A History of U.S. Pacifism

...Others surrendered it...

...Tension between pacifists—those who repudiated all war and violence---and non BOOKS pacifists—who rejected only "aggressive" wars —plagued the peace movement...

...In varying degrees, they have confronted the tax problem...

...but wherever the line was drawn, it often reflected acute and painful consciousness of the problem of preserving personal integrity in an interdependent world...

...or the curious hope that a greatly expanded Pentagon, employing germ warfare and deadly missiles, has something to do with preserving "democracy...

...The experiment remains, nevertheless, one of the most remarkable in the history of mankind...

...or the BOOKS confidence that armed blacks will, by turning to the methods of their oppressors, evade the ends of oppression...

...Mennonites, Amish, Quakers, and Brethren (Dunkards) by and large remained true to their convictions during the Civil War...

...This question has puzzled American pacifists from the very beginning...

...Mennonite critics have rightly called attention to the serious compromises into which Quakers were virtually forced so long as they were active in Pennsylvania commerce and politics...

...The world cannot be transformed by "political" methods, which always tend to result in violence...

...for commerce, trade, and politics inevitably force one to be involved in violent activities...

...Should one ground the repudiation of all violence—as did most early Quakers—on an Inner Light which demands obedience regardless of supposed consequences...

...Leon V. Sigal...

...and for them, the question arose of whether they would accept war if it was ostensibly necessary to abolish slavery...

...or should one, by contrast, base one's position primarily on "humanitarian" and economic grounds...

...Incidentally, Quakers are BOOKS at work today in one large American city trying to help train the police in forms of nonviolence...

...The only way to avoid unacceptable compromise is to live a relatively self-sufficient life, repudiating the fruits of complexity and thus avoiding the more egregious commitments to violence...

...and peace causes—and the League of Universal Brotherhood represented radical pacifist sentiment...

...In the years immediately before World War I, American pacifists increasingly turned to a study of the causes of war in the economic and social order...

...Some pacifists— like the very remarkable Elihu Burritt —retained their pacifism unimpaired...

...The Mennonite-Amish position (shared by certain other groups as well) has traditionally been that living in a complex society is incompatible with a thoroughly exemplified nonviolence...

...PACIFISM INT THE TJNITED STATES: FROM THE COLONIAL ERA TO THE FIRST WORLD WAR, by Peter Brock...

...After the conflict, it was revived with the establishment of the Universal Peace Union...

...Surely, something is basically wrong (as all pacifists argue) with a world in which millions of generally humane men—including professed radicals tolerate and even support such propositions...

...But for withdrawn pacifists—those who do not participate in complex society— active involvement in government must be repudiated...

...Many suffered imprisonment and some—in the South particularly—had to flee their homes...

...Most would have nothing to do with the militia...

...Surely, pacifism cannot be ignored in a day when men destroy towns in order to "liberate" them...

...This view was a major tendency in the New England Non Resistance Society and in American Tolstoyans of the early twentieth century...

...2) This second attitude, represented by Quakerism and certain other viewpoints, looks upon government as potentially a positive and constructive force, even though historically it has often been merely negative and suppressive...

...Perhaps the pacifist—with whom the term "naive" is so often associated, sometimes legitimately—is the little child in Andersen's fairy tale who, when the sophisticated all see the naked Emperor as clothed, shouts out in his innocence, "But the Emperor has nothing on...

...Those few Quaker youths who did go to war were expelled from their Meetings...

...Elsewhere in the colonies the Quaker witness was also made...

...or the picture of a highly armed and bureaucratic Soviet or Chinese power structure emancipating the exploited...

...3) Pacifists of the third type are "nogovernment" men—essentially pacifist anarchists...

...Then, too, many pacifists were active in the cause of abolition...

...For Quakers, peace came to mean following the way of love that begins in the hearts of individuals and through them leavens society until all men are won...

...The influence of the Tolstoyans also made itself felt...

...The period from the Revolution to the Civil War saw the development of a nondenominational peace movement, with the founding of regional peace societies and, in 1828, the establishment of the American Peace Society...

...Broadly speaking, the history of American pacifism reveals three fundamental attitudes: (1) In the Mennonite and Amish tradition, government is viewed as a necessary negative force for those who still live in the "world" and need to be restrained by coercion and even war...

...They have not only refused to work themselves, or suffer any of their servants to beemployed in the fortifications, but affirm thattheir consciences will not permit them to contribute in any manner .. . to the defence of the country...

...Pacifism and Government: One of the most vexing questions has turned on pacifist perspectives with respect to government...

...Many legitimate criticisms of the "holy experiment" have been offered, not the least of which is the one that calls attention to the compromises accepted by the Quaker-dominated legislature...

...With the development of socialist thought, many now sought to remedy the deficiency...

...Historically, too, living on the frontier created many dilemmas for the pacifist...

...The prewar pacifist movement had dissolved, in effect, a decade before the war...

...In general, the former attitude might hold that a byproduct of pacifism would be a more nearly humane society, but that the moral basis must transcend merely "utilitarian" considerations...

...others suffered confiscation of material goods for their refusal to pay taxes...

...How can one select violent means and yet come out with nonviolent ends...

...In Pennsylvania, under Quaker control, a careful distinction was made between police work and war...

...Pacifist-oriented groups played an important role in many of the early colonies—in Rhode Island, for example, where Quakers were active in politics for many years and, above all, in Pennsylvania...

...The Union, intimately associated with the activities of such men as Alfred Love, included in its membership many veterans who had been disillusioned with all war...

...The antecedents of American pacifism, of course, lay in the European background of Anabaptism, the Quakerism of the seventeenth century, and, more remotely, in the attitudes of early Christians...

...At times, however, one tends to get so lost in detail that the major themes are forgotten...

...This issue troubled John Dewey, despite his support of World War I. Yet most liberals in our time do not really face up to it...

...Yet others—and William Lloyd Garrison is perhaps the best example--continued to preach pacifism in principle but in effect supported the Civil War...

...of "progress," and threaten the destruction of mankind on the plea of "defense...

...and when he maintains that genuine revolution is incompatible with violent means, since violence has always been a characteristic method of essentially exploitative and inegalitarian societies...

...Generally speaking, Quakers were willing to pay taxes "in the mixture"—that is, when war taxes were not isolated from general imposts— but frequently they were unwilling to pay specifically designated war taxes...

...For the most part, Quakers refused to "buy" substitutes for the army or to pay the $300 required to gain exemption from service under the Draft Law...

...In 1711, during the War of the Spanish Succession (surely one of the most atrocious, absurd, and utterly futile wars in the long history of mankind), we find Governor Alexander Spotswood, of Virginia, writing to Lord Dartmouth: I have been mightily embarrassed by a set ofQuakers who broach doctrines so monstrous as their brethren in England never owned, nor, indeed, can be suffered by any government...

...Theirs was an ethic of withdrawal into rather self-sufficient agricultural communities...

...CUTTING ACROSS all periods and schools of American pacifism have been a number of rather sharply defined issues, which constitute a challenge not only to pacifists but also to all who are sensitive to moral and political questions: • What Should Be the Basis of Pacifism...

...William Penn thought of true government and true religion as virtually one...

...Princeton: Princeton Uni versity Press...

...Mennonites and Amish differed from Quakers in that they utterly repudiated "politics" and were much more pessimistic than Quakers in their view of man...

...WITH MUCH SKILL, Peter Brock has sought to tie together the many strands in the history of American pacifism from colonial times to 1914...

...Pacifists who accept this position will become involved in politics, even though they know its perils...

...From the very beginning, pacifists have taken rather diverse positions...

...But they will try to draw a line between the essentially destructive activities so often associated with government in the past—war, for example—and its constructive works...

...How to implement such an attitude was, of course, always a problem...

...At best, the coercion pacifists of this type associate with government is a kind of holding action against evil...

...The Quakerism of William Penn and his associates established the precedents which were to be followed, in varying degrees, until the middle of the eighteenth century...

...It raises, of course, the perturbing problem of means and ends...

...Much of the material will be familiar to the students of the American peace movement, and a considerable part builds on earlier works of E. N. Wright, Devere Allen, and many others...

...Short of the extreme withdrawal position— which has its own ethical and other difficulties —pacifists have sought to exemplify their view not only by refusing service in the militia and army but also by rejecting activities that substantially support military violence...

...While early Quakers were acutely aware of the relation between war and social injustice, pacifists sometimes had ignored the wider ramifications of their position...

...and since the seventeenth century, many Quakers have tried to develop this undoubtedly valid distinction...

...Perhaps the most original chapters deal with such groups as the Mennonites, Amish, and Shakers...

...For those involved in manufacturing and commerce, the issue often arose as to how one could retain one's vocation and yet sell or manufacture goods which in part might be used to sustain military violence...

...After the Revolutionary War and after the Civil War, not a few former soldiers became convinced pacifists, and the question arose as to whether they should accept their pensions as veterans...

...Acting consistently, it opposed the SpanishAmerican War, was accused of unpatriotic actions, and gradually faded from the scene...

...Some fled to Canada...

...During the Revolution, Quakers officially discouraged payment of most taxes to the revolutionary governments, partly on pacifist grounds and partly because they took seriously their allegiance to the British government...

...Some did...

...During King Philip's War (1675-1676), unarmed Quakers were unharmed, though surrounded by Indians on the warpath...

...Again, the answers varied...

...Radicals particularly should examine pacifism, which with all its difficulties and dilemmas— and they are many—surely makes more sense, even politically, than the spectacle of a Che Guevara trying to arouse illiterate peasants to kill others in the name of their own liberation...

...Is the pacifist any more "unrealistic" than the general and the orthodox politician when he insists that we cannot make war for peace (the road to peace is peace, as the late A. J. Muste used to say) ; when he argues that the only way to cut through the cycle of violence and counterviolence is to refuse to surrender to either, regardless of the nobility of the ends professed...

...At times, the second pacifist position has faded into the third or the third has in practice given way to the second...

...Unlike the American Peace Society and similar segments of the peace movement, the Union refused to distinguish between allegedly defensive and aggressive wars...

...but many did not, often in the face of dire poverty...

...when we arm with missiles to preserve "freedom," kill others en masse in the name...

...Later on, the New England Non-Resistance Society—devoted to both "no government...

...Personal Conduct and Pacifism: If one repudiates all war and warlike acts, how should one conduct oneself in a society where war is built into the structure of things...

...WHATEVER one may think about the general philosophy of pacifism—and here we have been barely able to skim a few questions—it touches on some of the most basic issues of human life...