New York, January 22, 1865.
. . . I am unqualifiedly against the retaliation resolutions
concerning prisoners of war. The provision that the Southerners in our hands
shall be watched over by national soldiers who have been in Southern pens, is
unworthy of a great people or high-minded statesmen. I abhor this revenge on
prisoners of war, because we should sink thereby to the level of the enemy's
dishonor. And what is more, I defy Congress or Government to make the Northern
people treat captured Southerners as our sons are treated by them. God be
thanked! You could not do it; and if you could, how it would brutalize our own
people! I feel the cruelty as keenly as any one. I grieve most bitterly that
men whom we and all the world have taken to possess the common attributes of
humanity, and who are our kin, have sunk so low; I feel the hardship of seeing
no immediate and direct remedy except in conquering and extinguishing the
Rebellion; but I maintain that the proposed retaliation is not the remedy.
Revenge is passion, and ought never to enter the sphere of public action.
Passion always detracts from power. Calmly to maintain our ground would do us
in the end far more good. I am indeed against all dainty treatment of the
prisoners in our hands; but for the love of our country and the great destiny
of our people, do not sink even in single cases to the level of our unhappy
enemy. The only remedy for this bitter evil, as for all others that beset us
now, is — let us send men and men to our Shermans and Thomases, that they may
strike and strike again. Let us place ourselves right before our own times and
before posterity. . . .
SOURCE: Thomas Sergeant Perry, Editor, The Life and
Letters of Francis Lieber, p. 355-6
No comments:
Post a Comment