The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 6.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

‘That accursed drum and fife! How they have maddened mankind! And the deep bass boom of the cannon, chiming in the chorus of battle, that trumpet and wild charging bugle,—how they set the military devil in a man, and make him into a soldier! Think of the human family falling upon one another at the inspiration of music! How must God feel at it, to see those harp-strings he meant should be waked to a love bordering on divine, strung and swept to mortal hate and butchery!’

‘Leave off being Jews,’ (he is addressing Major Noah with regard to his appeal to his brethren to return to Judaea,) ‘and turn mankind. The rocks and sands of Palestine have been worshipped long enough. Connecticut River or the Merrimac are as good rivers as any Jordan that ever run into a dead or live sea, and as holy, for that matter. In Humanity, as in Christ Jesus, as Paul says, “ there is neither Jew nor Greek.” And there ought to be none. Let Humanity be reverenced with the tenderest devotion; suffering, discouraged, downtrod-den, hard-handed, haggard-eyed, care-worn mankind! Let these be regarded a little. Would to God I could alleviate all their sorrows, and leave them a chance to laugh! They are miserable now. They might be as happy as the blackbird on the spray, and as full of melody.’

‘I am sick as death at this miserable struggle among mankind for a living. Poor devils! were they born to run such a gauntlet after the means of life? Look about you, and see your squirming neighbors, writhing and twisting like so many angleworms in a fisher's bait-box, or the wriggling animalculae ’