Pacifism in the United States

Pacifism has manifested in the United States in a variety of forms (such as peace movements), and in myriad contexts (such as opposition to the Civil War and to nuclear weapons). In general, it exists in contrast to an acceptance of the necessity of war for national defense. Pacifism in the United States has been occasionally influential in American politics, with public opposition to war impacting US politics and being championed by various organizations and activists.

In the colonial era, pacifism was a major belief among the Quakers and German sects in the Pennsylvania colony. The Quakers lost control of Pennsylvania because they were reluctant to protect settlers from Indian raids. During the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783), the pacifists kept quiet.

From 1794 to 1815, as France battled Great Britain, foreign policy was bitterly debated. Pacifism played a very small role, and there were no new pacifist organizations. Peter. Brockt, Pacifism in the United States (1968) pp.326–328, 339–342, 407–408, 418-434, 445, 449.

There was a small undeclared naval conflict against France in 1798-1800, and a real War of 1812 against Britain in 1812-1815. Antiwar sentiment in 1812 was strong in the northern states that bordered Canada; few people there wanted the annexation of Canada. After 1815 and the failure of the British military invasion of New Orleans. American isolationism became the dominant attitude. The US maintained a small military compared to the European great powers. It was primarily used to fight a war against Mexico and Native Americans. The other purpose was for national defense. The Civil War, saw limited Copperhead opposition to the war in the North, with flare ups of opposition such as the New York City draft riots. After the Civil War the US was a minor military power in comparison to the European great powers. The emerging American realism movement, rejected war and depicted it as cruel and useless, this as opposed to the Romantic movement which idolized war as heroic. Authors such as Walt Whitman, whose early writing displayed certain optimism at war began to depict war more negatively. During World War I early opposition to entering the European war was the dominant position, with Woodrow Wilson's campaign in 1916 using the slogan "He kept us out of the war." In 1917 the US joined World War I on the side of the Britain, France and Italy. After World War I, pacifism in the US grew more organized, with defined ideological stances. The lost generation of veterans endured through the trenches of the war, embraced a mild pacifism. This was further entrenched by antiwar authors such as John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway.James McGrath Morris, The Ambulance Drivers: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and a Friendship Made and Lost in War (Grand Central Publishing, 2017).

The interwar years saw the US avoid the world stage, as economic protectionism, and unregulated capitalism became the dominant economic forces. During the Great Depression in the United States opposition to war was a major force. Bitter debates took place in 1939-1941 about presidential proposals to help the United Kingdom in its war against Nazi Germany. Franklin D. Roosevelt's desire to help out overpowered the non-interventionists leading to policies such as the Lend-Lease Act. Japan's Attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 silenced all pacifist rhetoric.

The Civil rights movement of the 1960s was led by nonviolent direct action, that championed pacifism, drawing influence from the ideas of India's Mahatma Gandhi. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., who used or approved direct action tactics such as boycotts, felt that the goal of nonviolent direct action was to "create such a crisis and foster such a tension" as to demand a response.

After World War II the European great powers were greatly weakened, and the US became by far the largest economy in the world. The anti-capitalist pro-Communist enemy was the Soviet Union. With encouragement from London, Washington developed an interventionist foreign policy during the Cold War, funding and directly engaging with various conflicts. The US became directly involved in the Korean War, and Vietnam War. As the military situation in Vietnam deteriorated and thousands of people were drafted, an anti-war movement emerged until the removal of US soldiers in 1973. During the 1980s and 1990s and the anti-nuclear movement and anti-nuclear proliferation movements advocated against Nuclear war. After the terrorist attack in 2001, the U.S. fought a war on terror in the Middle East. Small pacifistic movements opposed the wars. Opposition to Israeli violence against Palestinians is also a common movement among American pacificists. Modern pacificism in the United States is led by both political and religious organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Catholic Peace Fellowship.

Colonial era

Antiwar activity in the colonial era was limited to certain churches.Mitchell K. Hall, ed. Opposition to War: AN Encyclopedia of U.S. Peace and Antiwar Movements (2 vol. ABC-CLIO, 2018) 1:166–170.Peter Brock, Pacifism in the United States: From the Colonial Era to the First World War (Princeton University Press, 1968).

Peace churches In Colonial Pennsylvania several small German religious sects, especially the Church of the Brethren, Mennonites, and Amish were Peace churches. They clung to the antiwar positions they had developed in Europe. They minimized contact with the larger society.Jan Stievermann, "A 'Plain, Rejected Little Flock': The Politics of Martyrological Self-Fashioning among Pennsylvania's German Peace Churches, 1739–65." William and Mary Quarterly 66.2 (2009): 287–324. From the 1780s to the mid-19th century the Shakers attracted attention for their commitment to peace. They practiced celibacy but recruited heavily and numbered about 4000.Jane F. Crosthwaite, " 'The mighty hand of overruling providence': The Shaker Claim to America." American Communal Societies Quarterly 6.2 (2012): 93–111.

Quakers

Much more influential in the long-run was the growing pacifism of the Quakers. They were eager and able to proclaim their message widely. They controlled Pennsylvania politics until they refused to fight the Native Americans who were allied with the French enemy and attacking frontier farms. They therefore gave up power in 1755. During the American Revolution (1775–1783) their general policy was neutrality between the King and Congress, to not serve in the army, and not to pay war taxes. Quaker intellectuals and activists played a major role in developing an anti-war Peace Position and spreading the word in the new nation. In the Civil War (1861–1865), the destruction of slavery was a higher priority than pacifism. About a fourth of young Quakers fought in the army, and most supported the Civil War with taxes.Hugh Barbour, and J. William Frost, The Quakers (Greenwood, 1988) pp 45–46, 123–126, 142–143, 197–200Peter Brock, The Quaker Peace Testimony, 1660 to 1914 (1990). New Nation In the 1790s when France battled Great Britain, foreign policy was bitterly debated. The Federalists led by Alexander Hamilton favored Britain; the Republicans under Thomas Jefferson favored France. Under the Federalists there was a undeclared naval conflict against France in 1798-1800 called the Quasi War. When Napoleon came to power in Paris, Jefferson and his Republicans turned against France, while continuing to oppose Britain. Jefferson wanted no entangling alliances. However the effort to boycott trade with both sides in the Foreign policy of the Jefferson administration hurt the US economy.Lawrence S. Kaplan, Entangling Alliances with None: American Foreign Policy in the Age of Jefferson (Kent State University Press 1987) pp 99-143. War of 1812

Under President James Madison and his Republican Party there was a real War of 1812 against Britain in 1812-1815. Opposition to the war was strongest in Federalist New England, and New York which conducted significant amounts of trade with the British Empire, and weakest in the Southern United States. The war started when the Jefferson and Madison fiercely opposed seizures of American shipping by Britain and France and were hostile to both sides. The British impressed American sailors who had once been British subjects into the Royal Navy and cut off U.S. trade with France. Jefferson used the Embargo Act of 1807 to gain leverage by making exports illegal. This badly hurt the New England economy; smuggling exports into Canada resulted. Jeffersonian war hawks led by Henry Clay and John Calhoun demanded war with Britain. Madison obliged in an effort to maintain American rights and honor in what contemporaries called, "The second war for independence."Norman K. Risjord, "1812: Conservatives, War Hawks and the Nation's Honor." William and Mary Quarterly (1961) 18#2 pp: 196–210 . Vehement protests against "Mr. Madison's War" erupted in Federalist Party strongholds in New England. Three governors refused to place their state militias under Washington's control for duty outside the territory of their states. In the ensuing 1812 and 1813 United States House of Representatives elections, eight sitting New England pro-war congressmen were rejected by the voters, and several others saw the writing on the wall and declined to seek re-election. There was a complete turnover of the New Hampshire delegation.James H. Ellis, A Ruinous and Unhappy War: New England and the War of 1812 (New York: Algora Publishing, 2009), p. 80

Organizing a peace movement The war ended in February 1815. The first movement in the United States was the New York Peace Society, founded in 1815 by theologian David Low Dodge, followed by the Massachusetts Peace Society. The groups merged into the American Peace Society, which held weekly meetings and produced literature that was spread as far as Gibraltar and Malta describing the horrors of war and advocating pacifism on Christian grounds. Pacifism to 1914: an overview by Peter Brock. Toronto, Thistle Printing, 1994. (pp. 38–39).

Civil War

After the election of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860, the Deep South cotton states led by South Carolina seceded from the union and established a new Confederate States of America. A civil war was imminent, and a large fraction of public opinion, especially in the North, decried the horrors of an imminent war with massive suffering and destruction. The peace movement had weakened greatly in the 1850s, as it used violence to stop the return of runaway slaves and supported the violence in Kansas. Remaining pacifists called for peaceful separation, as did many prominent civic leaders of both parties North and South.Peter Brock, Pacifism in the United States : From the Colonial Era to the First World War (1968) pp. 667–695. Merle Curti notes that the traditional rhetoric of pacifism was seldom heard. Instead the pacifists said non-violence only applied to international affairs. They tolerated or engaged in violence to defend the nation, repress insurrection, and free the slaves. With the Confederate artillery attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861, the mood in the North decisively changed, bringing a hyperpatriotic emphasis on defending the United States in the name of American nationalism. The abolitionist movement had long contained a powerful pacifist element, led by William Lloyd Garrison. After Sumter the abolitionists called for an intensive total war to destroy slavery once and for all. The peace movement had weakened in the 1850s and was now practically dead, apart from a large faction of Quakers.Merle Curti, Peace or War: The American Struggle 1636–1936 (1936) pp. 47–56.Mitchell K. Hall, ed. Opposition to War (2018) 1:4–5. For the rest of 1861 opposition to the war, in both North and South, was scattered and often violent; it was based on politics, not pacifism.Curti, p. 64.

Arbitration movement 1890s–1914