Caught between Loyalty and Sedition: Patriotic Politicians Who Have Dissented During Wartime
Many critics of the Iraq War are struggling to oppose the war while continuing to sound patriotic. How have leading figures in the past balanced criticism and loyalty during wartime? In this article we take a look at the responses of Edmund Burke, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and J. William Fulbright .
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke is best known for his conservative critique of the French, who he believed irresponsibly abandoned historical tradition for a mad, democracy-induced fervor during their violent 1789 revolution. While he rejected the French Revolution Burke earlier had openly advocated independence for the thirteen small British colonies in North America that had inspired France’s political upheaval. Burke might not have been a “revolutionary,” but he did often stand up in support of the American colonists despite his service in Parliament and allegiance to King George III..
In 1765, Burke entered Parliament just as relations between the American colonies were becoming strained. Burke began to question whether the British Empire, as it was then constructed, could adequately preserve the traditional liberties of her British citizens across the Atlantic Ocean. Burke sided with the colonists when the Stamp Act crisis broke.
After the Stamp Act controversy subsided in 1765, many British MPs gave up on reconciliation with the colonists. Burke himself began to reformulate many of his underlying conceptions of empire as he struggled to understand subsequent colonial grievances against Britain. Still, he urged those in Britain who were demanding a war against the colonies to be more patient, noting that “a conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood.”1
After war broke out, Burke was dismayed by the strain of political divisions at home. "I have the misfortune of differing with some of my fellow-citizens on this great and arduous subject,” he quietly lamented in 1777.2 Yet his political career was not ended by his dissenting opinions, and he remained an influential Whig politician. After his party’s coalition crumbled in 1783 and William Pitt’s Tory administration took power, Burke remained politically active in the opposition party for the remainder of his life.
Burke on seeking peace instead of further conflict with the colonies:
For, judging of what you are by what you ought to be, I persuaded myself that you would not reject a reasonable proposition because it had nothing but its reason to recommend it... The proposition is peace. Not peace through the medium of war; not peace to be hunted through the labyrinth of intricate and endless negotiations; not peace to arise out of universal discord, fomented from principle, in all parts of the empire; not peace to depend on the juridical determination of perplexing questions, or the precise marking the shadowy boundaries of a complex government. It is simple peace, sought in its natural course and in its ordinary haunts.3
Burke’s view on the American Revolution:
...the American war…[is] a war in my humble opinion productive of many mischiefs, of a kind which distinguish it from all others. Not only our policy is deranged, and our empire distracted, but our laws and our legislative spirit appear to have been totally perverted by it. We have made war on our colonies, not by arms, but by laws. As hostility and law are not very concordant ideas, every step we have taken in this business, has been made by trampling on some capital principle of wise government. What precedents were established, and what principles overturned, (I will not say of English privilege, but of general justice) in the Boston Port, the Massachusett’s Charter, the Military Bill, and all that long array of hostile acts of parliament, by which the war with America has been begun and supported! Had any of these acts been first exerted on English ground they would probably have expired as soon as they touched it. But by being removed from our persons, they have rooted in our laws; and the latest posterity will taste the fruits of them”4
Burke’s view on civil war, and its effect upon a liberal society:
…in most of the late proceedings we see very few traces of that generosity, humanity, and dignity of mind which formerly characterized this nation. War suspends the rules of moral obligation, and what is long suspended is in danger of being totally abrogated. Civil wars strike deepest of all into the manners of the people. They vitiate their politicks; they corrupt their morals; they pervert even the natural taste and relish of equity and justice. By teaching us to consider our fellow citizens in a hostile light, the whole body of our nation becomes gradually less dear to us.”5
Burke’s view on King George III’s attempts at propaganda:
I am too old, too stiff in my inveterate partialities, to be ready at all the fashionable evolutions of opinion. I scarcely know how to adapt my mind to the feelings with which the court gazettes mean to impress the people. It is not instantly that I can be brought to rejoice, when I hear of the slaughter and captivity of long lists of those names which have been familiar to my ears since infancy…the glory acquired at the White Plains by Colonel Rahl, has no charms for me;…6
Burke’s rejection of “unanimous” devotion to the British cause:
They [the leaders of the war] are continually boasting of unanimity, or calling for it. But before this unanimity can be matter either of wish or congratulation, we ought to be pretty sure, that we are engaged in a rational pursuit. Phrensy does not become a slighter distemper on account of the number of those who may be infected by it. Delusion and weakness produce not one mischief the less, because they are universal. I declare, that I cannot discern the least advantage which could accrue to us, if we were able to persuade our colonies that they had not a single friend in Great Britain. On the contrary,…it would be happy for us, if they were taught to believe, that there was even a formed [pro]American party in England, to whom they could always look for support! Happy would it be for us, if in all tempers, they might turn their eyes to the parent state;…7
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president of the United States (1861-1865), is remembered mainly in connection with the war he waged against the South over slavery. But he first made a national name for himself by opposing the Mexican-American War. As a young, first-term member of the U.S. House, “Honest Abe” dramatically denounced President Polk’s call for war and impugned the president's motives.
In 1847 Lincoln was only thirty-eight years old, but he was already a veteran of politics. He had served in office in the Illinois State Legislature for four consecutive terms from 1834-1841, and had recently been elected as a Whig to the U.S. House of Representatives a year earlier, in 1846. A shrewd and observant politician, Lincoln had refrained from describing his position on the growing crisis between the United States and Mexico during his House campaign. In reality, Lincoln was opposed to a war with Mexico because he believed that it was “immoral, pro-slavery, and a threat to… [ America’s] republican values."8 When President Polk attempted to rally Congress and the American people to support a war against Mexico in 1847, claiming that “American blood had been shed on American soil,” Lincoln spoke out.
On December 22, 1847, on the house floor, the Illinois congressman issued a bold challenge to Polk’s claim, introducing his “spot resolutions,” which called on the president to identify the exact spot where American soldiers had been killed. Although these resolutions were never approved by Congress, Lincoln’s brave dissent earned him the nickname “spotty Lincoln,”9 provoked one of his constituents to call him “the Benedict Arnold of our district,” and slowed his political career. 10
The event would also haunt Lincoln later on in his political career: in one of his famous debates with Stephen A. Douglas in 1858, Douglas reminded Lincoln that he had embarrassed himself by “taking the side of the common enemy against his own country.”11 Regardless, Lincoln would take the upper hand in his political battle with Douglas and would, of course, go on to become the Republican president of the United States—in spite of his freshman antiwar rhetoric.
Lincoln on the president, remarks in the House, July 27, 1848:
In a certain sense, and to a certain extent, he [the president] is the representative of the people. He is elected by them, as well as congress is. But can he, in the nature [of] things, know the wants of the people, as well as three hundred other men, coming from all the various localities of the nation? If so, where is the propriety of having a congress?12
Lincoln on President Polk, the war-making powers of the executive, and tyranny:
Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose—and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you have given him so much as you propose. If, to-day, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, ‘I see no probability of the British invading us” but he will say to you “be silent; I see it, if you dont.’
The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood.”13
Abraham Lincoln’s “Spot Resolutions”:
Mr. LINCOLN moved the following preamble and resolutions, which were read and laid over under the rule:
Whereas the President of the United States, in his message of May 11, 1846, has declared that "the Mexican Government not only refused to receive him, [the envoy of the United States,] or listen to his propositions, but after a long-continued series of menaces, have at last invaded our territory and shed the blood of our fellow-citizens on our own soil."
And again, in his message of December 8, 1846, that "we had ample cause of war against Mexico long before the breaking out of hostilities; but even then we forbore to take redress into our own hands until Mexico herself became the aggressor, by invading our soil in hostile array and shedding the blood of our citizens."
"And yet again, in his message of December 7, 1847, that the Mexican Government refused even to hear the terms of adjustment which he [our minister of peace] was authorized to propose, and finally, under wholly unjustifiable pretexts, involved the two countries in war, by invading the territory of the State of Texas, striking the first blow, and shedding the blood of our citizens on our own soil."
And whereas this House is desirous to obtain a full knowledge of all the facts which go to establish whether the particular spot on which the blood of our citizens was so shed was or was not at that time our own soil: Therefore, Resolved by the House of Representatives, That the President of the United States be respectfully requested to inform this House --
1st. Whether the spot on which the blood of our citizens was shed, as in his messages declared, was or was not within the territory of Spain, at least after the treaty of 1819 until the Mexican revolution.
2d. Whether that spot is or is not within the territory which was wrested from Spain by the revolutionary Government of Mexico.
3d. Whether that spot is or is not within a settlement of people, which settlement has existed ever since long before the Texas revolution, and until its inhabitants fled before the approach of the United States army....14
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore“Teddy” Roosevelt is widely remembered for the old African saying, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” This was ironic because the one thing TR never was was quiet. He always spoke loudly, whether he had a big stick handy or not--as Woodrow Wilson was to discover.
After serving two terms as a progressive Republican president from 1901-1909, Roosevelt retired temporarily to private life. In 1912 he lost the fight to win the Republican nomination for president and ran as the candidate of the Bull Moose or Progressive Party. Four years later he was again denied the Republican nomination. But he remained a large presence in American politics. 15
When war broke out in Europe Teddy toured the country to drum up support for the Allies and preparedness at home. He argued that those who opposed preparedness were “miserable creatures who should be hunted out of society by self-respecting men and women”16 and cautioned that among “the things that will destroy America,” were individuals who believed in “peace-at-any-price."17 When the U.S. entered the war in April 1917, Roosevelt remained the voice of wartime patriotism.
Both before and after the war began Roosevelt was a staunch critic of Democratic President Woodrow Wilson. He denounced Wilson before the war for failing to prepare and for delaying our entry into the fight. After Wilson finally came around to the pro-war viewpoint, TR denounced him for failing to execute the war effectively. Roosevelt, who had served as assistant secretary of the navy and had fought during the Spanish-American War, knew first-hand the importance of a well trained, well equipped, and well supported fighting force. (During the Spanish-American War he had joined critics who denounced the administration for inadequately providing supplies for the troops.) During World War I four of his children, Quentin, Ted, Archie and Kermit, along with a son-in-law, volunteered for the war, giving TR a personal stake in wartime management.
Furious with Wilson, Roosevelt publicly and privately attacked the president while the war was being waged. In a famous critique that nearly landed him in jail--Wilson seriously considered imprisoning TR for sedition--Roosevelt called he president a “foe of our own household” for not adequately preparing the nation and the military for war, and denounced the American occupation of Haiti and Santo Domingo. He said that these occupations undermined Wilson's claim to be fighting to make the world safe for democracy.18
Despite his criticism, Roosevelt enjoyed widespread popularity. As the father of four soldiers he seemed to embody the patriotic spirit. Had he not suddenly died in 1919 he very well may have won the Republican nomination in 1920 and the White House.
Teddy Roosevelt on loyalty, patriotism, and allegiance to the president:
Our loyalty is due entirely to the United States. It is due to the President only and exactly to the degree in which he efficiently serves the United States. It is our duty to support him when he serves the United States well. It is our duty to oppose him when he serves it badly. This is true about Mr. Wilson now and it has been true about all our Presidents in the past. It is our duty at all times to tell the truth about the President and about every one else, save in the cases where to tell the truth at the moment would benefit the public enemy.19
The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly as necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.20
J. William Fulbright
Senator J. William Fulbright served as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during the Vietnam War and became a stern critic of the war and Lyndon Johnson's administration.
Throughout the course of his long political career (1942-1974) Fulbright often championed unpopular and controversial causes. He was a passionate advocate of multilateralism and was highly influential in successfully moving the U.S. to become a member of the UN. He was skeptical of the popular anti-Communist fanaticism that marked America during the 40s and 50s. Fulbright objected to President Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. And in April of 1965, during the first year of the Vietnam War, Fulbright called for the temporary cessation of U.S. bombing raids. He hoped that a bombing halt would lead to peace talks. Later in the same year Fulbright criticized Johnson's decision to dispatch 20,000 troops to the Dominican Republic. Fulbright questioned the motives for the American invasion and reprimanded the president for misleading the public with “official assertions” and “misinformation.”
Many of Fulbright’s observations went unheeded. His fear of a protracted and devastating war in Vietnam was eventually realized. He continued to seek an end to the Vietnam War, and even attempted to convince Richard Nixon that it was not his presidential inheritance. In 1974, owing in part to his opposition to the war, Fulbright lost his bid for re-election.
Fulbright on dissent:
In a democracy dissent is an act if faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste, but its effects.21
It is a daunting task for an individual senator to publicly challenge the president of the United States,…It is difficult to mobilize the self-confidence and to feel the degree of conviction in your mind that will enable you to go beyond a certain limit. There’s always that nagging feeling that you could be wrong. You’re never quite that positive. Only fanatics are that sure of themselves.22
Fulbright on the Vietnam War in 1966:
I do not accept the view that criticism of the Vietnamese war is illegitimate in the absence of a fool proof plan for ending it; not do I accept the view that because we are already deeply involved in Vietnam it is “academic” to debate the wisdom of our involvement.23
Fulbright on belligerence:
I do not think that America’s greatness is questioned in the world, and I certainly do not think that strident behavior is the best way for a nation to prove its greatness. Indeed, in nations as in individuals bellicosity is a mark of weakness and self-doubt rather than a strength and self-assurance.24
Fulbrights’s dissenting view on the U.S. intervention in the Dominican Republic:
….I was in doubt about the advisability of making a statement on the Dominican affair until some of my colleagues made public statements on the floor. Their views on the way in which the committee proceedings were conducted and, indeed, on the Dominican crisis as a whole, are so diametrically opposed to my own that I now consider it my duty to express my personal conclusions drawn from the hearings held by the Committee on Foreign Relations. . . .
First. The United States intervened forcibly in the Dominican Republic in the last week of April 1965 not primarily to save American lives, as was then contended, but to prevent the victory of a revolutionary movement which was judged to be Communist-dominated. The decision to land thousands of marines on April 28 was based primarily on the fear of "another Cuba" in Santo Domingo.
Second. This fear was based on fragmentary and inadequate evidence. There is no doubt that Communists participated in the Dominican revolution on the rebel side, probably to a greater extent after than before the landing of U.S. marines on April 28, but just as it cannot be proved that the Communists would not have taken over the revolution neither can it be proved that they would have. There is little basis in the evidence offered the committee for the assertion that the rebels were Communist-dominated or certain to become so; on the contrary, the evidence suggests a chaotic situation in which no single faction was dominant at the outset and in which everybody, including the United States, had opportunities to influence the shape and course of the rebellion.
Third. The United States let pass its best opportunities to influence the course of events. The best opportunities were on April 25, when Juan Bosch's partv, the PRD, requested a " United States presence," and on April 27, when the rebels, believing themselves defeated, requested United States mediation for a negotiated settlement…
Fourth. U.S. policy toward the Dominican Republic shifted markedly to the right between September 1963 and April 1965. In 1963, the United States strongly supported Bosch and the PRD as enlightened reformers; in 1965 the United States opposed their return to power on the unsubstantiated ground that a Bosch or PRD government would certainly, or almost certainly, become Communist dominated. Thus the United States turned its back on social revolution in Santo Domingo and associated itself with a corrupt and reactionary. military oligarchy.
Fifth. U.S. policy was marred by a lack of candor and by misinformation. The former is illustrated by official assertions that U.S. military intervention was primarily for the Purpose of saving American lives; the latter is illustrated by exaggerated reports of massacres and atrocities by the rebels-reports which no one has been able to verify. It was officially asserted, for example, by the President in a press conference on June 17 according to an official State Department bulletin-that "some 1,500 innocent people were murdered and shot, and their heads cut off." There is no evidence to support this statement, . . .
Sixth. Responsibility for the failure of American policy in Santo Domingo lies primarily with those who advised the president. In the critical days between April 25 and April 28, these officials sent the president exaggerated reports of the danger of a Communist takeover in Santo Domingo and, on the basis of these, recommended U.S. massive military intervention…
Seventh. Underlying the bad advice and unwise actions of the United States was the fear of another Cuba. The specter of a second Communist state in the Western Hemisphere--and its probable repercussions within the United States and possible effects on the careers of those who might be held responsible--seems to have been the most important single factor in distorting the judgment of otherwise sensible and competent men.25
Related Links
Notes
1 Qtd. in John R. Bolton, “The Prudent Irishman: Edmund Burke’s Realism,” The National Interest, Winter 1997/1998, http://www.inthenationalinterest.com/Articles/April%202005/April2005bolton.html
2 Edmund Burke, “Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol,” The Works of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, A new Edition, ( London, 1803), III, 145
3 Edmund Burke, “Speech on Conciliation with America,” March 22, 1775, http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=24
4 Edmund Burke, “Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol,” The Works of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, A new Edition, ( London, 1803), III, 151-152
5 Edmund Burke, “Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol,” The Works of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, A new Edition, ( London, 1803), III, 152
6 Edmund Burke, “Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol,” The Works of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, A new Edition, ( London, 1803), III, 154
7 Edmund Burke, “Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol,” The Works of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, A new Edition, ( London, 1803), III, 168
8 “War Fever and Antiwar Protests,” Digital History, http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=318
9 The National Archives, “Teaching with Documents: Lincoln’s Spot Resolutions,” http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/lincoln-resolutions/ , from Mueller, Jean West and Wynell B. Schamel. “ Lincoln’s Spot Resolutions,” Social Education 52, 6 (October 1988): 455-457, 466.
10 “War Fever and Antiwar Protests,” Digital History, http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=318
11 Abraham Lincoln, “Printed Resolution and Preamble on Mexican War: ‘Spot Resolutions,’ Wednesday December 22, 1847,” The Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress, transcribed and annotated by the Lincoln Studies Center, http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mal:@field(DOCID+@lit(d0007000)) , n.1
12 Abraham Lincoln, remarks in the House, July 27, 1848, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Roy P. Basler ed., vol. 1, (1953), 504
13 Abraham Lincoln, letter to William H. Herndon, February 15, 1848, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Roy P. Basler ed., vol. 1, (1953), 451-452
14 Abraham Lincoln, “Printed Resolution and Preamble on Mexican War: ‘Spot Resolutions,’ Wednesday December 22, 1847,” The Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress, transcribed and annotated by the Lincoln Studies Center, http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mal:@field(DOCID+@lit(d0007000))
15 William H. Harbaugh, “Theodore Roosevelt,” Encyclopedia Americana, http://ap.grolier.com/article?assetid=0336070-00&templatename=/article/article.html
16 Kathleen Dalton, Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life, ( New York, 2004), 477.
17 Theodore Roosevelt, letter to S. Stanwood Menken, January 10, 1917. Proceedings of the Congress of Constructive Patriotism, Washington, D.C., January 25–27, 1917, p. 172. http://www.bartleby.com/73/58.html
18 Kathleen Dalton, Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life, ( New York, 2004), 486-487.
19 Theodore Roosevelt, “ Lincoln and Free Speech,” The Great Adventure, vol. 19 of The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, national ed., (1926), 297. http://www.bartleby.com/73/1506.html
20 Roosevelt, “ Lincoln and Free Speech,” The Great Adventure, vol. 19 of The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, national ed., (1926), 289. http://www.bartleby.com/73/1507.html
21 J. William Fulbright, speech April 21, 1966, in the U.S. Senate, http://www.bartleby.com/66/60/24160.html
22 J. William Fulbright, The Price of Empire, (New York, 1989),
23 J. William Fulbright, The Arrogance of Power (New York, 1966), 179
24 Fulbright, The Arrogance of Power (New York, 1966), 199.
25 J. William Fulbright, “Appraisal of U.S. Policy in the Dominican Crisis, September 15, 1965,” Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the 89th Congress, Ist Session, Volume III, No. 170, Daily Edition (September 15, 1965), pp. 22998-23005, in the Modern History Sourcebook: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1965Fullbright-US-DomRep1.html