitude. The really good people among
them, who take Christ at His word and do not attempt to
fritter away His meaning, do not count for much. The organization, as a whole, is governed by fashion and by money.
and is not a very congenial place for poor people, no matter how good they may be. If Christ should suddenly enter
a fashionable church, He would not be welcome. If He were
given a seat at all, it would be as far back as possible.
"The conversion of the world must be commenced in the




Nineteenth Century.


churches, and first of all among the preachers. When they
are truly converted, when they become actual Christians,
when they become sanctified by the truth and the truth has
made them free to carry out and practice their religion
everywhere and live it all the time, then they will have courage to declare the whole counsel of God. Then they will
boldly preach against fraud and falsehood and hypocrisy,
against covetousness, against the love of money, against devotion to fashion; in favor of the love described, commanded,
and practiced by Christ, and the charity preached by Paul;
and against war, the greatest of evils-war which embodies
in itself or carries in its train nearly all evils and all crimes
-war which is the lowest, coarsest, most vulgar and brutal
of all the occupations of man-war which had its origin with
the fallen angels and is the proper profession of devils only.
"The popular notion that war is a great promoter of
civilization is another reason for the demoralization of the
Christian world. The idea is absurd. War is the prolific
fountain of vice and crime, as already shown. War is almost the embodiment of barbarism. How can civilization be
promoted by its opposite, barbarism? Christ exposed the
fallacy of that kind of reasoning when He exploded the
charge of His enemies that He cast out devils by Beelzebub,
the prince of devils.
"Recently the general assembly of the Presbyterian
Church addressed a petition to the President against the
enormous increase of saloons and intemperance in Manila
since its occupancy by the American Army. This is like 'locking the stable door after the horse has been stolen.' If the
clergy of the United States had been as earnest in opposing
-— 8




The Great Trial of the


the beginning of the war as they now are in trying to abate
one of its many evil consequences, their united and determined influence might have prevented it, and the four
hundred saloons of which they complain would not have
been started. The war caused the saloons, and their apathy
is, to a considerable extent, responsible for the war.
"I say their apathy, because, to their credit be it spoken,
a large majority of them did not really preach in favor of it.
That kind of preachers are not very numerous in the Christian church, and it is well that they are not. Of all the monstrosities this world exhibits, a preacher of the gospel of the
Prince of Peace who advocates a foreign war of aggression
and conquest to acquire territory, extend commerce, and increase trade and wealth, in the name of Christian civilization, is perhaps the greatest. It is difficult to conceive of a
greater moral paradox. Such preachers crucify the Son of
God afresh and put Him to an open shame. Of whom Isaiah
said: 'Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil;
that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that
put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!' And against
whom Christ hurled that terrible denunciation: 'Woe unto
you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!' 'Ye serpents, ye
generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of
hell?'
"When the impostor who, under the name of American
civilization, established the four hundred saloons in Manila
gets his gambling-houses and all the other places of vice and
crime which accompany or follow such a war in full and successful operation, he will be prepared to take off the mask.




Nineteenth Century.


113


He can then safely put to the victims of his guile the same
terrible question asked by the unveiled prophet of Khorassan of his deluded and astonished victim.
"At the rate we are now going, Manila is likely to become in time as good a specimen of the civilization wrought
by such a war as Calcutta, the capital of British India, after
a commixture of 'criminal aggression' and 'benevolent assimilation' had been tried upon that country for generations.
A distinguished English writer described that city as 'a gorgeous monument of rapine, a painted sepulchre of crime.'
"Christ prayed that His disciples might all be one in
Him and His Father: 'That the world may believe that thou
hast sent me.' Similar reasoning will govern the modern
world. When men see that the clergy are actuated by the
spirit of Christ and governed by His precepts in all their
ways, they will be prepared to accept a religion which bears
such good fruits.
"But you ask me when this will be. How long will the
world have to wait till the evils and crimes of humanity will
be ended by the universal acceptance and practice of the religion of Christ? I answer, I cannot tell. I do not know.
We must wait and see. It was forty centuries from the time
Christ was promised till He came. He waited for the fullness of time; waited till men had exhausted their plans;
waited until the world was weary with attempting to conquer human ills and human errors; waited until the wisest
philosophers had taught, until the most eloquent orators had
spoken, until the strongest governments had tried their
schemes; waited until Egypt had risen in learning and then
sunk to ruin; waited until Babylon and all her glory had per



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ished, until Greece with all her philosophy and arts was a
failure; waited until Rome seated on her seven hills, and
grasping the known world, had gathered her poets, painters,
and philosophers, and yet in the midst of her glory was rushing headlong to ruin, and poor humanity was uttering the
cry, 'What must we do to be saved?' Then, when man could
do no more, Christ came.
"The world has waited since His advent nineteen hundred years to be conquered by His spirit and His precepts.
No man knoweth how much longer it must wait. The times
and seasons and the reason why we must wait are known
only to God. He is His own interpreter, and He will make
it plain.
"But I think we have passed the sonship and childhood
of Christianity-the age when it astonished by its miracle
and wonders, when it simply stirred the intellectual powers
of the world. We have reached the point where it has laid its
hands upon the powers of the earth, and it is opening its
heart of sympathy and taking in the lowest of the low-all
forms of suffering and misfortune-and the next age that
shall be developed is that of the Prince of Peace. I see the
era coming. I see it in the proposals to arbitrate and in the
efforts to avoid war. The age is coming when out of the heart
of the everlasting Father shall be developed the reign of the
Prince of Peace. Christ is to reign King of Kings and Lord
of Lords; and as He reigns the sword shall be beaten into
the plowshare and the spear into the pruning-hook, and men
shall learn war no more. And when that age comes, of His
dominion there shall be no end. He shall reign until the universe shall crown Him Lord of all.




Nineteenth Century.


"The nations which ought to lead in this regeneration of
our race are Great Britain and the United States, and I
earnestly hope they will. And I fervently pray that the
Boer and Philippine wars will be the last exhibitions which
these nations will ever give of the rapacity which they inherited from their heathen ancestors. Their privileges and
blessings have been greater than those of any other nations,
and their obligations to God and humanity are greater.
"I think they will realize this more and more from year
to year, and 1 hope that ere long they will awake to a consciousness of the wrongs they have inflicted upon those unfortunate peoples, restore all their rights to them, atone, as
far as possible, for all the evil they have done them, and be
forgiven. Even the author or authors of the war against the
Filipinos, who have caused so much intemperance, disease,
insanity, and the slaughter of so many thousand men; even
they, stained as they are, with so much blood unrighteously
shed, may be forgiven. The Great Prophet assures us that
'though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow;
though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.' Even
wholesale murder may be forgiven.
"In that noble passage from Isaiah which I read in opening this discourse it is said of Christ: 'He shall see the travail of his soul and be satisfied.' He could not be satisfied
without the salvation from slavery and sin and want of all
the race He died to save. Every continent and every island
of the sea shall be redeemed. Ethiopia shall stretch out her
hands to God. And the dark continent of Africa, so long
the prey of the white man, shall be lighted up by the Sun of
Righteousness, who shall shine upon all her deserts, and in




The Great Trial of the


all her waste places, and o'er all her blood-stained fields,
with healing in His beams, for all her woes.
"But though men are to be saved and the world is to be
redeemed and regenerated, you are not to infer that either
individuals or nations can escape the natural consequences
of their evil deeds. Christ came to save His people from
their sins, not from the consequences of their evil deeds.
These were interwoven by the Creator in the very framework of the universe, and can neither be avoided nor escaped.
The evils that men do live after them, and cannot be undone.
The forty thousand men who have been slaughtered in this
lamentable Philippine War cannot be restored to life.
"The thousands of maimed bodies and ruined constitutions will remain maimed and ruined. The enormous cost of
the war must be paid by the people. The intemperance, profligacy, corruption, and other evils caused by it will continue
long after the present conflict is ended. And the disgrace of
making such a war will endure as long as the history of the
nation.
"I entreat my countrymen, and also my countrywomen,
who have suffered so long and so much from this curse, and
I implore all of my brethren and sisters of the Christian Church, of all denominations, to use all their influence
to put a final end to this greatest scourge of the human race.
I assure the young men of my country that it is a great delusion to suppose that honor or glory can be acquired in an
unjust or an unnecessary war. Such a war, no matter how
successful it may be, is a disgrace and shame. Nothing but
righteousness exalteth a nation, and nothing but sin is a disgrace to any people. If the young men.of this country




Nineteenth Century.


117


would win true and lasting honor and glory, let them engage
in a bloodless contest with war itself and fight it to the end.
"The Great Apostle tells us that 'one star excelleth another in glory.' In the celestial world of the future, his star
shall be the brightest who has done the most to put war and
all the enemies of our race under the feet of the Prince of
Peace. The glory of Sirius, that matchless star that now
shines nightly above us, is material and transitory. But the
glory of the men who spend their lives in the regeneration
and redemption of mankind will continue to shine, with undiminished radiance, after the material heavens have been
rolled together as a scroll and the elements have melted with
fervent heat.
"I should rejoice if, in closing this discussion, I could
inspire this audience with the confidence which I feel in the
future. I have an abiding faith in the abolition of war and
the redemption of man. I shall not live to see it, but it will
come before the close of the next century, and maybe before
the end of the next generation.
"The present fearful demoralization in church and state
will pass away. The craze in favor of war will be followed
by a reaction in favor of peace. In 1854 slavery, the next
evil in magnitude to war, seemed stronger than ever before.
In ten years it was abolished. The means taken to extend
and perpetuate it hastened its destruction.  So it will be
with war. This miserable Boer and Philippine business will
so extend and strengthen the abhorrence of war throughout
the world as to compel the nations to abolish it.
"Some of you, perhaps, fear the spirit of unrest that pervades the nations. Fear not. The spirit you see moving on




118


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the face of the troubled waters is a benign and not an evil
spirit. The ear of faith can hear it repeating those words of
hope and encouragement uttered long ago upon a stormy
sea: 'Be of good cheer. It is I. Be not afraid.'
"As I close this address the predictions of prophets and
songs of poets foretelling and describing the blissful reign
of Messiah seem to crowd my memory. I give you in conclusion a few cheering and inspiring lines from one of them:
'No more shall nation against nation rise,
Nor ardent warriors meet with hateful eyes:
Nor fields with gleaming steel be covered o'er,
The brazen trumpets kindle rage no more;
But useless lances into scythes shall bend,
And the broad falchion in a plonghshare end.
All crimes shall cease, and ancient fraud shall fail:
Returning Justice lift aloft her scale,
Peace o'er the world her olive wand extend
And white robed Innocence from heaven descend.
No more the rising sun shall gild the morn,
Nor evening Cynthia fill her silver horn:
But lost, dissolved in thy superior rays,
One tide of glory, one unclouded blaze,
O'erflow thy courts: The Light Himself shall shine
Revealed, and God's eternal day be thine!
The seas shall waste, the skies in smoke decay,
Rocks fall to dust and mountains melt away;
But fixed His word, His saving power remains,
Thy Realm forever lasts, thy own Messiah reigns.' 




Nineteenth Century.


119


CONCLUSION.
The speech of Bishop Simpson occupied nearly an hour
in the delivery. I have given the substance of it, but very
imperfectly. The presence and manner of the speaker added
much to the effect of it, and the fact of his long and intimate
personal and political friendship for Mr. Lincoln added
more. He held the undivided attention of the entire audience and the effect of his address was evidently very great.
After the Bishop closed, Mr. Clay took the platform
and offered a series of resolutions for adoption by the meeting-declaring that the war against the Filipinos was unjustly and unconstitutionally begun by the President-that
they were the owners of their own country and had a right
to freedom and independence and self-government, and that
no nation had a right to force any form of government upon
them against their own consent. And requesting Congress
to put an immediate stop to the war, and the President to
enter promptly into a treaty of peace with the Filipinos
upon the basis of their freedom and independence.
He explained each resolution briefly, and then for a few
minutes addressed the meeting, urging their unanimous
adoption. It was the most eloquent speech I ever heard. His
appeal to those who professed to be followers of Christ was
irresistible. He stated that he was himself a member of a
Christian church, and that he expected soon to stand before
the judgment-seat of Christ, and there to meet the inhabitants of those islands, who had been persecuted so long by
professedly Christian men.




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He wished to meet them feeling that his garments were
not stained with their blood. In that awful presence he
wished to know that his robe was white and pure, and he
appealed to all his hearers to so vote now and act hereafter
that they could feel, in the presence of their final Judge, that
they had done their whole duty to these unfortunate people
and all others.
The effect of this speech was shown in the vote upon the
resolutions. It seemed to be the unanimous voice of twenty
thousand people. It seemed to pierce the roof of the building, and to reach the very throne of the Almighty Power before whom Mr. Clay had summoned his audience.
The noise awoke me from my long sleep. The great
auditorium, the vast audience, the tall commanding form of
the speaker, the sad earnest face of Mr. Lincoln, the benign
countenance of Bishop Simpson, the majestic form of Washington-the whole wonderful scene in which I had been entranced for so many hours faded away and left nothing behind but the remembrance of a dream.




Nineteenth Century.


APPENDIX.
Note to Bishop Simpson's sermon (taken from the Literary Digest for March, 1900).
"* * * Regret is expressed by several papers for the
state of affairs pictured in a number of reports from the
Philippines, which seem to agree that there is an immense
amount of drunkenness among the Americans there. President Schurman, of the Philippine Commission, it will be remembered, said publicly soon after his return to this country: 'I regret that Americans have been allowed to establish saloons in the Philippines, for the Filipinos are a temperate people, and the sight of an intoxicated American disgusts them. Nothing has done so much damage to the reputation of the American people as this.' Captain Frank M.
Wells, chaplain of the First Regiment of Tennessee Volunteers, who describes himself as 'an Administration man
clear through,' said in an address in Washington, February
11th, that 'before the American troops entered Manila there
were only three saloons in the city, and that in each only
soft drinks were sold; but that now there are four hundred
saloons, selling whisky. And the drunkenness seems to be
as bad afloat as ashore.' He said:
"'While on board one of the transports to Cebu, I found
that liquor-selling was the same as on the other transports.
I tried to have it stopped, but failed. I took special care of
the men in my regiment, with the determination that if I
could not save their souls, I would at least get them to hell
sober. I never saw so much liquor on a Mississippi steamboat, and I have traveled on a good many, as I saw on the
transport Sheridan the last three days we were in Cebu,'




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"Similar testimony was given a few weeks ago by Lieutenant E. Hearne, of the Fifty-first Iowa Volunteers, who had
just returned from Manila. In an address in New York City
he said:
"'The Filipinos, while pagans and semi-civilized, are
moral and sober. They first learn of Christianity from the
profane sailor, and when they see immense numbers of
drunken, profane, and immoral soldiers representing this
country, they have little respect for the religion they profess.
'If that is your religion,' they say, 'we prefer our own.' The
soldier, when associated with others, loses his identity.
Then his savage and lower nature displays itself. This is
particularly true of the soldier in the Philippines, idle under
a tropical sun. He loses all his religion. It is our duty first
to send out Christian soldiers if we expect to make any sort
of impression on the people there.'
"Mr. W. B. Miller, who has charge of the Army and Navy
work of the Young Men's Christian Association, said in an
address at the same meeting:
"'So great was the effect of the drunkenness and irreverence of the American soldier in the Philippines that one
man, writing to me from Manila, said that two missionaries
gave up their work among the natives and went to work on
the army. They realized the uselessness of their work when
there was an immoral and drunken army representing this
country on hand. One drunken soldier can do more evil than
two missionaries can undo. The sending of whisky and
questionable things to Manila is not a badge of honor for this
country.'




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123


"The latest report from Manila on this phase of expansion comes from Mr. H. Irving Hancock, Manila correspondent of Leslie's Weekly, who says:
" 'Of all the problems that confront us in the reconstruction of the Philippines, the gravest and wickedest is one of
our own importation. The Manila saloons, taken collectively,
are the worst possible kind of a blot on Uncle Sam's fair
name. The city's air reeks with the odors of the worst of
English liquors. And all this has come to pass since the
13th day of August, 1898! * * * * To-day there is no
thoroughfare of length in Manila that has not its long line
of saloons. The street-cars carry flaunting advertisements of
this brand of whisky and that kind of gin. The local papers
derive their main revenue from the displayed advertisements
of firms and companies eager for their share of Manila's
drink-money. The city presents to the new-comer a Saturnalia of alcoholism. * * *
" 'I do not mean this as a tirade against all saloons. It
is only a much-needed protest against the worst features of
the American saloon that have crept into Manila arm in arm
with our boasted progress. There is nowhere in the world
such an excessive amount of drinking, per capita, as among
the few thousand Americans at present living in Manila.
Nor does this mean that we have sent the worst dregs of
Americanism there. Far from it; some of the best American
blood is represented in Manila. There are men of brains and
attainment there, who would nobly hold up our name were it
not for the saloon at every step. Gamblers and depraved
women-in both classes the very dregs of this and other
countries-have followed, and work hand in hand with their




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natural ally. These people are fast teaching the natives the
depths of Caucasian wickedness, and the natives imagine it
is Americanism. * * * *
"'Chairman Schurman of the Philippine Commission
voices his regret that the American saloon was ever permitted to make its advent in Manila. Well may he regret it, as
may every other American too who has been in Manila during the past year. It is a great mistake to suppose that
every officer, soldier, and sailor in the Philippines is drinking
to excess, but some of them do, and the same is true of a
great percentage of the civilians. The native is not discriminating, and attributes this vice to all Americans. If saloons were carefully and honestly restricted in number and
put under the rigid regulations that decency requires, this
shame of Uncle Sam would quickly vanish. It is the glaring opportunity for drunkenness that does so much harm.
"'So far as my observation went, I found that the military authorities of Manila were not on record as having done
anything to abate this crying disgrace. Indeed, one American officer, fairly high in the councils at the palace, is the
putative head of the concern that is doing the most to encourage and supply the thirst of Manila. We tried to civilize the Indian, and incidentally wiped him off the earth by
permitting disreputable white traders to supply him with ardent liquors. Are we to repeat this disgrace tenfold, as we
at present seem fair to do, in the Philippines?' "
"A Crime Against a People.-The American soldiers, however, might drink themselves into death or idiocy, and it
would be of less ultimate consequence than the simple fact
of the introduction of the liquor traffic into the Philippine




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125


Islands. In one respect, at least, the civilization of the Filipinos was superior to our own, and that was in the use of intoxicating drinks. All travelers have testified to their temperateness and their very slight use of intoxicants. Our first
step has been to flood their towns and cities with whisky,
and thus break down a conspicuous native virtue. For this
liquor curse must remain in the Philippines long after the
bulk of the American army has been withdrawn. It is the
experience in all tropical countries that the whisky habit,
once it secures a foot-hold, is difficult to extirpate. Whisky
is a great decimater of tropical populations.
"The seriousness of the crime thus committed must be
confessed by the Government itself, since, in its view, the
Filipinos must be regarded as children.  What would the
world think of a nation that deliberately or heedlessly led
millions of children into the liquor habit for the sake of
profit? It is certainly remarkable that the Government,
while regarding the Filipinos as children in their political
capacity to govern themselves, should regard them as thoroughly mature in their capacity to govern their physical appetites. The Government has been extremely solicitous not
to grant the Filipinos self-rule in political affairs, yet it has
left them the prey of American rum-sellers in social affairs.
"One does not need to be a prohibitionist in the United
States to believe that the sudden and unrestrained introduction of the liquor traffic into a country where it had
never before existed was a crime against heaven and earth.
The traffic could have been forbidden at the outset by one
man; it could be forbidden to-day by one man, because the




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whole archipelago is under martial law."-The Springfield
Republican.
Extract from a speech delivered at a great public dinner
given to Mr. Webster at Philadelphia, on the 2d of December, 1846, on the "War Power."
"* * * But the annexation was completed. The
western boundary was a matter about which disputes existed or must arise. There was, as between us and Mexico, as
there had been between Texas and Mexico, no ascertained
and acknowledged western boundary.
"This was the state of things after the annexation of
Texas, and when the President began military movements
in that direction. Now, gentlemen, that I may misrepresent
nobody, and say nothing which has not been clearly proved
by official evidence, I will proceed to state to you three
propositions, which, in my opinion, are fairly sustained by
the correspondence of the government in its various branches
and departments, as officially communicated to Congress.
"First-That the President directed the occupation of a
territory by force of arms, to which the United States had
no ascertained title; a territory which, if claimed by the
United States, was also claimed by Mexico, and was at the
time in her actual occupation and possession.
"The Texan convention was to assemble July 4, 1845,
to pass upon the annexation. Before this date, to-wit, on
the 28th day of May, General Taylor was ordered to move towards Texas; and on the 15th day of June he was instructed
by a letter from Mr. Bancroft to enter Texas and concentrate




Nineteenth Century.


127


his forces on its 'western boundary,' and to select and occupy a position 'on or near the Rio Grande, to protect what,
in the event of annexation, will be our western border.'
"That the United States had no ascertained title to the
territory appears from Mr. Marcy's letter to General Taylor
of July 30, 1845. General Taylor is there informed that
what he is to 'occupy, defend, and protect' is 'the territory
of Texas, to the extent that it has been occupied by the people of Texas.' It appears in the dispatch last quoted, that
this territory had been occupied by Mexico.
"Mr. Marcy goes on to say: 'The Rio Grande is claimed
to be the boundary between the two countries, and up to this
boundary you are to extend your protection, only excepting
any posts on the eastern side thereof which are in the actual
occupancy of Mexican forces, or Mexican settlements over
which the republic of Texas did not exercise jurisdiction at
the period of annexation, or shortly before that event.'
"This makes it perfectly clear that the United States had
neither an ascertained nor an apparent title to this territory;
for it admits that Texas only made a claim to it, Mexico having an adverse claim, and having also actual possession.
"Second-That as early as July, 1845, the President knew
as well as others acquainted with the subject, that this territory was in the actual possession of Mexico; that it contained Mexican settlements, over which Texas had not exercised jurisdiction, up to the time of annexation.
"On the 8th of July the Secretary of War wrote to
General Taylor that 'this department is informed that
Mexico has some military establishments on the east side of




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the Rio Grande, which are, and for some time have been, in
the actual occupancy of her troops.' On the 30th of July
the Secretary wrote as already mentioned, directing General
Taylor to except from his protection 'any posts on the
eastern side thereof [of the Rio Grande] which are in the
actual occupancy of Mexican forces, or Mexican settlements
over which the republic of Texas did not exercise jurisdiction at the period of annexation, or shortly before that
event.'
"It manifestly appears to have been the intention of the
President, from the 28th day of May down to the consummation of his purpose, to take possession of this territory by
force of arms, however unwilling Mexico might be to yield
it, or whatever might turn out on examination to be her right
to retain it. He intended to extinguish the Mexican title by
force; otherwise his acts and instructions are inexplicable.
"The government maintained from the first, that the Rio
Grande was the western boundary of Texas, as appears from
the letters to General Taylor of the 28th day of May and 15th
day of June, 1845. On the 15th day of June, General Taylor
was instructed to take such a position 'on or near the Rio
Grande' as 'will be best to repel invasion and protect what,
in the event of annexation, will be our western boundary.'
In accordance with these are also the instructions of July
30th, to which I have already referred.
"On the 6th day of August the Secretary wrote to General Taylor: 'Although a state of war with Mexico or an invasion of Texas by her forces may not take place, it is, nevertheless, deemed proper and necessary that your force should




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129


be fully equal to meet with certainty of success any crisis
which may arise in Texas, and which would require you by
force -of arms to carry out the instructions of the government.' He is then, in the same letter, authorized to procure volunteers from Texas. On the 23d day of August the
Secretary instructed General Taylor thus: 'Should Mexico
assemble a large body of troops on the Rio Grande, and
cross it with a considerable force, such a movement must be
regarded as an invasion of the United States and the commencement of hostilities.' He is then instructed how to assemble a large force. On the 30th day of August he was instructed, in case any Mexican force crossed the Rio Grande,
'to drive all Mexican troops beyond it'; that  any attempt by
the Mexicans to cross the river with a considerable force
would be regarded as an invasion; and that on such an
event, namely, 'in case of war, either declared or made manifest by hostile acts,' he was not to confine his action within
the territory of Texas. On the 16th day of October the Secretary wrote that 'the information which we have here renders it probable that no serious attempt will, at present, be
made by Mexico to invade Texas.' But General Taylor is
still instructed to hold the country between the Nueces and
the Rio Grande. 'Previous instructions will have put you
in possession of the views of the government of the United
States, not only as to the extent of its territorial claims, but
of its determination to assert them.'
"He is directed to put his troops into winter quarters, accordingly, as near the Rio Grande as circumstances will permit. Up to this time and to the 11th day of March, 1846,
General Taylor was at Corpus Christi. The open and de



1.30


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cided step was taken on the 13th day of January. On that
day the Secretary of War directed General Taylor to march
to the Rio Grande and to take up a position opposite Matamoras. He is instructed, in so doing, in case Mexico should
declare war, or commit any open act of hostility, not to act
merely on the defensive. Throughout the correspondence it
is plain that the intention was to extinguish the Mexican title to this territory by armed occupation; and the instructions are explicit, to treat every assertion of title or movement on the part of Mexico as an act of hostility and to proceed accordingly and resist it.
"To show how Gen. Taylor understood the instructions
of his government, it may be observed that on the 2d day of
March, thirty miles from Matamoras, at a stream called the
Arroyo Colorado, he was met by a party of Mexicans, whose
commanding officer informed him that if he crossed the
stream, it would be deemed a declaration of war, and put into his hand a copy of General Mejias's proclamation to that
effect. Notwithstanding this, General Taylor put his forces
in order of battle, crossed the stream, and pushed on, the
Mexicans retreating. He arrived on the Rio Grande, opposite Matamoras, on the 29th day of March.
"Let me now ask your attention to an extract from a letter from Mr. Buchanan to Mr. Slidell, of January 20, 1846.
In this letter Mr. Buchanan says:
" 'In the mean time the President, in anticipation of the
final refusal of the Mexican government to receive you, has
ordered the Army of Texas to advance and take position on
the left bank of the Rio Grande; and has directed that




Nineteenth Century.


131


a strong fleet shall be immediately assembled in the Gulf of
Mexico. He will thus be prepared to act with vigor and
promptitude the moment that Congress shall give him the
authority.'
"Now, if, by this advance of troops, possession would be
taken on the extreme line claimed by us, what further
vigorous action did the President expect Congress to authorize? Did he expect Congress to make a general declaration
of war? Congress was then in session. Why not consult it?
Why take a step not made necessary by any pressing danger,
and which might naturally lead to war, without requiring
the authority of Congress in advance? With Congress is the
power of peace and war; to anticipate its decision by the
adoption of measures leading to war is nothing less than an
executive interference with the legislative power. Nothing
but the necessity of self-defense could justify the sending of
troops into a territory claimed and occupied by a power with
which at that time no war existed. And there was, I think,
no case of such necessity of self-defence. Mr. Slidell replied
to Mr. Buchanan on the 17th day of February, saying: 'The
advance of General Taylor's force to the left bank of the Rio
Grande and the strengthening of our squadron in the Gulf
are wise measures, which may exercise a salutary influence
upon the course of this government.'
"The army was thus ordered to the extreme limits of our
claim; to our utmost boundary, as asserted by ourselves; and
here it was to be prepared to act further, and to act with
promptitude and vigor. Now, it is a very significant inquiry,
'Did the President mean by this to bring on, or to run the
risk of bringing on, a general war?' Did he expect to be




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authorized by Congress to prosecute a general war of invasion and acquisition? I repeat the question, Why not
take the opinion of Congress, it then being in session, before
any war-like movement was made? Mr. Buchanan's letter is
of the 20th day of January. The instructions to march to
the Rio Grande had been given on the 13th. Congress was
in session all this time; and why should, and why did, the
executive take so important a step, not necessary for selfdefence and leading to immediate war, without the authority
of Congress? This is a grave question and well deserves an
answer.
"Allow me to repeat, for it is a matter of history, that before and at the time when these troops were ordered to the
left bank of the Rio Grande there was no danger of invasion
by Mexico or apprehension of hostilities by her. This is perfectly evident from General Taylor's letters to the government through the preceding summer and down to the time
the orders were given.
"I now refer to these letters.
"On the 15th day of August, General Taylor writes: 'In
regard to the force at other points on the Rio Grande, except
the militia of the country, I have no information; nor do I
hear that the reported concentration at Matamoras is for any
purpose of invasion.' On the 20th day of August he says:
'Caravans of traders arrive occasionally from  the Rio
Grande, but bring no news of importance. They represent
that there are no regular troops on that river except at Matamoras, and do not seem to be aware of any preparations for
a demonstration on this bank of the river.' On the 6th day




Nineteenth Century.


133


of September he writes thus: 'I have the honor to report
that a confidential agent, despatched some days since to
Matamoras, has returned and reports that no extraordinary
preparations are going forward there; that the garrison doer;
not seem to have been increased, and that our consul is of
the opinion that there will be no declaration of war.' On
the 11th day of October he says: 'Recent arrivals from the
Rio Grande bring no news or information of a different aspect from that which I reported in my last. The views expressed in previous communications relative to the pacific
disposition of the border people on both sides of the river are
continually confirmed.' This was the last dispatch, I presume, received by the War Department before giving the
order of January 13th for the march of the army.
"A month after the order of march had been given all
General Taylor's previous accounts were confirmed by him.
On the 16th day of February he thus writes to the AdjutantGeneral at Washington: 'Many reports will doubtless reach
the Department giving exaggerated accounts of Mexican preparations to resist our advance, if not indeed to attempt an
invasion of Texas. Such reports have been circulated even
at this place, and owe their origin to personal interests connected with the stay of the army here. I trust they will receive no attention at the War Department. From the best
information I am able to obtain, and which I deem as authentic as any, I do not believe that our advance to the banks of
the Rio Grande will be resisted. The army, however, will go
fully prepared for a state of hostilities, should they unfortunately be provoked by the Mexicans.'
"This official correspondence proves, I think, that there




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was no danger of invasion or of hostilities of any kind
from Mexico at the time of the march of the army. It must,
in fact, be plain to everybody that the ordering of the army
to the Rio Grande was a step naturally, if not necessarily,
tending to provoke hostilities and to bring on war. I shall
use no inflammatory or exciting language, but it seems to me
that this whole proceeding is against the spirit of the Constitution and the just limitations of the different departments
of the government; an act pregnant with serious consequences and of dangerous precedent to the public liberties.
"No power but Congress can declare war. But what is
the value of this constitutional provision if the President of
his own authority may make such military movements as
must bring on war? If the war power be in Congress, then
everything tending directly or naturally to bring on war
should be referred to the discretion of Congress. Was this
order of march given in the idle hope of coercing Mexico to
treat? If so, idle it was, as the event proved. But it was
something worse than a mistake or a blunder; it was, as it
seems to me, an extension of executive authority of a very
dangerous character. I see no necessity for it and no apology for it, since Congress was in session at the same moment
at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, and might have
been consulted."




Nineteenth Century.


135


Extracts from a speech of Mr. Clay in the House of
Representatives March 24, 1818, on his motion providing
for a minister to the United Provinces of Rio de la Plata.
This speech contains the true, well-settled American
doctrine, against which the United States is fighting in the
Philippine Islands.
* * * * * * "But I take a broader and a bolder position. I maintain that an oppressed people are authorized,
whenever they can, to rise and to break their fetters. This
was the great principle of the English Revolution. It was
the great principle of our own. Vattel, if authority were
wanting, expressly supports this right. We must pass sentence of condemnation upon the founders of our liberty, say
that they were rebels, traitors, and that we are at this moment legislating without competent powers, before we can
condemn the cause of Spanish America. Our Revolution was
mainly directed against the mere theory of tyranny. We had
suffered comparatively but little; we had, in some respects,
been kindly treated; but our intrepid and intelligent fathers
saw, in the usurpation of the power to levy an inconsiderable tax, the long train of oppressive acts that were to follow. They rose, they breasted the storm, they achieved our
freedom. Spanish America for centuries has been doomed
to the practical effects of an odious tyranny. If we were justified, she is more than justified."
"I am no propagandist. I would not seek to force upon
other nations our principles and our liberty if they did -not




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want them. I would not disturb the repose even of a detestable despotism. But if an abused and oppressed people
will their freedom; if they seek to establish it; if, in truth,
they have established it-we have a right, as a sovereign
power, to notice the fact, and to act as circumstances and
our interest require. I will say, in the language of the venerated father of my country, 'Born in a land of liberty, my
anxious recollections, my sympathetic feelings, and my best
wishes are irresistibly excited, whensoever, in any country,
I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners of freedom.'
Whenever I think of Spanish America, the image irresistibly
forces itself upon my mind of an elder brother whose education has been neglected, whose person has been abused and
maltreated, and who has been disinherited by the unkindness
of an unnatural parent. And when I contemplate the
glorious struggle which that country is now making, I think
I behold that brother rising by the power and energy of his
fine native genius to the manly rank which Nature and Nature's God intended for him."  * * * * * * * *
"The independence of Spanish America, then, is an
interest of primary consideration. Next to that, and highly
important in itself, is the consideraton of the nature of their
governments. That is a question, however, for themselves.
They will, no doubt, adopt those kinds of government which
are best suited to their condition, best calculated for their
happiness. Anxious as I am that they should be free governments, we have no right to prescribe for them. They are,
and ought to be, the sole judges for themselves. I am
strongly inclined to believe that they will in most, if not all
parts of their country, establish free governments. We are




Nineteenth Century.


137


their great example. Of us they constantly speak as of
brothers, having a similar origin. They adopt our principles, copy our institutions, and, in many instances, employ
the very language and sentiments of our revolutionary
papers.
"But it is sometimes said that they are too ignorant and
too superstitious to admit of the existence of free government. This charge of ignorance is often urged by persons
themselves actually ignorant of the real condition of that
people. I deny the alleged fact of ignorance; I deny the inference from that fact, if it were true, that they want capacity for free government; and I refuse to assent to the further conclusion, if the fact were true and the inference just,
that we are to be indifferent to their fate."
* * * * * * "The fact is not therefore true, that
the imputed ignorance exists; but, if it do, I repeat, I dispute
the inference. It is the doctrine of thrones, that man is too
ignorant to govern himself. Their partisans assert his incapacity in reference to all nations; if they can not command
universal assent to the proposition, it is then demanded as
to particular nations, and our pride and our presumption too
often make converts of us. I contend that it is to arraign
the dispositions of Providence himself to suppose that He
has created beings incapable of governing themselves and to
be trampled on by kings. Self-government is the natural
government of man, and for proof I refer to the aborigines
of our own land." * * * * * *








Nin ctcnth ('Centry.             1


139


ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
(A lecture delivered by Samuel C. Parks, January, 1894,
before the Oratorical Association of Michigan University.)
Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Oratorical Association:
The traveler who ascends the Pacific coast from the
Golden Gate to the British possessions as he approaches the
mouth of the great river Columbia may stand upon the deck
of the steamer and see, far to the northeast, a lofty mountain, its summit above the clouds and covered with perpetual
snow.
The traveler who descends that coast from the North
Pacific may see to the southeast the same great object far inland, and overlooking the States of Oregon and Washington.
The miner returning to the great ocean from the depths
of Idaho may see, from the summit of the Blue Mountains
of Eastern Oregon, the same stupendous landmark more than
two hundred and fifty miles to the west, and shining bright,
golden, and glorious in the rays of the morning or the evening sun. It is Mt. Hood, one of the giants of the Cascade
Mountains, one of the great landmarks of the Pacific coast,
and an everlasting monument of the wisdom and power of
the Creator,
In the moral as well as the material world there are
great landmarks for the instruction and guidance of mankind. They are evolved, in the providence of God, from civil,
religious, or social convulsions, and serve through all time as
beacon-lights to warn and guide the historian, the philosopher, and the statesman. Such were the establishment of




The, (beat Trial of the


Christiaini ty- the Rieformtinafon of Ii uther, the French Revolution, flie~ American Revolution, the, discovery of America,
and the administration of Abraham Linlcoln.
It is of this man, who, more than ainy others, was the
in'utrunwien iiised by Providence in the erection of the last
great laindnimak of human p)rogress, that I have undertaken
to speak~ to-night.
So much has been said afnd w~ritten upon this subject
within the last thirty years, by the be-st speakers and writers
of the age,-(. that very few mnen can now expect to say anything wic   has not already been better said. Mv, only hope,
of being- able to entertain von consists in giving something
ol m,11y own Jpersontal recollections, of Mr. Lincoln, and my
opinion of him as a mnan, as a, lawyer, as an ora tor, and as
a statesm)an, foundedA prin cipally upoi m   own — pelsoflal
I. AAas very well tacqua,_inted with Mr. Li.ncoln f rom the
c-ear 1-840 until his defAih in I S(5; Sand], dur-ing the greater
part of that time, mny r~elations,- with him wvere intimate and
confidentia~l. If my opinion of him s~hould not be found to
taftrree4 hin all respec~ts, w~ith the view generally accepted, I
cafruly- say-t that it wa111s' niot lightly nor hastily f ormed.
Thei recent biographios of Mr. Lincoln have undertaken
to giethe pulcevery fc of his citr           n   vry, phase
of his chiaracter-public and] private. Properly or impiroperl-v, the veil has been lifted from his entire life. A-nd his
countrymen now have a right to know him as he was, in
every,- shtage of his unparalleled career.
Alr. Linc.oln was born, as von ame aware, in IHardin
(Iun-tv, Kentuckyv. in 18019. H~e ttoved to Spenccr County,




Ninteteenlth Cent ury.


Indiana, with his father's family, in 1816, and moved again
in 1830 to Macon County, Illinois. Thence "drifted," to use
his own word, down the Sangamon River in 1831 to a little
town on that streami called New Salem, which he made his
home for about five years. Here he first entered the profession of flat-boatmen down the rivers Sangamon, Illinois, and
Mississippi, and succeeded very well. Then he became clerk,
and afterwards principal in a little store, and broke up at it,
badly in debt. After this, he studied and practiced surveying awhile. Here he volunteered to serve in the Black Hawk
War, and was elected captain of his company. And it was
while living here that he was first elected to the Illinois
legislature and began the study of law, acquired great popularity among all classes of people, and laid the foundation
of his future greatness.
And it was here, according to tradition, that he formed
that strong and unfortunate attachment to Ann Rutledge,
a most excellent girl, whose untimely death is said by some
of his biographers to have cast a dark shadow over his future
life. In 1836 he finally and permanently located in Springfield, the capital of the State.
Myv first distinct recollection of seeing him was in
Springfield, in the fall of 1840. I was on the way to church
with my father's family, and we met Mr. Lincoln on the State
House Sqluare, carrying solme law-books either to or from
his office. There was nothing attractive in his appearance;
nothing to indicate the future reformer, either in religion, or
morals, or politics. And the most lovesick Ophelia could
not have called him "the glass of fashion," or "the mould of
forlm."'




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He was very tall, awkward, homely, and badly dressed.
My father was a rather strict Presbyterian. He afterwards
became a strong friend of Mr. Lincoln; but, at the tinie referred to, he was quite indignant at the apparent contempt
with which he treated the Sabbath day, in sporting his law
books in the faces of the people who were going to church.
The plain truth is that at that time he was remarkably
uncouth, for a professional man, and probably cared less for
appearances than any respectable lawyer in the State. His
origin was lowly, his boyhood had been wretched, his opportunities for improvement very poor. And his manners were
true to his origin and his antecedents.
Although he then had considerable ambition to rise in
the world, he had, or seemed to have, very little to improve
his manners, or appearance, or conversation. He generally
wore an old rusty hat; his pantaloons were often too short
and his coat and vest too loose. His features were rugged,
his hair coarse and rebellious, and he was, when in repose,
by nature and habit a man of a "sad countenance." He was
well aware that his appearance was not very prepossessing,
but he took a very philosophical view of the matter.  He
said the Creator liked homely people, and that was the reason he made so many of them.
In this connection he told a story on himself, while he
was President, and laughed at it quite heartily. He said that
immediately after his nomination for President in 1860, the
Springfield boys began to sell pictures of him. One bright
little auctioneer, in crying his goods, said, "Here 's your likeness of Abe Lincoln! Buy one. Price only twenty-five cents.
He'11 look better when he gets his head combed."




Nineteenth Century.


14:3


He had all his life a love for stories which would excite
mirth or "point a moral," and at the time of which I am now
speaking he had a taste for bar-room stories. And he would
treasure up and repeat any that he had read or heard (whether strictly ethical or not), which had what hle called a "nub"
to them. His language was not always very select nor very
pure. He had the reputation of being an infidel, and he certainly had not a very high regard for the Christian sentiment
of the community in which he lived. Though not as profane
as some men, he would swear when he felt like it, and especially if he wished to give particular emphasis to what he
was saying.
It is not to be inferred from the foregoing that he was
ever an immoral man. On the contrary, his habits were
good. He did not use tobacco or intoxicating liquors in any
of their forms. He never was known to taste whisky but
once, and this was not done to test the strength of the
whisky, but his own strength, which was very great. His
manner of doing this was original and peculiar. He squatted
down before a barrel of whisky, raised it up on to his knees,
rolled it over till the bung-hole met his mouth, and then
took a sip out of it. This was the beginning and end of his
whisky-drinking. During the thirty years he was in public
life, the people of the United States spent about twenty thousand millions of money for intoxicating liquors, tobacco, and
opium. If this was a good thing to do, Lincoln deserves no
credit for it; if a bad thing, no blame; for not a dollar of this
money was spent by him. If all of his countrymen would
imitate his example, it would save the United States about
$2,000,000,000 every year. That suml would give employment




144


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to 2,500,000 laboring men and women all the time, and pay
each one of them $800 a yeal. And it would postpone to
after times and perhaps forever the great conflict between
speculation and labor which now seems to be hastening
upon uls.
In 1840 Mr. Lincoln did not stand very high either as a
lawyer, a politician, or an orator. One of his townsmen,
Judge Stephen T. Logan, was altogether his superior as a
lawyer; and another of them, Colonel E. D. Baker, who afterwards distinguished himself in the battle of Cerro Gordo,
became senator from Oregon, and fell at Ball's Bluff so unnecessarily, was much his superior as a politician and a public speaker. And they were both his superiors in education,
in culture, in taste, and in respect for the Christian sentiment of the country. At that time Logan was probably the
best lawyer and Baker the finest speaker in the State of
Illinois.
Mr. Lincoln has sometimes been called by his eulogists
and biographers a great lawyer. It would be more correct
to say that he had some of the qualities of a great lawyer.
But he never became a great lawyer in the sense that Alexander Hamilton or Chancellor Kent were great lawyers. He
had neither the genius of Hamilton, nor the application of
Kent. He did not study enough, he did not devote himself
sufficiently to his profession, and his mind during the greater
part of his life was too much occupied with other things to
make a great lawyer. Practically he knew nothing about
the "lucubrations of twenty years" which the great English
oommentator said were necessary to make a lawyer. To be
a great lawyer, a man must know the law. It can only be




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known by the operations of a genius which amounts to intuition, or by years of close application. Mr. Lincoln was not
a genius; nor, as a lawyer, was he ever for any considerable
length of time a close student.
But though not in the strict sense of the term a great
lawyer, he was a great advocate, and more successful at the
bar than many men who knew more lawm than himself. It
would be no exaggeration to say that as an advocate, in cases
which called out his full powers, he had few equals and no
superior in the courts of Illinois.
For this there were two reasons. One was that he was
naturally and conscientiously fair-minded and honest, and,
as a rule, would not advocate any cause, anywhere, which he
did not believe to be just. As a boy, he was always for fair
play, either in a foot-race, a wrestle, or a fist-fight. Owing
to this characteristic, he would not, knowingly, take a case
that was wrong; and if he ignorantly got into such a case, he
would generally refuse to prosecute or defend it after he h:;d
ascertained his mistake. He was not only morally but intellecutally honest. He could not defend a wrong. He could
not advocate a cause in which he did not believe. If lie undertook it, he failed.  He was the easiest lawyer to beat
when he thought he was wrong that I ever knew. He had no
disposition and no talent "to clear the guilty and to varnish
crime." I find this opinion of Mr. Lincoln, which I expressed
many years ago, quoted in one of his recent biographies, and
time has only confirmed and strengthened it.
I practiced at the same bar with him for many years,
and will give a few cases in point. Soon after beginning to
practice, I was employed to defend a man charged with lar



'The Great Trial of the


ceny, and Mr. Lincoln was employed to assist me. I really
believed, at the beginning of the trial, that the man was not
guilty. But the evidence was unfavorable to him, and at its
close Mr. Lincoln called me into the consultation-room and
said: "If you can say anything to that jury that will do our
man any good, say it. I can't. If I say anything, the jury
will see that I think he is guilty and will convict him." And
so I proposed to the prosecuting attorney to submit the case
without argument. This was done. The jury disagreed, and
before the case could be tried again, the man died.
Take another case: I brought a suit for one S. H. Jones,
late president of the State National Bank of Springfield, Ill.,
which he afterwards ascertained was to be very closely contested by two of the leading members of the bar. At his re
quest, I spoke to Lincoln to assist me. But he declined, saying, "I do not think that case can be gained, and I told Sam
Jones that it was no use for him to waste money in it on me."
In this instance, however, he was mistaken, for though it
was a hard case, it was finally and rightfully gained, after
being tried three times.
In the same county, Lincoln brought suit for a man
named Hoblitt, on an account, and proved it without any
trouble. Defendant's attorney then produced a receipt in
full from Hoblitt, which clearly covered the account. Lincoln took the receipt, examined it till he was satisfied, and
then handed it back to the opposing attorney, who proceeded
to prove it. Whereupon the presiding judge (Treat) inquired:
"What do you say to that, Mr. Lincoln?" But Lincoln had
quietly left the court-house and gone to his hotel. The Court
sent for him, but he declined to return, saying to the sheriff:




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"Tell Judge Treat that my hands are dirty, and I want to
wash them." He had soiled his hands with a mean case.
Owing to this habit of not advocating a bad case, or one
which he thought bad, he had the great advantage of feeling
that he ought to gain the cases that he did advocate. He
also had the great advantage of having the confidence of the
Court and jury at the outset, and the fairness and skill to
keep it to the close. A certain case which he was defending
was seriously endangered by the evidence of a witness called
Lonze Jackson. His associate counsel tried to impeach the
witness. Lincoln saw that the jury did not like that, and
stopped it, and finally won the case. Speaking to me of it
afterwards, he said: "I saw that we could not plow Lonze
up, and concluded to plow around him."
In another very closely contested and doubtful case, in
which he was assisting me, in his closing speech to the jury
he was extremely liberal in his admissions in favor of the
defendant.  We got a verdict for about two-thirds of our
claim. I said to him: "Lincoln, you admitted too much."
"No," he answered; "that 's what gained the case."
I have said that there were two reasons for Mr. Lincoln's
success as a lawyer. I have mentioned one. The other was
great ability. He had confidence in himself, and loved to
advocate what he thought was right. And when he felt that
he was right, and that the question was an important one
to his client or to the public, he argued with great power and
with consummate skill. He had very little education and no
training whatever in elocution. But he had read enough and
had associated with intelligent men enough to acquire a
sufficient command of language to express himself clearly




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and forcibly. And he was a natural logician. So far as I
know, none of his forensic speeches have been preserved, but
many of them are remembered by his associates at the bar,
and by the Courts and juries to which they were addressed.
And some of them are still spoken of with admiration and
enthusiasm, as of overwhelming force and effect. Such was
his speech to the jury in the great slander suit of Eliza Cabbot vs. I)r. Reignier. His denunciation of the doctor for attempting to ruin the reputation of an innocent girl was equal
to a Philippic of Demosthenes.
His temper and disposition as a lawyer were admirable.
His confidence in himself caused him to feel that he could
present his client's case fully and fairly to the Court and
jury, and he was generally satisfied with the result, whether
it was a victory, a defeat, or what he called "a dog fall."
He was never offensively elated by success, and was very
seldom depressed by defeat. He was the fairest practitioner
I ever saw at the bar. As a rule, he never took a questionable advantage, and would concede all he could to his opponent, consistently with the rights of his client, and sometimes seemed to concede too much. He treated the Court,
the bar, the jury, the witnesses, the officers, and all parties
to a suit in such a way as to secure the confidence and goodwill of all.
His remarkable taste and talent for telling apt stories
was, no doubt, one reason for his great popularity on the cir
cuit. And he seemed to enjoy these stories as much as anybody. I have seen him apparently as much delighted at being able to prove a favorite bear story, which he had told in
the court-room, as if he had gained an important law-suit.




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149


For his strict integrity, his fair practice, and his high
standard as a lawyer, this man perhaps does not deserve a
great deal of credit. His integrity was not originally of his
own choosing. It was the gift of God. He was, as already
stated, naturally and constitutionally honest and could not
help it. His mind would not work dishonestly. A good
cause was as necessary to set it in motion and keep it running properly as steam is necessary to start and keep in successful action a steam engine. The natural motive power
seemed as indispensable in the one case as in the other. Honesty was a necessity with him. It was his only road to
success.
But Mr. Lincoln's standing as a. lawyer, taking it altogether, was not so much superior to that of other prolminent
members of the bar as to give him a very high position in
the records of the profession, or in the history of the country. It is to his history as a political speaker and debater
and as a statesman that we must look for the full development of his mind and heart, and for his title to the admiration and gratitude of mankind. This development was gradual. It was the work of many years. His earlier efforts gave
little promise of what he was one day to become. His public life and public speaking began in 1832, when he was 23
years old. His published speeches from that time until
1848 contained very little evidence of ability or eloquence.
His first one, announcing himself as candidate for the Legislature, could have been made by almost anybody. His second one on the same subject was not a very great deal better. A much more pretentious one, made before a lyceum
in Springfield in 1837, on the perpetuity of our free institutions, would do for a tyro in politics, but hardly for a states



The Great Trial of the


man. Its style is very far inferior to his later productions.
Another, delivered in Springfield in 1840, in a debate between some of the leading men of the State upon the question of the National Bank vs. The Subtreasury, fell far below
the importance of the subject. No one would infer from it
that the author would ever become an orator or a statesman.
Compared with the speech of Mr. Clay upon the same subject, it was as a molehill at the foot of a mountain. One of
the first political speeches I ever heard Mr. Lincoln make was
in the summer of 1842, in a little old log school-house in Sangamon County, Illinois. It was not a great speech, and there
was only one thing in it which I now remember. His firstborn son, Robert Lincoln, had made his advent into the world
a few days before, and the orator took occasion to speak of
him to the audience as a "whelk of a boy." Worcester defines
a whelk to be a "gasteropodous mollusk." The history of this
Lincoln mollusk seems to favor the doctrine of evolution. It
has already evolved into a Secretary of War and a minister
to England, and some people have predicted that it might
yet expand into a President of the United States.
In 1843 Lincoln was a candidate for the Whig nomination for Congress in the Springfield district, but was easily
beaten in Sangamon County by Colonel Baker, who at that
time was a much more popular politician. In 1844 he took
active part in the canvass for Mr. Clay against Mr. Polk and
his speeches were able and effective.  He was considered
one of the ablest advocates of a protective tariff in the State,
but his speech in Congress early in 1848, on the Mexican
War, is the first evidence we have in his published addresses
of his great ability in exposing a wrong and in defending the




it'eteelth Century.


truth. General Grant, who was a soldier in that war, called
it in his Memoirs "unholy"; he also said that it was one
of the most unjust wars ever waged by a stronger nation
against a weaker one. Mr. Clay, Mr. Crittenden, and other
eminent men said substantially the same thing. What these
men said, Mr. Lincoln, in the speech referred to, undertook
to prove. It is a clear, logical, and convincing examination
of the question. And he sifts and riddles the messages of
President Polk, in which that gentleman attempts to justify
the acts of his administration in bringing on that war. Mr.
Lincoln also made a satisfactory canvass, both in the East
and the West, in the latter part of the presidential campaign
of 1848, in favor of the election of General Taylor. But it
required a greater wrong than the Mexican War, and greater
questions than those involved in the Taylor canvass, thoroughly to arouse and develop Mr. Lincoln's moral and intellectual nature.
On the 4th day of January, 1854, Mr. Douglas introduced into the Senate his bill to repeal the Missouri Compromise, as it was popularly called. The bill declared the
prohibition of slavery by the law of 1820 in Kansas and Nebraska inoperative and void. This startling declaration took
the country completely by surprise and filled the North and
WXest with indignation and alarm. It gave rise to an earnest
and lengthy debate in the Senate. Most of the Whigs and
anti-Nebraska Democrats opposed it very strongly. The
press and the people took up the discussion, public meetings
were held, speeches made, sermons preached, and thle excitement ran high all over the country.
And no wonder that the country was excited, indignant,
and alarmed.  The Missouri (ompromise had always been




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considered and was in fact one of the most important and
sacred acts of the Government of the United States. Only
five years before its repeal, Mr. Douglas himself had eulogized it in the finest passage he ever uttered. He then described it as having "an origin akin to the Constitution and
c-alculated to remove for(ever the only danger which seemed
to threaten to sever the social bond of union, and as canonized in the hearts of the American people as a sacred thing
which no ruthless hand would ever be reckless enough to
destroy."
Its repeal caused, in its ultimate effects and consequences, an amount of misery such as no eye had seen, or ear
heard, nor had it entered into the heart of man to conceive:
tlhe loss of thousands of millions of money, of hundreds of
thousands of lives, the making of hundreds of thousands of
w idows and orphans, and the filling of the whole land, North
and South, East and West, full of sorrow and mourning.
Mr. Douglas, the author of this new departure, was not
highly educated nor very well read, nor was he always a
reliable politician. But he was a man of great natural talents, an impressi ve speaker, a man of genial disposition, popular manner, and up to this time had been a very successful
politician. IHe was the idol of the Illinois Denlocracy, and
a prominent leader in the Senate. So great was his influence
over his party in Illinois that, although when he first proposed the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, very few members of the Democratic House of Representatives were in
favor of it, yet resolutions approving it passed that body by
(Imore than a two-thirds majority.  The leaders took the
ground that "Douglas must be sustained," and it must be




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153


admitted that in the discussion in the Senate he gave his
political friends reason to believe that he could be sustained. He was a bold, ready, and skillful debater, and not
very scrupulous of his choice or use of weapons or modes of
attack or defense. When hard pressed, he did not stand on
ceremony, but struck right and left with any weapon he
could lay his hands on. Though he was ably met in the Senate by Seward, Chase, and others. there was one very important point in which, strange to say, they did not seem equal
to the occasion. This was that the great principle of selfgovernment required that the people of the Territories should
be allowed to have slavery if they chose, and he closed the
debate in the Senate in a tone of defiance and in the language
of anticipated triumph, telling his opponents that he would
go before the people "in the name of self-government and the
Constitution, and in that name would fight the battle and
win the victory." And at first it looked as if this most wonderful doctrine might win.  It was perfectly amazing the
number of intelligent men, some of whom had been opposed
to Douglas all their lives, who were taken in by this new and
preposterous political dogma. Old-line Whigs, followers of
Henry Clay, swallowed this monstrous political bolus as
readily as if it had been a small and sweet homeopathic pill.
Slavery is the government of one man by another. Negro slavery, as it existed in this country at that tine, was
about as absolute a government of one man by another as
could be. The master governed the slave, civilly, politically,
morally, socially, religiously, and personally. Whatever laws
there may have been in the slave States against cruelty to
slaves, were, in most of them, practically inoperative and




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void in nine cases out of ten. There were many humane masters, but this was in spite of the institution which in its very
nature was founded upon injustice and cruelty. This institution, which the Nebraska bill permitted to be introduced
into Territories which had been dedicated to freedom for
more than a generation, was the worst form of despotism.
The contention of Mr. Douglas, stripped of all disguises, was
that one set of men in the Territories should be allowed to
govern another set of men as they pleased. That is, that the
right to establish slavery is the right to establish self-government. That is, that slavery is self-government, which is
just as true as to say that despotism is freedom, or that truth
is falsehood.
At the time this bill was introduced into the Senate, Mr.
Lincoln had not been very active in politics for several years,
nor did he at first seem inclined to take much part in the
public discussion of the Nebraska bill. In the summer of
1854 I attended an informal WVhig meeting at Springfield,
and insisted that Mr. Douglas must be met and answered
upon his great principle of self-government, and one of the
editors of the Illinois Journal, Josiah Francis, an intimate
friend of Lincoln, agreed to see him and get him to make a
speech upon the subject. Accordingly, on the 4th of October, Mr. Lincoln made his first speech upon the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise, and twelve days after he repeated it
in Peoria. It was a great speech. The work was thoroughly
done. He answered all Mr. Douglas' reasons for the repeal
fully and effectually, and he made his vaunted great principle of self-government, as applied to the Nebraska bill, look
as thin as his homeopathic soup, which he described as being




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155


"made out of the shadow of the shade of a pigeon which had
been starved to death."
This speech proved that Mr. Lincoln's friends had made
no mistake in calling on him to expose the sophistries of Mr.
Douglas. He was the right man for the times and the occasion. By nature he hated injustice. From his early associations his sympathies were with the lowly. Politically he was
a Henry Clay Whig, and had adopted the principles of that
great leader upon the subject of slavery. Mr. Clay had said
that slavery was the greatest of human evils; that it was a
foul blot upon our country; he had said that if he could be
instrumental in removing it from Virginia, the State of his
birth, or from Kentucky, the State of his adoption, he would
not exchange the glory of that achievement for all the laurels that ever entwined the brow of the greatest conqueror.
And as late as 1850, only two years before his death, and in
the face of threats of disunion and civil war, he had declared
that nothing would induce him to vote in favor of the introduction of slavery into territory then free, and that the man
who would dissolve the Union to extend slavery was a traitor
and deserved the fate of a traitor. So that in opposing the
extension of slavery Mr. Lincoln not only obeyed the dictates of his nature, but advocated the principles of the foremost leader of his party, who was in some respects the greatest political leader that this country has ever known.
Mr. Lincoln's speeches in 1854 led to his being a candidate for the United States Senate in the winter of 1854 and
1855. I went to the Illinois Legislature as a member at his
request, and did what I could for his election. But though
nine-tenths of the anti-Nebraska men, as they were called,




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were for him, he could not get the other tenth, who insisted
that they were elected as Democrats, and could not vote for
a Whig. At Mr. Lincoln's request, his friends voted for and
elected Judge Trumbull, a very able and reliable antiNebraska Democrat. Lincoln's defeat was, at the time, a
great disappointment to him and his friends. I told him we
would elect him the next time. He said he thought that
"before that time the taste of the senatorship would get out
of his mouth." He told me afterwards that his defeat was
the best thing that ever happened to him.
From this time forward he devoted himself to this subject, and rapidly increased in knowledge of it and in ability
to handle it, and in the public estimation. His constant application to it developed him as nothing else could have
done, and he became master of the subject, and the ablest
political speaker and debater in the country.
In 1856 the Illinois delegation to the National Republican Convention at Philadelphia, of which I was a member,
urged the nomination of Mr. Lincoln for Vice-President, and
he received a very respectable vote. But it was finally concluded that Mr. Dayton would give the ticket more strength
in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and Mr. Lincoln's name
was withdrawn by the Illinois delegation at my instance.
On the 16th day of June, 1858, the Republican Convention of the State of Illinois nominated him for United States
senator against Mr. Douglas, whose term was soon to expire. On that night Mr. Lincoln addressed the convention
in a carefully prepared speech. He began it by one of the
boldest declarations which, up to that time, had ever been
made by a conservative American statesman. He said: "A




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house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure half-slave and half-free. I do not
expect the Union to be dissolved. I do not expect the house
to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will
become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents
of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it
where the public mind will rest in the belief that it is in the
course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it
forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States,
old as well as new, north as well as south."
James Madison himself never made a clearer statement
of a proposition than that. The speech which followed was
as nearly a demonstration of the correctness of the opinion
above quoted as a thing of that kind can be demonstrated.
But it was a dangerous doctrine to preach at that time in
Illinois, and I dreaded very much its effect upon the ensuing
election. As soon as he finished speaking and before he left
the speaker's stand, I went to him and urged him to make two
modifications of the speech before it was published. He made
one of them, which was comparatively unimportant, but refused to alter the part I have quoted. "Isn't it true?" he
said. "Certainly it is true," I answered, "but it is premature.
The people are not prepared for it, and Douglas will beat us
with it all over the State." "I think," he answered, "that the
time has come to say it, and I will let it go as it is." He did
let it go, and Douglas was delighted with it. I afterwards
heard that some friends to whom he read the speech before
its delivery made the same request that I did about the
"house divided against itself," and with the same result. At
first it put us on the defensive, and we had a hard and close




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contest. Lincoln and Douglas stumped the State, meeting
eight times in joint discussion. The contest attracted the
attention of the whole nation, and was one of the greatest
ever waged in this country or in any other. Lincoln more
than sustained himself, and carried the popular vote by about
4,000 majority. But, owing to the way the State was districted, Douglas carried the Legislature by a majority of
eight, and was reelected senator.
This campaign gave Lincoln a national reputation as one
of the ablest leaders of the Republican party and led to his
being a candidate for the presidential nomination.
In the political campaign of 1859 Mr. Lincoln took part
in the canvass of the State of Ohio, and made strong and
effective speeches in Columbus and Cincinnati. This led to
the publication of the speeches of both parties in the joint
debate between him and Douglas. This was done by the
Republican State Committee of Ohio, and the book was distributed in that State and others, in 1860, as a campaign document. It was an abundant fountain of information and
argument for Republican speakers and writers during that
campaign, and may yet be read with interest and profit by
students and statesmen.
After the Ohio campaign and during a lull in the political storm, Mr. Lincoln undertook to enter the lecture field,
but did not succeed very well, and after trying it three times,
gave it up. He never became what is called a literary man.
He became a great thinker, not a great reader. But he always had a taste for poetry. In his chrysalis life at New
Salem his taste seemed to be considerably for doggerel, and
he was the best reciter of that kind of verses that ever ap



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peared on the New Salem boards. He used to "bring down
the house" by reciting an anonymous poem which settled by
a compromise the great question of how St. Patrick came to
be born on the 17th of March instead of the 8th or 9th. This
question, according to tradition, had created great excitement in Ireland and a fierce war of factions. A part of this
poem was as follows:
"The first factional fight in old Ireland, they say,
Was all on account of St. Patrick's birthday.
It was somewhere about midnight, without any doubt,
And certain it is it made a great rout.
Some fought for the 8th, for the 9th some would die,
He who wouldn't see right would get a black eye.
At length these two factions so positive grew,
That each had a birthday, and Pat he had two,
'Till Father Mulcahay, who showed them their sins,
Said none could have two birthdays except as twins.
'Now, boys, don't be fighting for the 8 or the 9,
Don't quarrel so always, now why not combine?
Combine eight with nine-that is the mark,
Let that be the birthday.' 'Amen!' said the clerk.
So they all got blind drunk, which completed their bliss,
And they 've kept up the practice from that day to this."
But this boyish taste for doggerel passed away and was
succeeded by a higher one for Shakespeare and Burns; the
latter he was accustomed to carry around with him on the
circuit, and committed much of it to memory. And no wonder. The man who said his heart was buried in the grave
of his first love, Ann Rutledge, would naturally love the poet




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who sang with such mournful beauty over the grave of Highland Mary.
The man who hated slavery and sympathized with the
oppressed and weary-laden everywhere would feel in his
inmost heart every verse of that matchless poem, "Man was
made to mourn."
The great central question of the poem has been asked
in some form by oppressed humanity for thousands of years.
It was the question five thousand years ago upon the banks
of the Nile by the hundreds of thousands of slaves who built
the Pyramids at the command of Egyptian tyrants. It was
the question upon the shores of the Tigris and Euphrates by
the miserable victims of unrequited toil, who erected those
vast monuments of despotism in Nineveh and Babylon. It
was the question of the poor and ignorant victims of the
oppressions and cruelties of the robber barons and the petty
despots of the Middle Ages. That question has been asked
for centuries by millions of the subjects of the great despotisms of modern Europe. It was asked by the black man in
America during his three hundred years of bondage, and it
is now being asked all over the civilized world by men of all
colors and all races who are suffering from poverty and want,
from political despotism, from financial oppression, and from
corporate greed. The question as put by the unrivaled minstrel of Scotland is the cry of oppressed and downtrodden
humanity from the dawn of history to the present hour.
"If I 'm designed yon lordling's slave,
By Nature's law designed,
Why was an independent wish
E'er planted in my mind?




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If not, why am I subject to
His cruelty and scorn?
And why has man the will and power
To make his brother mourn?"
No public man ever lived who was better fitted to understand and to answer this question than Abraham Lincoln.
None of the great rulers of the world believed more entirely
in the equal rights of our common humanity as a matter of
principle, or were more devoted to their vindication in practice. He has been justly called the great commoner of the
world, and when the fullness of time had come and when he
could do so constitutionally as a necessary war measure, he
answered one phase of the great question by emancipating
nearly 4,000,000 slaves.
On the 27th day of February, 1860, Mr. Lincoln made
his last great speech upon the slavery question at Cooper
Institute, New York. It was the opinion of Mr. Greeley that
this speech surpassed anything from Mr. Seward on the same
subject, and placed its author in the front rank among Republican orators. The country indorsed this opinion. Lincoln became at once a formidable competitor of Seward for
the presidential nomination, and it has always been believed
by his friends that this speech very materially aided, if it did
not secure, his nomination. I was at Chicago before, during, and after the convention, took considerable part in the
canvass, and am well satisfied that this opinion is correct.
And it may be said generally that few speeches had been
made in this country that will so well repay an American
citizen for the perusal. It is believed to be an unanswerable
presentation of the great truths involved in the questions




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then before the country. Mr. Lincoln had been studying the
subject for six years, and he took four months to prepare the
speech. It was his final and conclusive answer to the greatest and most dangerous political sophist of the age.
It is due to the memory of Mr. Douglas to state that
after the rebellion broke out, he took strong grounds for
suppressing it, and advocated earnestly the most stupendous
preparations for war. He took the position that while the
war lasted there could be but two parties, patriots and traitors. From the fall of Fort Sumter until his death, he acted
the part of a patriot and a statesman. His voice and influence were strong in favor of supporting the Government and
suppressing the rebellion and preserving the Union. His advice as to the conduct of the war was freely given, and thankfully received, and in at least one important particular was
acted upon by the administration. A short time before his
death, Mr. Douglas told Colonel Latham, of the 106th Illinois, and myself, in Springfield, that he advised Mr. Lincoln
to take and keep possession of the mouth of James River
in Virginia, and that Fort Monroe was occupied and fortified
in pursuance of that advice. Mr. Lincoln himself is authority for the statement that Douglas at his request went from
Washington to Illinois to rouse his friends to the necessity of
a vigorous prosecution of the war, and he did rouse them as
no other man could. His speech to the Legislature of Illinois, which was then in session, was worth many thousands
of men to the Union Army, and it was partly due to him that
Illinois furnished more than twice as many men to the Union
Army as Alexander the Great led from Greece to the conquest of the Persian empire.




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The speeches of Mr. Lincoln from the 4th of October,
1854, to the 27th of February, 1860, should be read by every
student. The history of the great contest which resulted in
his election to the presidency, and led to the Civil War and
the destruction of slavery, cannot be fully understood without them. They did more than any other one thing to educate the mass of the people of our country upon the questions
then at issue. In preparing them and delivering them, Mr.
Lincoln did much to educate himself in the higher order of
statesmanship. He increased in knowledge and wisdom year
by year, and his speeches gradually rose higher and higher
in political morality, in devotion to truth, to justice, to liberty, to law, to peace and good-will among men. No man in
our history grew so great intellectually and morally in so
short a itime. As to position, he rose in less than six years
from comparative obscurity to an office which all Americans
and many men of other nations consider the highest in the
world. And what is more to his honor, as he rose in position he rose in moral excellence and in the respect and confidence and love of his countrymen. In saying this, I am not
unaware that things have been said and written highly derogatory to his character. I saw quite recently, in a book
that was a good deal read in the United States, a statement
to the effect that Mr. Lincoln bribed Mr. Chase not to be a
candidate for President in 1864 by promising him the office
of Chief Justice. The authority for this statement is not
given by the author of the book, and I am confident that it
is not true. It is entirely inconsistent with his lifelong character and with his uniform conduct as I knew him for many
years. I know personally and from himself that he strongly
disapproved of any bargains, express or implied, said to have




The Great Trial of the


been made by his friends in Chicago in 1860, and I also know
that the appointment of Mr. Cameron as Secretary of War,
which has been charged to a corrupt bargain, was only decided on after he became satisfied that the undivided support
of the great border State of Pennsylvania was necessary to
the success of his administration and the preservation of the
Union. I know this from a long conversation I had with Mr.
Lincoln, prior to his departure for Washington in February,
1861, upon this very subject.
Whatever may have been Mr. Lincoln's faith or want of
faith in his early life, he became convinced long before he
said it in his last noble inaugural, that the judgments of the
Lord are true and righteous altogether, and he was not the
man to invite those judgments upon his country or upon himself by any corrupt bargains for place and power. The latter and by far the better part of his life was occupied in
advocating truth and right, and in devotion to what Edmund
Burke so eloquently described in his picture of eternal justice. He said that he would rather be assassinated than to
abandon the great cause, and he was assassinated because he
was true to it. And with the exception of the crucifixion of
the Savior of mankind, his death was the greatest crime in
the history of the human race.
Mr. Lincoln has been compared to Henry Clay, but Mr.
Clay was by nature and always a leader of men, and could
not be otherwise. He was a dominant character in American
politics for more than forty years. He created the Whig
party, and it died with him. No American became a great
party leader so early in life, and continued so long. He led
the administration of President Madison into and through




Nineteenth Century.


165


our last war with Great Britain. As said by Mr. Madison
himself: "He was the giant who carried us through." He
led the forces of protection in the great tariff debate of 1824
and succeeded against Mr. Webster, who at that time was
opposed to a tariff for protection. In the long war against
the administrations of Presidents Jackson and Van Buren
he led, as truly stated by one of his biographers, "the most
brilliant array of able men that has ever been marshaled in
a deliberative body in America." In 1820, in 1833, and in
1850, he led Congress and the country from threatened civil
war to harmony, reconciliation, and peace. And the admiration and gratitude of the nation he served so long and so well
have woven themselves into an evergreen garland around
his memory. On the other hand, Mr. Lincoln did not become
a leader till he was forty-five years old. He was roused to
prominence and to leadership by a great national crime.
This gave him the opportunity to do more for freedom and
more for humanity in ten years than Mr. Clay did in half a
century.
Mr. Lincoln has also been compared to Washington.
But in some respects these men were too dissimilar for comparison. Washington had a personal dignity, a grandeur of
manner and character which Lincoln never attained and
never desired. In this respect he preferred to remain as he
was born, one of what he called "the plain people." He was
"Abe Lincoln" from the cradle to the grave.  But nobody
ever read or heard of the father of his country being called
"Jack Washington" or any other nickname.
As a business man and financier Washington was a great
success, and Lincoln was a failure. Both were men of the




Th e Gireat Trial of the


strictest integrity, neither was dissipated or wasteful, but
Nature had given business capacity in a large measure to
Washington, and denied it to Lincoln.
In matters which involved no principle, Lincoln often
seemed and sometimes was undecided, irresolute, and vacillating, very unlike Washington. But in business which he
considered vital to himself or to his country, he had the firmness, fortitude, courage, and self-reliance of Washington
himself. In general, both these men were models of patience.
But occasionally each would become provoked beyond endurance. On one of these occasions Washington was known to
swear with great energy and emphasis. And once, during
the war, Lincoln is said to have declared that some of the
New York bankers "ought to be shot" for their tricks with
the currency.
These men were very much alike in their belief in Divine
Providence, and in their constant appeals for His aid for
themselves and their country during the long and terrible
ordeals through which they were called to pass. Upon the
whole, it may be said that neither of them could have filled
the position of the other. Lincoln could not have filled the
position of Washington in the Revolutionary War. Washington could not have done what Lincoln did from 1854 to
1861. And no other man could have have supplied the place
of either of them.
As a public speaker, Mr. Lincoln possessed all the essentials required by Webster's definition of eloquence. He had
the "subject and the occasion." He possessed "high moral
and intellectual endowments." ie had "the clear conception
outrunning the deductions of logic," and the logic which




Nineteenth Century.


167


should follow the clear conception. He had "clearness, force,
and earnestness, patriotism and self-devotion, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit." But he did not
reach the full development and exercise of his powers till the
latter part of his life.
In 1844 Lincoln admitted to a Springfield audience that
he could not speak with Baker, and at that time it was true.
Baker was a genius and an ever-ready and very beautiful
speaker. In 1852 Lincoln said to me that he wished he were
as good a speaker as Leonard Swett, and at that time he was
right. Swett united logic with eloquence in a remarkable
degree, and made better speeches for General Scott's election
than Lincoln made. In fact, Swett's campaign speeches in
1852 were better than those of either Lincoln or Douglas.
In the same year, 1852, Lincoln delivered an eulogy upon
Henry Clay, which was not satisfactory to his friends, and
which added nothing to his reputation as a public speaker.
But in 1856, two years after the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, many of the leading Republicans of Illinois addressed the State Convention at Bloomington. Several of
them made fine speeches, and Lovejoy seemed to captivate
the convention. But Lincoln made the closing speech, and
produced a more profound impression than all the other
speakers combined. In fact, before he closed, they seemed to
be forgotten.
His power as a speaker consisted in his deep conviction
of the importance of the subject, his thorough knowledge of
it, the clearness of his statement, and the fearlessness and
intense earnestness of his expression.




168


The Great Trial of the


This brings him within Webster's definition of an eloquent orator, and made him during the last ten years of his
life our ablest, most impressive and effective speaker. Demosthenes, Cicero, Burke, and Webster were the great orators
of their respective countries, but none of them ever uttered
anything better (in so few words) than Lincoln's speech at
Gettysburg, or his last inaugural address, or his eulogy of
the Declaration of Independence.
There are two ways of measuring men whom the world
calls "great." One is by character, and the other is by what
they accomplish. Tried by the latter test, the first Napoleon
was a very great man. His deeds were wonderful, and for
nearly twenty years the continent of Europe trembled beneath his tread. But judged by the former test, he was a
very small man. He was almost entirely selfish, and seemed
to have very little sense of moral obligation. And this is
true to a very great extent of a very large proportion of the
great men of history.
Lincoln was one of the few men who filled the full measure of moral and intellectual greatness. Gauging him by the
double standard of character and of what he accomplished
for himself, for his country, and for the human race, he has
had no superior among the statesmen of all countries and all
ages.
It has been said of him by one of his recent biographers
that he was a very ambitious man, and so he was. He was
very ambitious to be elected senator in 1854, and still more
to be made President in 1860. I shall never forget the earnestness with which he answered me at the Republican State
Convention in Decatur in 1860, when I asked him what men




Nineteenth Century.


169


he wanted for delegates to Chicago. He said, "I must have
Davis," meaning Judge David Davis, of Bloomington. He
knew that Davis would do more for his nomination than any
other man living. We gave him Davis, and the result vindicated Lincoln's judgment.
But Lincoln's ambition was not of the vulgar sort. A
friend who knew him intimately for more than twenty-five
years once said that ambition was his ruling passion, but that
so strong was his sense of justice that he would not do any
human being a deliberate and serious wrong to obtain the
presidency of the United States. And this was strictly true.
He desired to obtain office and power by worthy means and
for noble ends. And his ambition became higher, purer, and
nobler the longer he lived. In 1858, in his contest with Douglas, he declared that, "while pretending no indifference to
earthly honors, I do claim to be actuated in this contest by
something higher than anxiety for office. I charge you to
drop every petty and insignificant thought of any man's success. It is nothing. I am nothing. Judge Douglas is nothing. But do not destroy that immortal emblem of humanity,
the Declaration of American Independence."  Every word
came from the heart. Lincoln did more than any other man
of his generation to save that Declaration and to preserve its
significance and universality.
Yes, Mr. Lincoln was ambitious, and he accomplished
the objects of his ambition. He raised himself from the lowest depths to the summit of earthly honor. By sagacity, firmness, and patience, almost without example, he restrained
many of his countrymen who wished to go too fast, stimulated those who were too slow, and labored and argued with




170


The Great Trial of the


both, preparatory to the only measure which would save the
Union, and which he foresaw must ultimately come.
He was urged by Governor Yates and other prominent
men both east and west to emancipate the slaves as a necessary war measure, long before it was done. He knew just as
well as they did that emancipation was inevitable. And he
knew better than they did that it must not be issued till the
border States were prepared for it. And he also knew that if
delayed too long, England and France would acknowledge
the independence of the Southern Confederacy.
And looking over the whole field, domestic and foreign,
he issued his proclamation of emancipation exactly at the
right time. And, with a sagacity never surpassed, ran the
ship of state safely between Scylla and Charybdis. He alone
emancipated a race. This, he said, with becoming pride,
'was the central act of his administration, and the great
event of the nineteenth century." And so it will always be
regarded.
Thirty-four hundred years ago the children of Israel
were delivered from Egyptian bondage. And upon the shore
of the Red Sea they sang a song of deliverance, which the
poet Moore has paraphrased into that beautiful anthem:
"Sound the loud timbrel
O'er Egypt's dark sea;
Jehovah has conquered,
His people are free."
Thirty-one years ago two races on this continent, the
white and the black, were emancipated from a slavery which
had been a curse to both for 300 years. For this, songs of




Nineteenth Century.


171


joy, of thanksgiving to the "Author of liberty" have ever
since been ascending and will continue to ascend forever.
And the posterity of both races will honor and bless through
all time the name of Abraham Lincoln, whose strong, steady,
and inspired right arm struck the blow which made their
country free.
It would be a serious omission to close this lecture without noticing Mr. Lincoln's views upon the labor question.
In his first regular message to Congress in December,
1861, he warned his countrymen against "the effort to place
capital on an equal footing if not above labor in the structure
of government." And he stated the relation of capital to
labor with Madisonian clearness in the following words:
"Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only
the fruit of labor and would never have existed if labor had
not first existed. Labor is superior to capital and deserves
much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights which
are as worthy of protection as any other rights."
Whenever this doctrine of Mr. Lincoln shall be accepted
by the American people, enacted into law, and carried out
in practice, the labor question will be settled in this country. Strikes with their attendant riots and bloodshed, business paralysis, want and starvation will cease. And the preposterous system under which one man can accumulate
100,000,000, while a thousand other men as good as he can
not support their families, will pass away forever. A great
deal of the talking and acting, of the bad feeling and bad
politics of the present day assumes that there is a very large
number of people whose condition is fixed for life as laborers
and that they constitute a separate class. Mr. Lincoln, in




7he (- Ceat ''Trialt of the


the message referred to, combats this assumption and shows
that where education and suffrage are general, conditions are
constantly changing, and the laborer of this year often becomes the capitalist next year. And he might have added
that the millions accumulated by the proud capitalists of one
generation are often scattered to the winds by the next, and
their descendants must labor or starve.
The views of Mr. Lincoln were called out by the slavery
question, but they are of universal application, and are as
true to-day in the ITnited States as when uttered thirty-three
years ago. And in the very nature of things they must he
true forever.
No particular sets or families of men in this country can
ever form themselves or be formed into a permanlent class of
capitalists. Such a state of things cannot be maintained in
any country whose people are intelligent, enterprising, and
free.
No analysis of iMr. Lincoln's character would be complete
which did not notice at least briefly the total absence of any
disposition in him to abuse the enormous power which as
President and commIander-in-chief of the Army and Navy lie
possessed during the war. So far as he was concerned, the
terrible strain upon our free institutions of four years of rebellion and civil war did us no harm. All of our institutions,
except slavery, remained the same at his death as before. -He
made no change either in the form or the spirit of the Government. Things have been done since his time of far more
doubtful legality and propriety than anything during his administration. Caesars, Cromwells, and Napoleons are never
made of such men as Lincoln. He was, if possible, more free




Nineteenth Century.             173
from any disposition to assume or exercise dictatorial powers
or to extend or prolong his authority than Washington himself. Neither Washington nor any other President of the
United States ever possessed one tithe of the power held by
Lincoln. And there is not on the face of the earth a fairminded and intelligent man who can deny that he wielded
that power for the preservation of the Union and the Constitution, and for the freedom, prosperity, happiness, and glory
of his country.




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