FACTS AND CONSIDERATIONS RELATING r L\ I ft AT a time like the present, when the notes of mili- tary preparation are heard throughout our once peaceful land, and strenuous efforts are making to in- duce our young men to enlist themselves for battle, it may be well to pause, and calmly, and seriously ask ourselves, WHAT is WAR ? If we hear of it only at a distance, or read the ac- counts which are given of it, our ideas of its real cha- racter will be very erroneous. It is the policy of those who are most active in beginning and carrying on war, to dress it up in glowing and deceptive colours, in order to hide its native deformity, that they may the more easily induce persons to enlist in it. If delineated in its true character, with all its injus- tice and wickedness ; its savage cruelties, its bar- barous murders, its miseries and sorrows, few would be found to engage in so dreadful an em- ploy. Hence nearly all the public accounts which we see of it, represent it as little more than a splendid game played between nations, in which laurels are to be reaped, glory won, and booty taken. We are told of the discipline and bravery of the troops, the splen- dor of the equipage, the thrilling sounds of the music, the noble appearance and high bearing of the army, the skill with which the battle was fought, the glory of the victory, and the magnificence of the triumph. Let us draw aside this gorgeous but flimsy cover- ing let us turn from the romance to the reality, and contemplate war as it is as the soldier meets and finds it on the march, in the camp, and in the field. Of the multitudes who thoughtlessly enlist in armies, there are probably few individuals, who, if called upon deliberately to destroy a fellow creature whom they had never before seen, and who had not been convict- ed of a crime, would not shudder and revolt at the 2 Facts and Considerations relating toWar. commission of such a deed. Men whose moral sen- sibilities would be shocked at the idea of imbruing their hands in the blood of an innocent person, will yet, with a strange inconsistency, hasten to the field of battle, armed with deadly weapons, for the very purpose of killing their fellow men, to whom they are utter strangers, and who have never offended them. The more of these men they destroy, the louder claims they make upon the plaudits of their country, and boast themselves upon the fact of having ushered into eternity, unprepared perhaps, many of their fellow candidates for everlasting life. It is natural and proper for us to enquire by what means an act, which in times of peace would be de- clared to be murder in the highest degree, and pun- ished with the most severe penalty that the law can inflict, as a crime of the deepest dye, is, in a state of warfare, transmuted into a virtue demanding the meed of praise. The act, in itself, and in the aw- ful consequences it produces to the unhappy victim, is precisely the same in war as in peace the only difference is in the relations existing between the two nations to which the slayer and the slain belong. No food citizen will hesitate for a moment to admit, that illing a man in the time of peace is a gross violation of the law of God, as well as the law of the land and the simple question which remains to be answered is, whether the declaration of war by one country against another, suspends and superse*des the Divine law, so that it ceases to be murder for the citizens to kill each other. If the rulers of a nation possess any power thus to supersede the Divine law, it must be sought in the New Testament; it must come from the Divine Law- giver himself they could not grant to others what they had not themselves. Now it is plain that no man, however high his station, or great his influ- ence, possesses the power to suspend the opera- tion of God's moral laws ; and consequently, unless it can be shown that the New Testament has conferred such a power upon governments, they must be desti- tute of it. Facts and Considerations relating to War. 3 Jt is true that in the inscrutable wisdom of His pro- vidence, the Almighty was at times pleased, under a former dispensation, to permit and to authorize war for the punishment of nations for their wickedness : but this is no warrant for us to fight. We can plead no such authority ; we are living under that administra- tion of grace and truth which came by Jesus Christ. The whole tenor of his life and of his precepts, was in strict accordance with the heavenly anthem which ushered in his glorious advent; "Glory to God in the highest and ON EARTH PEACE GOOD WILL TOWARDS MEN." There is no one feature more strikingly appa- rent in the precepts of the Divine Lawgiver, than the peaceable nature of the religion which he taught. In his memorable sermon on the mount, he commands his followers, " LOVE YOUR ENEMIES, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you; and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you." These commands of Christ are too plain to admit of evasion too positive to allow of any compromise. They demand our prompt and unqualified obedience. They are as imperative on nations and rulers, as they are on the humblest individual in private Mfe; and they admit of no explanations which weaken their obliga- tion. How then can we kill those whom we are com- manded to love, or injure those whom it is our duty to bless and to benefit? Can any one suppose, that he who goes upon the field of battle, to kill those whom he calls the enemies of his country, is not violating every one of these commands? No lesson is more clearly taught in the New Testa- ment, than that we should forgive injuries. It is even made the condition on which we are to ask, in our prayers, for the forgiveness of our own sins " For- give us our debts, as we forgive our debtors;" and we are positively assured, " if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your tres- passes." How solemn are the expressions of Christ, when speaking of the punishment of the unmerciful and unforgiving man; "So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts for- give not every one his brother their trespasses." Thus 4 Facts and Considerations relating to War. does the Divine law strike at the very root of revenge it forbids all vindictive feelings, even where an in- jury has been committed or an insult offered, and by cutting off all animosity and all retaliation, it eradi- cates the very elements of war. "From whence come wars and fightings'?" says the inspired apostle: "come they not from hence, even from your lusts which war in your members ?" So that we see the origin of them is in those fierce and corrupt passions of the depraved heart, which are totally at variance with the example and precepts of our Lord, and which it is the very object of his blessed religion to subdue and eradicate. Instead, therefore, of deriving from the New Testa- ment which all Christians acknowledge to be a rule any authority for that assumption of power by which rulers seek to legalize the destruction of men in a state of warfare, we find that the precepts of Christ forbid war entirely, as being wholly at variance with the very nature and design of the gospel, which is " to save men's lives, not to destroy them." It is important that every man who is called upon to enter the army, should seriously consider these things, and remember that on himself rests the responsibility and the consequences of his own actions. It will not avail him to plead that others created the war, and that he is only fighting in defence of his country. The declaration of war cannot suspend the Divine law, nor will his fighting for his country, excuse him for violating the positive commands of Christ, or re- lease him from that punishment which is the conse- quence of such violation. When you hear the thrilling notes of martial music, or listen to the solicitations of others to enter with them on the career of a soldier, turn your eyes from the gaudy pageantry of war, and coolly reflect on the hundreds and thousands of your fellow beings who are cruelly butchered on the field of battle. Imagine the groans of the wounded and dying the wailing of the bereaved widows and helpless orphans, the misery, the sorrow, the wickedness and want, which follow in the train of war; and then calmly ask yourselves whe- Facts and Considerations relating to War. 5 ther as humane men, or as Christians, you can lend your aid in the prosecution of this murderous business. At Palo Alto, Resaca, and Monterey, thousands of men were suddenly hurried out of time into eternity, their hearts burning with revenge arid malice, and their hands reeking perhaps in a brother's blood ; un- prepared, it is to be feared, for that awful reckoning with the Judge of all the earth, from which none can escape. What must be the feelings of that man, who survives this fiend-like conflict, and afterward reflects that he was himself, the instrument of thus closing the mortal career of his fellow man, and hurrying him, with his sins upon his head, into the presence of his God. Would not bitter remorse follow him dur- ing the remnant of his days. But it is not in battle only that the victims of this insatiable demon are sacrificed. War has means of destruction, says Dr. Johnson, more formidable than the cannon and the sword. Of the thousands and tens of thousands that perish, a very small part ever feel the stroke of the enemy. Dreadful as is the car- nage on the battle-field, where heaps of wounded and slain lie piled on each other, while the earth is drench- ed with blood, and covered with mangled limbs and flesh ; still the number is greater who languish in tents, and ships, and hospitals ; amid damps and filth, and putrefaction, gasping and groaning, amongst men made obdurate by long continuance of hopeless mis- ery ; and who are at last thrown into pits, or tossed into the ocean, without notice and without remem- brance. By insufficient and unwholesome food by long and forced marches, by incommodious encamp- ments, in an unhealthy country, where courage is useless and enterprize impracticable, and by the vices and licentiousness which a military life engenders, fleets are silently depopulated and armies melted away. A writer describing the field of Borodino, says, " the fire of 2000 pieces of cannon enveloped the two armies in smoke, and mowing down whole battalions, strewed the earth with the dead and wounded. The latter fell to expose themselves to a fate still more 1* 6 Facts and Considerations relating to War. terrible. How agonizing their situation. Forty thou- sand dragoons galloping over the field in every di- rection, trampled them under foot, and dyed their horses hoofs in their blood. The flying artillery, in rapid and alternate advance and retreat, put a pe- riod to the anguish of some, and inflicted new tor- ments on others who were mangled by their wheels. * * * * Night separated the combatants, but left 80,000 men dead upon the field." Describing the appearances next day, he says, " A surface of about nine square miles in extent, was covered with the killed and wounded, with the wreck of arms, lances, helmets and cuirasses, and with balls as numerous as hail stones after a violent storm. Such was the havock occasioned by repeated discharges, that mountains of dead were raised. But the most dreadful spectacle was the interior of the ravines, where the wounded had instinctively crawled to avoid the shot. Here, these unfortunate wretches, lying one upon another, destitute of assistance and weltering in their blood, uttered the most horrid groans. Loudly invoking death, they besought us to put an end to their excruciating torments." Another writer describing the siege of Saragossa, says, " Pestilence broke out as a matter of course, and when once begun, it was impossible to check its progress, or confine it to one locality. It was not long before more than thirty hospitals were established. As soon as one was destroyed by the bombs, the pa- tients were removed to some other building, which was in a state to afford them temporary shelter, and thus the infection was carried to every part. The daily average of deaths was not less than 350. Men, stretched upon straw, in helpless misery, lay breathing their last, and with their dying breath spreading the mortal taint of their own disease, without medicines, food or attendance ; for the ministers of charity them- selves, became the victims of disease. The slightest wound produced gangrene and death in bodies so pre- pared for dissolution by distress of mind, want of pro- per aliment and of sleep; for there was no respite either by day or night. ****** The cemeteries Facts and Considerations relating to War. 7 could no longer afford room for the dead. Large pits to receive them were dug in the streets and in the courts of the public buildings, until hands were wanted for the labour; they were laid before the public build- ings, heaped upon one another, and covered with sheets ; arid not unfrequently these piles of mortality were struck by a shell, and the shattered bodies scat- tered in all directions. When the besieging army en- tered the city, six thousand bodies were lying in the streets and trenches, or piled up in heaps before the churches." Of the sufferings endured in marches, the following description given by an eye witness, will convey some idea; " Overwhelmed with whirl-winds of snow, our soldiers could not distinguish the road from the ditch- es, and often fell into the latter, which served them for a tomb. Badly clothed and shod, having nothing to eat or drink, groaning and shivering with the cold, they gave no assistance and showed no signs of com- passion to those who, sinking from weakness, expired around them. Many of these miserable creatures struggled hard in the agonies of death. Some in the most affecting manner, bade adieu to their brethren in arms, and others with their latest breath pronounced the names of their mothers and of their country. Stretched on the road, we could only see the heaps of snow that covered them, and formed undulations in our route like those in a grave-yard. " Flocks of ravens flew over our heads, croaking ominously, and troops of dogs, which followed us, and lived solely on our bloody remains, howled around us, as if impatient for the moment when we should become their prey. Every day furnished scenes too painful to relate. The road was covered with soldiers, who no longer retained the human form. Some had lost their hearing others their speech ; and many by excessive cold and hunger, were reduced to such a state of stupid frenzy, that they roasted the dead bodies for food, and even gnawed their own hands and arms." Take another scene from an eye witness and parti- cipator : " These horrors, so far from exciting our sensibility, only hardened our hearts. Having no 8 Facts and Considerations relating to War. longer the power of exercising our cruelty on our enemies, we turned it on each other. The best friends were estranged ; and whoever experienced the least sickness, was certain of never seeing his country again, unless he had good horses and faithful servants. Securing the plunder was preferred by most to the pleasure of saving a comrade. We heard around us the groans of the dying, and the plaintive voices of those who were abandoned ; but all were deaf to their cries and, if any one approached them, even when on the point of death, it was for the purpose of stripping them, and searching whether they had any remains of food." " Among the burning houses, were three large barns filled with soldiers, chiefly wounded. They could not escape from two of them, without passing through the one in front, which was on fire. The most active saved themselves by leaping out of the windows, but those who were sick or crippled, not having strength to move, saw the flames advancing rapidly to devour them. Touched by their shrieks, some who were the least hardened, endeavoured in vain to save them, but we could scarcely see them, half buried under the burning rafters. They entreated us to shorten their sufferings by depriving them of life ; and from motives of humanity we thought it our duty to comply with their wishes ! ! ! As there were some who still sur- vived, we heard them with feeble voices crying. " Fire wi us .Ji r e on us ! at the head ! at the head I don't miss /" How awful is this picture ! how does war harden the heart, steel it against the cry of distress render it insensible to the awful realities of death and eternity, and exemplify the truth of that Scripture declaration, " The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel." Such are some of the horrid scenes which the march of an army presents, and if the written delineation fills us with horror, how much more shocking must it be to witness and to suffer the dreadful reality. Nor is a hospital much less terrible. An eminent surgeon, present in the hospitals after the battle of Waterloo, says, " The soldiers who had in the morning Facts and Considerations relating to War. been moved by the piteous cries of those they carried in, I saw in the evening, so hardened by the repetition of the scene, and by fatigue, as to become indifferent to the sufferings they occasioned. It is impossible to conceive the sufferings of men rudely carried at such a period of their wounds. When I first entered the hospital, the men had been roused and excited in an extraordinary degree ; and in the glance of their eyes there was a character of fierceness, which I never expected to witness in the human countenance. On the second day the temporary excitement had sub- sided, and turn which way I would, I encountered every form of entreaty from those whose condition left no need of words to stir compassion. " Surgeon Major ! O how I suffer ! Dress my wounds do dress my wounds ! Doctor, I commend myself to you. Cut off my kg. Oh ! I suffer too much /" And when these entreaties were unavailing, you might hear, in a weak, inward tone of despair, "I shall die! lam a dead man!" In the hospitals of Wilna there were left more than 17,000 dead and dying, frozen and freezing. The bodies of the former were used to stop the openings in the windows, floors and walls, and in one Corridor of the Great Convent, above 1500 were piled up trans- versely, like pigs of lead or iron. Such are some of the horrors of war ! But per- haps it will be said, these descriptions do not apply to the Mexican campaigns there will be no such mise- ries there. Do not deceive yourselves with such hopes war is very much the same every where climate or other attendant circumstances may make some little modifications, but its general features do not vary. Could you now look at the troops who are enduring long, painful, and harassing marches, through an un- healthy, and in great measure, uncultivated country at the sick, the wounded, the dying, crowded into un- comfortable quarters, with little or no attendance, and few of the comforts which their diseased and helpless condition demands, you would perceive, that war at Palo Alto, Monterey, or Resaca, is the same cruel and destructive business that it was at Borodino, Sara- gossa, and Waterloo. In proportion to the numbers > *<*t 10 Facts and Considerations relating to War. engaged, the carnage and the miseries were probably quite as great at the former as at the latter places. A member of Congress in a speech lately delivered in the House of Representatives, describing the ap- pearance of the volunteers who had been discharged by General Taylor, says, " Of all the emaciated, walk- ing skeletons ever beheld, these surpassed. They were discharged because they were utterly unfit for duty. A campaign on the Rio Grande had rendered them thus incompetent, and their discharge under these circumstances, was an act of good sense and of huma- nity. Had not General Taylor discharged them when he did, death would very soon have done it for him." But the moral evils of war are not less terrible ! Bad as many men are who enlist in armies, war makes them worse. The recruit begins his degradation even in the rendezvous, and he rapidly grows more wicked in the camp. There vice becomes his occupation: His worst passions are fostered, and unbridled license given to the exercise of them. Those restraints which kept them in check while the man was in the bosom of virtuous society, are all removed. He becomes ashamed of tender feelings, and of conscientious scru- ples. He dare not meet the dread laugh of his com- panions in arms he drowns his convictions, stifles the stirrings of good within his breast, and runs eager- ly with the multitude to do evil. The business of a soldier is to butcher his fellow men. He is hired to destroy them, and all his inge- nuity and skill are called into requisition to enable him to kill them in the most successful manner. He is a wholesale, legalized murderer. "War," says the celebrated Robert Hall, "is the fruitful parent of crimes. It reverses, with re- spect to its objects, all the rules of morality. It is nothing less than a temporary repeal of all the prin- ciples of virtue. It is a system, out of which almost all the virtues are excluded, and in which nearly all the vices are incorporated. Whatever renders human nature amiable or respectable, whatever engages love or confidence, is sacrificed at its shrine." Camps are proverbially scenes of the most aban- Facts and Considerations relating to War. 1 1 doned and unblushing wickedness. Every species of crime which can deform or debase the character of man, is there shamelessly practised. It is an atmos- phere of moral pestilence, which corrupts all who come within its baleful influence. One of the volunteers, writing from Monterey, dur- ing the late armistice, remarks : " If you would witness wickedness and vice, drunkenness and all the wicked propensities of the human heart if you would see the worst passions with which our fallen nature is cursed, in the most odious colours, the American camp, I grieve to say, is the place where you may behold them. Full many a bright and promising youth, who looked forward to a life of usefelness and honour, may date his ruin, it is greatly to be feared, from this campaign this grand school of iniquity and vice. The ingenuous mind shrinks appalled from the re- volting scenes daily exposed to view." ***** Consider for a moment the consequences of volun- tarily placing yourselves within the influence of such corrupting examples. It is not merely exposing your moral and religious principles to the imminent danger of utter prostitution, and your reputation to hopeless ruin, but it is hazarding the everlasting welfare of your souls that part which will never die, and which must be happy or miserable forever. What can compensate you for encountering so fearful a risk ; or how can you pray, " Lead us not into temp- tation," or- hope to be preserved from the dreadful contamination, if you thus willingly place yourselves within its worst influences ? Have you ever seriously pondered the immea- surable value of one immortal soul ? Have you reflected upon the awful words FOREVER AND EVER? and considered that when millions of millions of years shall have passed over, your unbodied spirit will be but as in the dawn of its existence, as full of high and holy hopes and joyful anticipations as though its eternity of bliss was only that moment begun ; or groaning in unutterable woe and misery, as trem- blingly alive to hopeless agony and despair, as when it first heard the awful sentence, " Depart from 12 Facts and Considerations relating to War. I 8 me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." These are solemn realities ; and well might the Saviour of man, He who knew better than any other, the worth of an immortal spirit, exclaim, " What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul ; or what will a man give in exchange for his soul ?" When solicited to join the army, pause and reflect, that this precious undying soul, which is to be happy or miserable forever, will be jeoparded by your as- sent that you will be obliged to surrender yourselves as mere machines, to the absolute control and direction of officers, and to do at their bidding acts from which humanity revolts, and which religion abhors that the law of Christ our Saviour commands you to love and to pray for, and to do good to, those whom your offi- cers will compel you to shoot through the head or stab to the heart that amid these deeds of blood and murder, and the fierce and malevolent passions which rage on the battle field, you will yourselves be liable to be hurried unprepared into the presence of your God and Judge, there to receive that solemn sentence which is to fix unalterably your everlasting destiny. Surely, if you weigh these things with the seriousness which becomes their high import, you will not hesitate to fol- low the injunctions of that blessed book, which says, "Follow peace with all men; and holiness, without which no man can see the Lord." 05 , , O CL B e TJ 4J S 03 4_) (U = M-l r - T3 (D 3 ,3 O CQ rH -H ,d 4_) O 0) W * (U-H U >,, 05 &X O JH - H ,_, _r< 4H H >i 3 >i M O (U Q ' A (U O cn a & -H -H M rH PL, EH < H J CQ 05 H h (U 11 , o ^ 5 O o5 (U h ^5 Sow CX W < g -H 0) OQ 05 O O 0) .. ^rH ^4 CX-P ftf O*-H ^ CN JJ a r a (0 O O r-,-H H O JJ 0) oo o5 FACTS nt rare pamphlet describing "the horrors tness testimony, graphically to the it will be said, these descriptioi campaigns. Do not deceive yoursel rs of the Rio Grande campaign were emaciated, walking skeletons ever be: 5 war has given rise to "wickedness the wicked propensities of the hume worst passions with which our falle : odious colors, the American camp, : lere you may behold them." 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