man affairs, we can discern a meaning in the most perplexing passages, and trace a guiding clew through labyrinths more intricate than that of Crete.

In harmony with the comprehensive use, thus briefly indicated, of civil and political history, the American Peace Society wished to subject the late war between the United States and Mexico to the crucible of a philosophical and Christian analysis. The friends of peace have often drawn their arguments and illustrations in vindication of their holy cause from Herodotus and Thucydides, or Hume and Robertson; but unhappily they have now been provided with a fearful strife nearer home, whose fields of blood are hardly yet dry, and whose wounds are still ghastly, from which they may teach the evils of international war. And now the thunder of artillery and the shrieks of the wounded having died away, they wish to repeat again in mournful recitative, though it be but with a jarring human tongue, the angel's sweet hymn, "on earth peace, good will toward men.”

The language of the schedule, issued by the Society in February, 1847, was as follows: "The Review should be written without reference to political parties, and present such a view of the subject as will commend itself, when the hour of sober and candid reflection shall come, to the good sense of fair-minded men in every party and in all sections of the country. The war, in its origin, its progress, and the whole sweep of its evils to all concerned, should be reviewed on the principles of Christianity and of enlightened statesmanship; showing especially its waste of treasure and human life; its influence upon the interests of morality and religion, its inconsistency with the genius of our republican institutions, as well as with the precepts of our religion, and the spirit of the age, its bearings immediate and remote, on free, popular governments here and through the world; how its evils might have been avoided with better results to both parties; and what means may and should be

-

adopted by nations to prevent similar evils in future. Our sole aim is to promote the cause of permanent peace, by turning this war into effectual warnings against resorts to the sword hereafter."

Here, then, is a distinct purpose, avowed at the outset, to use the Mexican War as an argument for the cause of peace; to "beat its swords into ploughshares, and its spears into pruning hooks," for the culture of humane and Christian sen-` timents. Without following the above-mentioned order of topics, with rigid accuracy, it will then be the aim, both of our logic and our rhetoric, in this Essay, to draw the moral of this event in the nineteenth century, and to employ it as a powerful instrument, furnished by our opponents themselves, — if peace have any opponents, to scatter the illusions of military glory, and to reveal the incalculable evils of international war. We have great advantages for the accomplishment of this purpose, in the very recent occurrence of the contest; the voluminous public documents, correspondence, and speeches; the numerous memoirs, sketches, and letters, written by eye and ear-witnesses and actors in the field and the camp; and in able and eloquent essays, for and against the war, which have been laid before the public during its progress. Much of the history of the blood-stained past has been written and sung by the advocates of war, the bards and historians of the world's boisterous childhood, who have showered the richest gifts of their genius upon those fierce heroes, who were ready to

"Wade through slaughter to a throne,

And shut the gates of mercy on mankind."

But the time has now come to examine the subject of war in all its aspects and all its issues; to decompose its glittering fabric of glory into its constituent elements; and while it is "fresh and gory," to arrest the fugitive attention of the public, and confine it to the solemn lessons of Providence and

Revelation. And he, whose pen is moved by pulses from a Christian heart, will not fear to question any customs, usages, or laws pertaining to this relic of barbarism, according to the plain and positive precepts of Christ, and the whole spirit of his religion. Such is the subject, plan and promise of the following pages; the fulfilment must rest with Him, who deigns to be a co-worker with the humblest of his creatures for good.

In the investigation of this war, we would rise, as suggested in the circular of the Society, far above the tempestuous region of partisan politics, and the extravagances of zealous, but injudicious reformers. We would speak, as men bound by the laws of natural justice, and as Christians bowing to the benevolent precepts of Christ, as the ultimate authority in every question of public, not less than of private morals. One of the vices of the times is headlong ultraism ;- the ultraism of conservatism, as well as that of radicalism. Impatient of halves, men "go the whole," to use the national phrase. It is not a day of qualification, or moderation. Parties tolerate none in their ranks, that will not ride the pendulum of their peculiar notions to the utmost point of its swing. The very nature and form of social progress, developed in our country, predisposes us to this fierce intolerance. The rush and eagerness of our daily life, the earnest enterprise that is busy all over the land, that plies every tool and machine, spins along the lines of city intercourse, pours forth into forests and prairies, skims every river and lake, and careers over every ocean, in the pursuit of wealth, naturally incline our people to adopt very decided opinions upon every subject. They act under a momentum that easily throws them into extremes. We would guard against this weakness. We would speak "the words of truth and soberness." However severe may be our judgment of the late contest between the United States and Mexico, it shall be a censure within the bounds of reason and religion, and therefore commending

itself to whatever there may be of reason and religion in the minds of our readers; and all the more severe because springing not from wholesale and indiscriminate abuse, but from the simple and eternal principles of right. It requires no far-fetched proofs or strained positions; no fanatic appeals or ultra doctrines, to brand the war in question with an adequate seal of infamy. For its own history is its sufficient exposure. Its origin, causes, purposes, and results are truth-telling witnesses against it. To be abhorred and condemned, it needs but to be recorded and reviewed.

CHAPTER II.

CIRCUMSTANCES PREDISPOSING TO THE WAR WITH

MEXICO.

"If that the Heavens do not their visible spirits

Send quickly down to tame these vile offences,

No event in history has an independent and solitary existence. All its facts may be said, in one sense, to be the effect of all that precedes, and the cause of all that follows. For history is not so much a chain, as a network. Its transactions do not obey a law of simple succession, but of intricate combination. The working out of the great designs of Providence is furthered by a diversity of agencies,

some

in conflict, and others in alliance. We can, therefore, understand historically nothing by itself. To know even one

nation truly and thoroughly, we need to know all nations. Viewed according to this judgment, the history of mankind is a unity, and its truest designation is universal.

This general principle holds true, in its application to the important matter under review. To comprehend it aright, we need to have been diligent students of the past as well as the present. It involves, especially, the great questions of European colonization in America, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, under the English, or Protestant, and Continental, or Catholic forms, and their respective issues down to this moment.

In truth, far back even beyond the third and fourth generation, the causes have been in process to predispose us to this Mexican crisis, and, if prudence and wisdom did not govern both the aggrieved and the aggressor, to plunge us in a brute strife. This is no sudden leap. This is no mine sprung without warning. On both sides, the elements have been silently brewing, through many years, for the issues of to-day. As the cannons that have mowed down ranks of living men, and the deadly bombs that have crashed through homes of affection, have in many cases been lying rusty and ancient, the relics of days gone by; so have the causes that set these horrid engines in operation been long accumulating in the arsenal, so to speak, and lying unused, until the fatal imprudence or passion of one or both parties has summoned them into action.

To specify a leading cause, we would advert to what Sir Robert Peel has called, in the British Parliament," a development of military ambition in the United States;" in one sense, both cause and effect of the war with Mexico. The attentive student of history will be at no loss to trace the origin and growth of this fearful passion. have existed as a people, we have been no sluggards in the use of the sword. The old French and Indian wars occupied our great grandfathers; the Revolution our grand

For the time we