THE

ADVOCATE OF PEACE.

MARCH AND APRIL, 1861.

PEACE AT HOME.

The principles of peace are needed everywhere, no less at home than abroad; and, while our cause restricts itself to the single purpose of doing away the custom of international war, we have long supposed it would be found in time quite as necessary among ourselves as in our intercourse with other nations. This necessity is now upon us much sooner, and in a worse form, than any one could well have deemed possible. Indeed, it has come very like a clap of thunder in a cloudless sky. Of our thirty-three States, six have suddenly raised the flag of rebellion under the soft, equivocal name of secession, set at defiance the constitution and laws of the general government, appropriated to their own use all the national property within their reach, and erected themselves into a separate, independent slaveholding confederacy, confessedly established exclusively for the support, perpetuity and extension of slavery.

Such are the main facts. What are to be the results, Omniscience alone can foresee; but we are clearly passing through a crisis pregnant with vast and far-reaching consequences. We are treading upon a volcano that may yet upheave the very foundations of government and society. We may be opening fountains whose bitter and baleful streams shall drench a continent in blood, crime and woe for ages to come. Such a separation of such a people for such reasons, a rebellion got up in the land of Washington and Jefferson to consecrate, extend and perpetuate human bondage, must portend the direst results; and only an

Almighty hand can avert the evils it naturally forebodes. If the past be any index to the future, we certainly have reason to expect, without the special interposition of God, a long series of fierce, vindictive wars consequent upon the separation that has just taken place. God grant it may not be so; but such to the eye of reason are the dangers that hang over our country's prospects.

Cling to your princiThese, and nothing short

To the friends of peace, then, what is the obvious and imperative lesson of the hour? Wake anew to the claims of Peace, as a leading, paramount question of our country and the age. ples more fully, more persistently than ever. of these, will carry us safely through our present and prospective perils. If these principles had been from the first instilled into our whole people, and wrought into their entire character, we might have passed with little harm through this fiery ordeal; and even now, if those who claim to be followers of the Prince of Peace will breathe his spirit, and put in practice his principles, they may be able, under God, to hold the nation back from most of the evils we have so much reason to fear, and, if a separation must come, bring it about without bloodshed, or even permanent ill-will.

We rejoice that the seeds of peace have already been so widely sown as to allow some hope of such a result. It might have been made sure by a right training of the people on this subject in season. Had such an education of them in the principles and habits of peace been commenced with vigor ages ago, there would have been in this crisis little or no danger; and most devoutly do we hope that the bitter experience through which we are now passing, will lead us to adopt, both at home and abroad, a strict, settled policy of peace.

It seems to us passing strange that even intelligent Christians should have slumbered so long and profoundly over this view of the subject. An apathy, amounting almost to a moral paralysis, has fallen upon them. Next to nothing has yet been attempted in comparison with what might and should have been, yet enough to show what may and must in time be done, with moral certainty of ultimate success. The pittance spent in this work has, none of it, been lost not a volume nor tract, not a sermon nor lecture, not an article, tale, or paragraph in any of our numerous periodicals; but future history will prove that there has been going on a silent yet effective process, undermining the war-habits of the people, and the war-policy of their rulers. Living in the midst of these gradual changes, we are not fully aware of their extent or even their existence. Vastly more has already been accom

plished in this great reform than even its own friends suspect. How else can we account for what is now passing before our eyes? Here is a population of four or five millions, more than rose in rebellion against England in the seven years' war of our revolution, bringing about essentially the same result in two months, without a single drop of blood as yet. One century ago such a revolution would have crimsoned a continent, and kept it for half a generation plunged in all the horrors of civil war. Surely something has wrought a marked, most sig nificant change in the habits of mankind on this subject; and, whether due chiefly to the Peace Society or not, it is full of hope for the future, and ought to call forth a ten-fold increase of effort in this cause. At such a time as this no friend of God or man should be insensible to its claims, or refuse either the labors or the contributions requisite for its fullest success. If in this land of Bibles and Sabbaths, of Christian pulpits and Christian presses, with a Christian church for every five hundred souls, and every sixth man among us a professed follower of the Prince of Peace, we cannot settle our own disputes without drenching the land in fraternal blood, it will surely brand us, in view of the whole world, with everlasting disgrace. Such a result we cannot as yet bring ourselves to regard as possible; but our prevailing expectation is, that this strange rebellion, which has so suddenly culminated in a Republic of Slaveholders, will yet be restrained, chiefly by the more peaceful habits and influences prevalent in the Free States, from involving the parties in civil war, and that all the questions growing out of it, will in the end be adjusted with little effusion of blood.

THE PRESENT CRISIS IN OUR COUNTRY:

PLEA FOR ITS

PEACEFUL SOLUTION IN ANY EVENT.

No friend of peace can look without anxiety upon the alarming aspect of the times. On every side are seen, both at home and abroad, omens of a gathering storm whose fury may ere long sweep and shake the world. Seldom has there been a crisis so eventful: and the passing hour may strike the keynote of long ages to come. Impressed with such views, the Committee of the Peace Society regard the threatening indications of a war in Europe the coming spring, and the existing difficulties in our own land pressing to the same disastrous result, as a loud and imperative call upon the friends of peace for increased energy and activity in disseminating those gospel principles which not only demonstrate the crime and folly of war, but also suggest a wiser and

more satisfactory solution of all national misunderstandings by Christian means.

Such a solution we believe to be possible; and it is chiefly for this reason that the Peace Society, embracing men of every creed in religion and politics, would lift its humble voice to dissuade the parties from all thought of attempting in any event a settlement of their controversies by an appeal to the sword, as mutually suicidal. Of what possible avail could such an appeal be? Would it bring a single one of the points in dispute any nearer to a solution? Would it change at all the convictions or preferences of either party? Would not the North still cling to Freedom, and the South to Slavery, just as resolutely as ever? Is it possible for the sword ever to settle such a controversy? Never. Unkennel the dogs of war all over the land, kindle the fires of battle on every hill and in every valley, let our lakes, our rivers, and our vast sea-coast be crimsoned with fraternal blood; and would not the parties still be obliged, as a last resource, to sheath the sword, and betake themselves to the very same methods of peaceful adjustment that we now urge. them to adopt at the start?

We say this in no spirit of either dictation or partiality. As friends of peace, we plead merely for a bloodless issue of the controversy. It is not ours to decide on what terms it ought to be settled; we only ask that it may, in any event, be brought in some way to a conclusion by peaceful, legal, rational means. Have we not such means already at hand? Does not our government, by its Constitution and laws, contain provisions designed and adapted to meet just such cases as this? Here is the proper remedy; and were there a disposition on both sides to use such provisions aright, we see not what occasion there could ever be for war among ourselves on this or any other issue.

In thus pleading for peace, we are far from abetting rebellion in any form. Under a government like ours, all the work of our own hands, and always under our control through the ballot-box, what shadow of excuse can there ever be for violent resistance of its authority? True, it may occasionally bear, or seem to bear, hard upon our interests; but the remedy is still in our own hands, and pretty sure in time to redress our grievances. We may have to wait; but so we must in any case. In this way we certainly can obtain redress far better than we could by rebellion. Our government is designed to secure the rights of all; and if any are dissatisfied, their only proper course is to wait until the expedients, provided in our Constitution and laws, can be duly applied to the case. The enforcement of law is the remedy in which all parties are bound to acquiesce; but even if they refuse, the way would