War of liberation

“ But it is to be feared that in America, the factors which make this war of liberation not only righteous but compulsory are still imperfectly grasped.
The liberty of the little nations is necessary to our own peace, freedom and safety. That is the last remaining discovery which the American people must make. ”

“ Through liberation alone can we obtain that complete triumph, bringing with it assured tranquillity, without which the war will stop merely to break forth anew, and peace will be nothing but an uneasy truce. Among all the powers of Congress incident to our unparalleled condition, there is none so far-reaching, as there is none so beneficent,—there is none so potent to beat down rebellion, as there is none other by which peace can be made truly secure. ”

“ After the great exertions of the war of liberation, a truce in political life followed, and the nations used it to make up for what they had lost in the development of civilization during the period of political strife. A flood of ideas inundated the world. ”

“ Full of the most flaming patriotism, and not doubting that deliverance would finally come, statesmen and warriors, Stein, Scharnhorst, Blücher, Schill, and others, labored unweariedly to keep up the spirits of the people, and prepare them for the coming War of Liberation. ”

“ In our own great struggle, which had for its object the liberation of the Negro, the scars which our country received have not yet been entirely eliminated. Portions of the country devastated by the soldiers still bear the marks of the invasion, but what was lost in money and material things was made up by the welding together of the two sections of the country. The Union was made a concrete, humanitarian body of citizens. The battle was for the right and liberty triumphed. And by the defeat of Germany liberty again triumphs and the world is made a safe place in which to live. ”

“ While inflexibly resolved to fight until victory is achieved to accomplish this task of liberation, the Socialists are none the less resolved to resist any attempt to transform this defensive war into a war of conquest, which would only prepare fresh conflicts, create new grievances, and subject various peoples more than ever to the double plague of armaments and war. ”

“ I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that the war upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation has now become a war of agression and conquest. ”

“ Every interest of the insurgents, every dollar of their property, every institution, however peculiar, every life in every rebel State, even, if necessary, should have been sacrificed, before one dollar or one man should have been drawn from the free States. How much more, then, was it the President's duty to confer freedom on the four million slaves, transform them into a peaceful army for the Union, cripple the rebellion, and establish justice, the only sure foundation of peace! I therefore hail the day when the Government shall recognize that it is a war for freedom. ”

“ Send forth a base and hireling band,
To desolate our happy land,
And make our Southern freemen cower.
To arms, to arms! each one,
The sword unsheathe, raise the gun,
Then on, rush on, ye brave and free,
To death or victory.
Now clouds of war begin to gather,
And black and murky is our sky—
Shall we submit—no, never, never!
Let death or freedom be our cry—
In Heaven’s justice firm relying,
We’ll nobly struggle to be free,
[Pg 171] And bravely gain our liberty,
Or die, our Northern foes defying. ”

“ Is checked by no danger, is stayed by no fear,
Though mighty thy foes are, and urgent thy need,
We charge thee, look upward! we bid thee Godspeed!
On, on! thou brave champion of liberty's cause;
Unfurl Freedom's flag; blot out Tyranny's laws;
"God and the right!" be thy constant war-cry,
Till Oppression's hold ceases, and Slavery die. ”

“ No one can call these "wars of liberation." For these are free countries living under their own governments. Nor are these aggressions any less real because men are knifed in their homes and not shot in the fields of battle. ”

“ One has to get back to facts after reading it, to the enormous war preparations of the Republics, to the unprepared state of the British Colonies, to the ultimatum, to the annexations, to the stirring up of rebellion, to the silence about peace in the days of success, to the fact that by 'inextinguishable love of freedom' is meant inextinguishable determination to hold other white men as helots--only then can we form a just opinion of the worth of his message. ”

“ The present rebellion is but the culmination of this conflict, long existing,—transferred from social and political life to the camp and the battle-field. In the new arena, we have all the rights of belligerents in an international war. Slavery has taken the sword; let it perish by the sword. If we spare it, its wickedness will be exceeded by our folly. As victors, the world concedes our right to demand, for our own future peace, as the only terms of restoration, not only the abolition of Slavery in all the Rebel States, but its prohibition in all coming time. ”

“ If we make them freemen, and their defense is the defense of the Nation, whose right and duty is it to bear arms, if not theirs? In this great struggle, now for universal freedom not less than for perpetual Union, who ought to take part, if not they? And how can we expect to succeed, if we fail to avail ourselves of the natural helps created for us by the very conditions of the war? When, therefore, the President, after much consideration, resolved to summon black soldiers to battle for the flag, I felt that it was a wise act, only too long delayed. ”

“ But we are fighting the fight which is the fight of all freemen everywhere—against the wantonness of military power, against the spirit that tears up treaties and makes peaceful agreement between nations impossible—against a cruelty and barbarism in war which brings our civilisation to shame. We have a right to your sympathy—you who are the heirs of Washington and Lincoln, the trustees of liberty in the New World as we, with France, are in the Old. ”

“ In the one, brave leaders risked their lives in that defence of rights which has made their enterprise an epoch in man's history; in the other, a mean and braggart spirit actuated its promoters to strike in the back that nation which almost alone was carrying on, in the best spirit of the Revolution, the struggle for the liberties of Europe against the designs of Napoleon. The brave spirits of the War of Freedom led the affairs of the United States no longer. ”

“ Sixty years ago, the flags of freedom unfurled across Europe and Asia as victorious American and Allied troops brought World War II to an end. Freedom prevailed when millions were liberated from oppression and tyranny was replaced by democracy. ”

“ Those who stood in the enemy's trenches and fought bravely for what they considered to be their liberty will soon be convinced that their struggle was prompted by men who knew not liberty, and that Great Britain will extend to them a degree of freedom which they never knew before. ”

“ I might furnish a thousand proofs to show that the pretensions of gentlemen to the sanctity of their municipal institutions under a state of actual invasion and of actual war, whether servile, civil or foreign, is wholly unfounded, and that the laws of war do, in all such cases, take the precedence. ”

“ Or if at any time the fainting resolution and exhausted strength of our adversaries seemed to promise us that repose which was so necessary to us, we saw the dying embers of war again eagerly rekindled by a country that, standing aloof from the contagion, shouted from her rocky shores to see the flames that consumed the vitals of Europe. The bitterest enmity that our early struggles in the cause of liberty had drawn down upon us was to be shewn by a people “that had long insulted the slavery of Europe, by the loudness of its boasts of freedom.” ”

“ The North was free. Millions instantly resolved that the Nation should not die—that Freedom should not perish, and that Slavery should not live.
Millions of our brothers, our sons, our fathers, our husbands, answered to the Nation's call.
The great armies have desolated the earth. The greatest soldiers have been ambition's dupes. They waged war for the sake of place and pillage, pomp and power,—for the ignorant applause of vulgar millions,—for the flattery of parasites, and the adulation of sycophants and slaves. ”

“ Remember that we do not go forth for the sake of blood and carnage; but it is necessary, that, in the commencement of this revolution, all the whites we meet should die, until we have an army strong enough to carry on the war upon a Christian basis. Remember that ours is not a war for robbery, and to satisfy our passions: it is a struggle for freedom. ”

“ This strife is not a strife between two hostile camps, but a war of tyranny against freedom, of barbarians against the collective might of a free nation. Therefore must the whole people arise with the army. If these millions sustain our army, we have gained freedom and victory for universal Europe, as well as for ourselves. Therefore, O strong, gigantic people, unite with the army, and rush to the conflict. ”

“ The strangest of all is to see peace men, those in the States who were members of peace societies, and who were sending delegates to peace congresses, laboring to inaugurate civil war, with the expressed object of working a revolution throughout the nation, ultimating in a dissolution of the Union; and all to procure the emancipation of the slave. Simple men! They should learn that revolutions involving such grave consequences are not usually set on foot by murderers and thieves. ”

“ To resist attacks on their rights or their liberties is with them an instinct. Whether this war shall last one, or three, or five years, is a problem they leave to be solved by the enemy alone; it will last till the enemy shall have withdrawn from their borders — till their political rights, their altars, and their homes are freed from invasion. ”

“ We have entangled ourselves with wrong, have gone contrary to the Divine Order; now, if we come out plainly and strongly on the right side, we triumph; for Right cannot fail. This war will make a nation of great and true souls; if we fight for freedom. And what else is worth the conflict, the loss of life? The Union, a Country—a home? Yes, if these may be preserved in honor and humanity, not otherwise. Better be parceled out among the nations than keep the stigma of inhumanity upon our great domain. Freedom for slavery is no freedom to a noble soul. ”

“ But he asserted a general principle of international law,—that the commander of an invading army is not bound to recognize the municipal laws of the country,—that he may treat all as freemen, though some are slaves. And he claimed, that, in case of a servile war in this country, our army would have a right to suppress the insurrection by giving freedom to the insurgents. In regard to the effect of such a proclamation upon those not liberated by the military power, he expressed no opinion. ”

“ But the blow was struck,—the blow that was ultimately to destroy slavery, and make our country free indeed,—“a land without a serf, a servant, or a slave.”
The war to preserve the integrity of the nation was marked by great battles, weary marches, long sieges, and splendid deeds of daring. Brave men met brave men, and gallant soldiers stormed forts and heights by gallant soldiers defended. If America wept for the folly and madness of some, yet was she proud of the courage of all her sons. ”

“ Ten years after the beginning of the world war, fought on our side with a high appeal to such great words as “Liberty,” “Justice,” “a world made safe for democracy” and “the overthrow of militarism,” one is dismayed to find the beginning of a class warfare with appeals to force, and denials of liberty and justice, on both sides. ”

“ But now the time had come when the anti-slavery movement, no longer a mere opposition to the demands of the slave-power, was to proceed to positive action. The war had scarcely commenced in earnest, when Mr. Sumner urged general emancipation. Only the great ideal object of the liberty of all men could give sanction to a war in the eyes of the devotee of universal peace. To the end of stamping upon the war the character of a war of emancipation all his energies were bent. His unreserved and emphatic utterances alarmed the politicians. Our armies suffered disaster upon disaster in the field. ”

“ It is not our purpose to insist on the technical process of territorializing the conquered rebel States. What we do insist on is that the military authority, which the nation has so laboriously asserted and acquired over them, shall not be withdrawn until the natural and necessary and appropriate consequences of the war shall have been attained; and that among these is the inauguration of Freedom instead of the reinstitution of that hideous anomaly of the nations, American Slavery. ”

“ Nor can the Rebels complain. They challenge our armies to enter upon their territory in the free exercise of all the powers of war,—according to which, as you well know, all private interests are subordinated to the public safety, which, for the time, becomes the supreme law above all other laws and above the Constitution itself. If everywhere under the flag of the Union, in its triumphant march, Freedom is substituted for Slavery, this outrageous Rebellion will not be the first instance in history where God has turned the wickedness of man into a blessing ”

“ There was, therefore, no alternative left but to establish and maintain military rule during the war over the conquered people in the disputed territory who had submitted to our arms, or to forbear the exercise of our belligerent rights and leave them in a state of anarchy and without control. ”