It is trite to observe that the ideal of free speech applies not only to those with whom we agree, but also—even more so—to those with whom we disagree. Free speech is always important in defending liberty, but it becomes even more so when debating the justice of war. The causes of war are inevitably contested, and it would be impossible to avoid the evils of aggressive wars if critical voices against war are silenced.
One of the main concerns in debates surrounding war is that supporters of war are often quick to accuse their political opponents of being unpatriotic or even traitors. They then silence their opponents under the guise of maintaining national unity.
Warmongers invariably cloak their acts of aggression in the language of righteousness—and, unless one is a pacifist, what principled objection could there be to a righteous war?
The Orwellian slogan “War is Peace” illustrates how doublethink allows aggressive states to wage endless wars while calling it “peace.” Opposing war is then seen as thwarting efforts to promote global peace. For example, President Trump described his strikes against Iran as “a good thing for all parties concerned and a very good thing for the world.” He added:
Peace and stability cannot prevail in the Middle East as long as Iran continues to foment violence, unrest, hatred, and war.
In his 1994 lecture “The Culture of Warm,” Paul Fussell illustrated how this type of euphemistic language is often used to mask the realities of war:
Before long we are calling war “peace-keeping.” What used to be designated aerial bombing has been euphemized into air strikes and even surgical strikes, dishonestly implying a degree of accuracy which would make combat veterans laugh out loud.
When the conduct of war is depicted as essentially a force for good, citizens who criticize wars risk incurring the wrath of their own governments. In Northern Opposition to Mr. Lincoln’s War, John Chodes recounts the hardships experienced by Indianans who criticized Lincoln’s war. The governor, Oliver P. Morton, ordered that his critics be arrested, subjected civilians to military trials, and imprisoned them in a detention camp. He shut down newspapers and imprisoned their editors. All this was ostensibly to root out the traitors who did not agree that Lincoln’s war was necessary to hold the Union together.
Similarly, although Delaware and Virginia were, in principle, sympathetic to the Union, many citizens of these states were critical of the Republican view of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Brion McClanahan explains that many in Delaware saw the Union as “the Union of the Founders as opposed to a sectional government dominated by Northern interests. To them, that did not constitute Union.”
The case of Maryland illustrates this contention even more clearly. In Maryland: The South’s First Casualty, Bart Rhett Talbert reports that citizens of Maryland were angered by the sight of thirty-five rail cars rolling through Maryland in April 1861containing troops of the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment. Marylanders came out to protest, cheering for Jefferson Davis and hurling paving stones at the rail cars. In the ensuing violence, four soldiers and twelve citizens lost their lives. Several others were severely injured.
The challenge in maintaining peace in Maryland was further illustrated by the fact that the National Guard was known to sympathize with the South. This posed obvious difficulties when it was proposed to call on the Maryland Guard to defend the federal garrison in Fort McHenry.
The governor, Thomas Holliday Hicks, attempted to appease both sides, saying, “I am a Marylander; I love my State and I love the Union, but I will suffer my right arm to be torn from my body before I will raise it to strike a sister State.” He made a futile show of “trying to placate Marylanders” while at the same time publicly urging President Lincoln “not to provoke bloodshed by forcing a way through Maryland.” He expressed hopes that Maryland could remain “neutral” in the war.
In response, Lincoln created the Military Department of Annapolis, commanded by General Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts, under orders “to put down any pro-Southern movement by Marylanders and, if necessary, to suspend the writ of habeas corpus.” By the end of April, Maryland was under federal control. Hicks threw his hat in with the federal authorities and disarmed the state militia with orders to send all their arms to the federal garrison.
The Maryland legislature adjourned on May 14, and that night Ross Winans, the delegate from Baltimore, was arrested without a warrant by federal troops under General Butler’s command. It was not the first time he was arrested, nor the last. On this occasion he was accused of treason for harboring Southern sympathies and locked up in Fort McHenry. John Merryman of Baltimore suffered the same fate, accused of “voicing secessionist views.”
Although Winans was later released upon signing an oath of loyalty to the government, a showdown with the United States Supreme Court ensued regarding Merryman, when the federal authorities refused to obey a habeas corpus writ issued by Chief Justice Taney for his release. Talbert reports that Taney himself feared “that even he might not be safe from imprisonment.” One can only imagine the consternation of a Chief Justice who sees that the federal government simply ignores his writs.
Further arrests of Maryland citizens followed, and by September about a third of the legislature was arrested along with editors of critical newspapers. They were detained without trial at Fort McHenry to prevent the legislature convening a special session where they might potentially vote to secede. Talbert explains:
. . .before the legislature could meet again, the army authorities moved. They arrested members and employees of the legislature across the state between the 13th and 17th of September. Squads of troops seized about thirty in Baltimore and Frederick alone, while imprisoning Mayor Brown, Frank Key Howard, editor of the Baltimore Exchange; Thomas W. Hall, editor of The South; Elihu Riley, editor of the Annapolis Republican; and Henry May, a Maryland representative in the United States Congress.
It is important to note that the dispute in this case was primarily constitutional. Conservatives argued that violation of the Constitution was unlawful, and that unconstitutional conduct by the federal government was not justified to deal with the “emergency” created by the secession of the Southern states. Radicals saw the Constitution as an unsatisfactory compromise, at best, and deemed it necessary to “reinterpret” its meaning to fit what they viewed as the political exigencies of the time.
The radical view that despotism is justified for a good cause was considered by John Stuart Mill to be compatible with liberalism. In “Considerations on Representative Government,” Mill said that despotism may be justified so long as it is for a “time strictly limited” and for a “temporary purpose”:
I am far from condemning, in cases of extreme exigency, the assumption of absolute power in the form of a temporary dictatorship. . .as a necessary medicine for diseases of the body politic which could not be got rid of by less violent means.
Whichever side of that constitutional dispute one supports—whether in favor of individual liberty and peace, or in favor of Millian Man’s “temporary dictatorship”—it remains important for all perspectives to be aired. Silencing critics of war only makes peace more elusive.
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