William Schouler, A history of Massachusetts in the Civil War: Volume 1

[158] that population to rise upon the defenceless women and children of the country, carrying rapine, arson, and murder—all the horrors of San Domingo a million of times magnified—among those whom we hope to re-unite with us as brethren, many of whom are already so, and all who are worth preserving will be, when this horrible madness shall have passed away or be threshed out of them? Would your Excellency advise the troops under my command to make war in person upon defenceless women and children, of any part of the Union, accompanied with brutalities too horrible to be named? You will say, God forbid! If we may not do so in person, shall we arm others so to do, over whom we can have no restraint, exercise no control, and who, when once they have tasted blood, may turn the very arms in their hands against ourselves as a part of the oppressing white race? The reading of history, so familiar to your Excellency, will tell you, the bitterest cause of complaint which our fathers had against Great Britain, in the war of the Revolution, was the arming by the British Ministry of the red man with the tomahawk and the scalping-knife against the women and children of the colonies; so that the phrase, “May we not use all the means which God and nature have put in our hands to subjugate the colonies?” has passed into a legend of infamy against the leader of that ministry who used it in Parliament. Shall history teach us in vain? Could we justify ourselves to ourselves, although with arms in our hands, amid the savage wildness of camp and field, we may have blunted many of the finer moral sensibilities, in letting loose four millions of worse than savages upon the homes and hearths of the South? Can we be justified to the Christian community of Massachusetts? Would such a course be consonant with the teachings of our holy religion? I have a very decided opinion upon the subject; and if any one desires—as I know your Excellency does not—this unhappy contest to be prosecuted in that manner, some instrument other than myself must be found to carry it on. I may not discuss the political bearings of this subject. When I went from under the shadow of my roof-tree, I left all politics behind me, to be resumed only when every part of the Union is loyal to the flag, and the potency of the Government through the ballot-box is established.

Passing the moral and Christian view, let us examine the subject as a military question. Is not that State already subjugated which requires the bayonets of those armed in opposition to its rulers to preserve it from the horrors of a servile war? As the least experienced of military men, I would have no doubt of the entire subjugation of a State brought to that condition. When, therefore,—unless I am better advised,—any community in the United States who have met