Much has been said to show that war begets immorality, and that the cultivation of the military spirit has a corrupting influence on community.  And members of the clergy and of the bar have not unfrequently so far forgotten, if not truth and fact, at least the common courtesies and charities of life, as to attribute to the military profession an unequal share of immorality and crime.  We are declared not only parasites on the body politic, but professed violators of God’s laws—­men so degraded, though unconsciously, that “in the pursuit of justice we renounce the human character and assume that of the beasts;” it is said that “murder, robbery, rape, arson, theft, if only plaited with the soldier’s garb, go unwhipped of justice."[1] It has never been the habit of the military to retort these charges upon the other professions.  We prefer to leave them unanswered.  If demagogues on the “stump,” or in the legislative halls, or in their Fourth of-July addresses, can find no fitter subjects “to point a moral or adorn a tale,” we must be content to bear their misrepresentations and abuse.

[Footnote 1:  Sumner’s Oration.]

Unjust wars, as well as unjust litigation, are immoral in their effects and also in their cause.  But just wars and just litigation are not demoralizing.  Suppose all wars and all courts of justice to be abolished, and the wicked nations as well as individuals to be suffered to commit injuries without opposition and without punishment; would not immorality and unrighteousness increase rather than diminish?  Few events rouse and elevate the patriotism and public spirit of a nation so much as a just and patriotic war.  It raises the tone of public morality, and destroys the sordid selfishness and degrading submissiveness which so often result from a long-protracted peace.  Such was the Dutch war of independence against the Spaniards; such the German war against the aggressions of Louis XIV., and the French war against the coalition of 1792.  But without looking abroad for illustration, we find ample proof in our own history.  Can it be said that the wars of the American Revolution and of 1812, were demoralizing in their effects?  “Whence do Americans,” says Dr. Lieber, “habitually take their best and purest examples of all that is connected with patriotism, public spirit, devotedness to common good, purity of motive and action, if not from the daring band of their patriots of the Revolution?”

The principal actors in the military events of the Revolution and of 1812, held, while living, high political offices in the state, and the moral tone which they derived from these wars may be judged of by the character stamped on their administration of the government.  These men have passed away, and their places have, for some time, been filled by men who take their moral tone from the relations of peace.  To the true believer in the efficacy of non-resistance, and in the demoralizing influence of all wars, how striking the contrast between these different periods in our political history!  How infinitely inferior to the rulers in later times were those, who, in the blindness of their infatuation, appealed to physical force, rather than surrender their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness!  Let us trace out this contrast:—­