Samuel Gridley Howe to Senator Charles Sumner, December 28, 1851

South Boston, Dec. 28, 1851.

My dear Sumner: — I received to-day the revised copy of your speech, and thank you for it. It is a beautiful and characteristic speech; and had you stopped where you say, “and here I might stop,” it would have had my heartiest approval. What follows does not please me; nay! it pains and grieves me. Perhaps I cannot give you any good reason for my dissent, because I am not your equal in logical power; I yield habitually to your reasoning; but where my moral instincts lead me to differ with you, you cannot shake me. They have rarely led me so to do, but in this case they rise up, and will be laid by no magic of logic; and they tell me you are wrong. I can understand that Mann and Giddings and Allen,¹ all my superiors, vastly so, in knowledge and power, should approve your sentiment, for they are lawyers, statesmen if you will, and bow themselves with what seems to me a superstitious reverence before the "Law of Nations," as expounded by Grotius, Puffendorf and others.

Do you not yourself, dear Sumner, have too much reverence of this kind? Does it not amount to blind veneration?

You talk about “that Supreme Law, the world's collected will, which overarches the Grand Commonwealth of Christian Nations!”

The world's collected will! in God's name what do you mean? The world is the people of the world; and this “Supreme Law” was not enacted by the people, nor for the people, but by the selfish few who have governed and oppressed the peoples — enacted or rather acted in the interests and for the preservation of the rulers, and not in the interests of the people.

“The Grand Commonwealth of Christian States” — where — when was there ever such a thing or anything approaching it?

It is a mockery to call the Governments of Europe Christian. They hate; they do ever to others as they would not be done to; they try to overreach and undermine and injure and destroy each other. A precious set of piratical combinations against the true interests of the people and the real progress of humanity to be dignified with the name of a “Commonwealth of Christian States!”

This is mere rhetoric, my dear Sumner, and poor rhetoric, for everything is poor that is not true.

You say “what that code forbids you, forbear to do!” and I am sorry you said it, for you may have to unsay it if you continue to be among the powers that embody the sentiment of our people in the stirring times that are coming. Many and many of the laws of your venerated code of national law will be rent asunder and trampled upon in that resurrection day of the people's rights when the principles of international communication shall be settled not with a view to the interest of the governors but the governed.

The law of nations! Why, what is a nation? Is it an entity, a principle, an enduring thing? No! but a temporary arrangement, a convenient classification for those whose motto is divide et impera: a classification which your law of nations would fain keep up, but which is fast disappearing as the sentiment [of] human brotherhood is passing from the abstract into the concrete.

The only fault I have found with Kossuth (and I find the same with you), is the assumption of the innate reality, the great importance, the enduring nature of these national distinctions and divisions. A people united under one government, living within certain geographical boundaries, may do whatever they choose, may enslave, oppress and outrage in every possible way those of a certain sect or colour living within their borders; and those nations over the border, though they may hear the groans of the victims, have no right to interfere. This is not human brotherhood: we were men before we were citizens,² and though we are to look first to the interests of our immediate neighbours and countrymen, we are not [to] overlook the claims of our brethren over the border. I know what you will say — you will use all moral means, but you will never use force — you will have no wars. Against this, again, all the instincts of my nature revolt. God gives us power, force, and the instinct to use it, and though it is better never to use it in war, yet it may be the only means in our power to save the perishing. I tell you, Sumner, as I have often told you before, these instincts of ours, this combativeness and this destructiveness, though destined to die out by and by, when the moral sentiment becomes supreme, have yet their work to do in the suppression of wrong and the establishment of right. Suppose your neighbour is beating his wife and his children, and you hear their cries, and you cannot stop him by any moral means, will you not knock him down and tie him? If you would not, then ought God to wither the arm and shrivel the knuckles that will not use the strength He lent them.

And do you not hear the cries of people over the border, and say, “Oh! I must not interfere, you are not of my people, you are only men and women, not my fellow citizens; the ‘law which overarches the Grand Commonwealth of Christian States’ forbids me to employ the force which God has given me in your behalf, and what that forbids, I cannot do.”

You say that “against every purpose” you will uphold the peaceful neutrality of your country. Now, my dear Sumner, this seems to me a wrong doctrine and a selfish doctrine. Our country is growing with a giant growth; in a few years its strength may become so great, it may so command the commercial and monetary interest of the globe that no nation would dare to risk its enmity; I say this may possibly be: and yet you would so tie up our hands that we could not interfere even if another partition of Poland, or another Massacre of Parga³ or a St. Bartholomew's Eve, were to be enacted. It would be none of our business according to your doctrine, though another Herod slew all the infants over the border, or the rivers on the other side of the mountains were red with the blood of Huguenots, or another Poland shrieked as her last Kosciusko fell.

It is true you say “you would swell with indignation at the steps of tyranny;” but, Lord bless you, if you should swell until you burst, you would not do half so much good as by a kick and a lick at the tyrant.

Sumner, I know that abstractly and logically your peace principles seem sound, and I doubt not they will finally prevail; but there is a time for all things; and so long as avowed tyrants go about tying up people and flogging them, it is the business of somebody who has the power, to knock the tyrant down and let the people up.

Nobody who knows your generous sympathetic nature will ever suspect you of selfishness or of irony, but a stranger might almost suspect you of both, as you apostrophize Kossuth, and tell him “to be content with outgushing sympathy,” while you deny him any material aid; “to trust in God,” while you refuse him, and tell every other nation to refuse him, the aid of means, by which alone God ever does anything.

I have thus loosely and rapidly put down some passing thoughts for your consideration.

But the principal one is this; and this, dear Sumner, has disturbed me more than all: it seems to me that all this latter part of your speech is de trop; is uncalled for; is suggested by a desire to set forth and reiterate your peace principles, in forgetfulness of the harm it may do to the downcast, the struggling, the almost desperate patriots of Europe. Why tell the Despots that under no circumstances will we ever resort to the kind of interference which alone they fear, or care much for? What care they for our “outgushing sympathy” or our “God speed” to patriots, or our swelling bosoms — so that we will only keep quiet, and hold our hands off while they bind their victims securely — and put off, for years incalculable, the emancipation of their people?

If you will be as harmless as a dove, at least be as cunning as a serpent, and do not tell the Despot that you will show nothing but a white feather.

Kossuth has partly exposed the miserable charlatanerie of secrecy in diplomatic intercourse; I wish he had gone further and said that an honest, brave and intelligent people ought absolutely to forbid any secret negotiations, and insist upon every despatch being public. I hope you will move in this matter. I never read of a member of your Senate or of the House asking the President to communicate some information provided in his opinion the public interests do not forbid it, without a feeling that we are grossly humbugged (pardon the word).

How can truth ever do any harm but by being concealed — rotting in the dark? But methinks before throwing aside entirely the old maxims of diplomacy and statesmanship (forsooth !) I would at least use that part which allowed me to conceal from the despots of Europe the (to them comforting and encouraging) fact that never under any circumstances would we be driven by any atrocities of theirs to interfere in behalf of those our unfortunate brethren whom they hold in their grasp, and may legally hold by the “Great Law which overarches the Grand Commonwealth of Christian Nations.” Fas est ab hoste doceri; and if I am to be bound by the Devil's code, let me learn all I can of his mode of working, and counteract him where I may.

I have wanted to sit down and write something about this matter for publication — but alas! I find fast creeping over me a disinclination for any work of the kind — and my deep interest in everything that touches you or your fame, has, I fear, led me to feel more about this matter than my devotedness to the right and good.

At any rate I have done one duty of friendship and told you frankly how much in my opinion the latter part of your speech falls short of the high standard you usually maintain. This is the speech of Lawyer Sumner, Senator Sumner — not of generous, chivalrous, high-souled Charles Sumner, who went with me into the Broad Street riot,³ and who, if need had been, would have defended the women and children in the houses, by pitching their ruffianly assailants downstairs. Enough; I will not begin upon another sheet. Good night, God bless you.

Ever thine,

S. G. h.

_______________

¹ Charles Allen, then a Congressman.

² “Before man made us citizens, great Nature made us men.” — Lowell.

³ By Ali Pasha.

⁴ See ante, page 97.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 355-60