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War No More: Three Centuries of American Antiwar & Peace Writing

Edited by Lawrence Rosenwald

“Conventional wisdom says that the voices of peace are inevitably drowned out by the trumpets of war, but this volume suggests otherwise. . . . The voices in this book, a replying chorus of hope, insist that change is possible.”—James Carroll, from the foreword

Overview
News & Views
Table of Contents
Contributors

Overview

Video Maxine Hong Kingston and Viet Thanh Nguyen
May 27, 2022

Video The Fate of the Earth: Jonathan Schell and His Legacy
December 28, 2020

Interviews Susan Ware: Race, region, and the full story of the fight for women’s suffrage
August 24, 2020

Americans have been at war for most of our history as a people. Wars of conquest gave way to wars of empire, the Civil War to the World Wars, and the Cold War to the War on Terror. our national anthem celebrates heroism under fire, and martial imagery permeates our politics and our pastimes. But at every turn in this history, Americans have questioned and resisted both particular wars and justifications for war in general. Taking up the pen instead of the sword, they have produced a body of literature of great passion and power, a homegrown American tradition that refuses the proposition that war is the inevitable price of liberty or prosperity—that dares to envision a world where people learn war no more.

Gathering essays, letters, speeches, memoirs, songs, poems, cartoons, leaflets, stories, and other works by nearly 150 writers from the colonial era to the present, War No More brings this extraordinary writing together for the first time in a single volume, “a conversation,” in the words of editor Lawrence Rosenwald, “not yet fully described by historians, nor fully available to activists, but living in these pages.”

With a roster of writers that includes five-star generals, theologians, nuclear physicists, folk singers, statesmen, quietists, anarchists, veterans, and Nobel laureates, War No More reveals as never before the diversity, vitality, and perennial relevance of this literary tradition still in the making. Classic expressions of conscience from the journals of eighteenth- century Pennsylvania Quaker John Woolman and Thoreau’s seminal “Civil Disobedience” lay the groundwork for such influential modern theorists of nonviolence as David Dellinger, Thomas Merton, and Barbara Deming.

The long arc of the American antiwar movement is vividly traced in the urgent calls of activists, made in soaring oratory and galvanizing song, and in dramatic dispatches from the front lines of antiwar protests, among them Norman Mailer’s famous account of the 1967 march on the Pentagon from The Armies of the Night. The voices of veterans, from Union soldier Obadiah Ethelbert Baker to Camilo Mejía, a staff sergeant in Iraq, are prominently represented. So too is the first-hand testimony of conscientious objectors, whose religious and moral convictions led them to refuse military service, and who persisted in their beliefs in the face of ostracism, imprisonment, even torture. Contemporary writers, including Barbara Kingsolver, Jonathan Schell, Nicholson Baker, and Jane Hirshfield, demonstrate the ongoing richness of this literature in the years since September 11, 2001.

Woven together with informative headnotes by the editor, this groundbreaking collection features a detailed chronology of the antiwar movement, as well as a sixteen-page portfolio of illustrations.

Lawrence Rosenwald, editor, is the author of Emerson and the Art of the Diary (1988) and Multilingual America: Language and the Making of American Literature (2008). A war tax resister since 1987 and a longtime pacifist, Rosenwald is the Anne Pierce Rogers Professor of English at Wellesley College.

This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

Published with project support and kept in print by the Berkley Foundation with a gift to the Guardians of American Letters Fund.
News & Views

Video Maxine Hong Kingston and Viet Thanh Nguyen
May 27, 2022

Video The Fate of the Earth: Jonathan Schell and His Legacy
December 28, 2020

Interviews Susan Ware: Race, region, and the full story of the fight for women’s suffrage
August 24, 2020

Interviews “One backward glance” — Daniel H. Weiss on Michael O’Donnell and the tragic era of Vietnam
January 23, 2020

Interviews J. Michael Lennon: Norman Mailer “recognized the permanent cleft in the American character”
April 11, 2018
Table of Contents

_Foreword by James Carroll
Introduction by Lawrence Rosenwald_

Iroquois Tradition | “The Tree of the Great Peace”
John Woolman | (from) The Journal of John Woolman | (from) A Plea for the Poor
Warner Mifflin | “I Counted None My Enemy”
David Low Dodge | “An Odd and Singular Man”
Benjamin Rush | A Plan of a Peace-Office for the United States
Joseph Smith Jr. | (from) The Book of Mormon
Ralph Waldo Emerson | (from) War
William Lloyd Garrison | Declaration of Sentiments Adopted by the Peace Convention, Held in Boston, September 18, 19, & 20, 1838
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | The Arsenal at Springfield
Adin Ballou | The Term Non-Resistance
Theodore Parker | Speech Delivered at the Anti-War Meeting, in Faneuil Hall, February 4, 1847
Thomas Corwin | (from) Speech of Mr. Corwin, of Ohio, on the Mexican War
Henry David Thoreau | Civil Disobedience
Obadiah Ethelbert Baker | Nov. 30th To an absent Wife
Cyrus Pringle | (from) The Record of a Quaker Conscience: Cyrus Pringle’s Diary
Herman Melville | Shiloh
Walt Whitman | Reconciliation
Timothy H. O’Sullivan and Alexander Gardner | A Harvest of Death
Julia Ward Howe | Appeal to Womanhood Throughout the World
Ambrose Bierce | Chickamauga
Stephen Crane | War Is Kind
Mark Twain | Battle Hymn of the Republic (Brought Down to Date) | The War Prayer
William James | The Moral Equivalent of War
John F. Kendrick | Christians at War
Emma Goldman | (from) Preparedness, the Road to Universal Slaughter
Ellen N. La Motte | Heroes
Randolph Bourne | The War and the Intellectuals | Below the Battle
Traditional (Gospel) | Down by the River-Side
Emily Greene Balch | To the President of Wellesley College | (from) Toward Human Unity or Beyond Nationalism
Eugene V. Debs | Address to the Jury
M. C. Otto | An Experiment in Conscience
Walter Guest Kellogg | The Stierheim Case
Arturo Giovannitti | Scott Nearing Reprieves Democracy
Sara Teasdale | “There Will Come Soft Rains”
Jane Addams | Personal Reactions During War
Reinhold Niebuhr | 1923: In Europe
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. | Dissent in United States v. Schwimmer
E. E. Cummings | “i sing of Olaf glad and big”
Floyd Dell | On Trial
Edna St. Vincent Millay | Conscientious Objector
Dalton Trumbo | (from) Johnny Got His Gun
William Everson | War Elegy X
Lowell Naeve | (from) A Field of Broken Stones
Robert Lowell | Letter to President Roosevelt
Bayard Rustin | To Local Board No. 63
Leo Szilard | A Petition to the President of the United States
Dorothy Day | We Go on Record—
Kurt Vonnegut | Wailing Shall Be in All Streets
Edgar L. Jones | (from) One War Is Enough
Naomi Replansky | Epitaph: 1945
Karl Shapiro | The Conscientious Objector
William Stafford | To Meet a Friend
Howard Schoenfeld | (from) The Danbury Story
General Advisory Committee to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission | Annexes to the General Advisory Committee Report of October 30, 1949
Ed McCurdy | Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream
Ray Bradbury | August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains
Omar N. Bradley | A Decent Respect for Human Intelligence
Albert S. Bigelow | Why I Am Sailing into the Pacific Bomb-Test Area
Jeannette Rankin | Two Votes Against War: 1917, 1941
Paul Reps | (from) Zen Telegrams
Pete Seeger and Joe Hickerson | Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
Juanita Nelson | A Matter of Freedom
Barbara Deming | Southern Peace Walk: Two Issues or One?
Edmund Wilson | (from) The Strategy of Tax Refusal
David Dellinger | The Future of Nonviolence
Clinton Hopson and Joe Martin | The War on Vietnam
Country Joe McDonald | The I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag
A. J. Muste | Statement Made on 12/21/65 to the Federal Grand Jury
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee | Statement on American Policy in Vietnam
Tuli Kupferberg and Robert Bashlow | (from) 1001 Ways to Beat the Draft
Josephine Miles | Necessities (1)
Abraham Joshua Heschel | (from) The Moral Outrage of Vietnam
George Starbuck | Of Late
Denise Levertov | Life at War | Making Peace
Martin Luther King Jr. | Beyond Vietnam
Robert Bly | Counting Small-Boned Bodies
James Baldwin | The War Crimes Tribunal
Paul Goodman | A Young Pacifist | A Causerie at the Military-Industrial
Norman Mailer | (from) The Armies of the Night
Contributors to WIN Magazine | (from) Mobilization! Oct. 21
Howard Zinn | Dow Shalt Not Kill
W. S. Merwin | When the War Is Over
Thomas Merton | Nonviolence Does Not—Cannot—Mean Passivity | (from) War and the Crisis of Language
Joan Baez | What Would You Do If?
Muriel Rukeyser | Poem
Shirley Chisholm | “The Business of America Is War and It Is Time for a Change”
Angela Davis | The Liberation of Our People
Daniel Berrigan | (from) The Trial of the Catonsville Nine
Henry Cosby, Joe Hinton, and Pam Sawyer | I Should Be Proud
J. K. Osborne | (from) I Refuse
John Kerry | Statement of John Kerry, Vietnam Veterans Against the War
Ron Kovic | (from) Born on the Fourth of July
Gloria Emerson | (from) Winners and Losers
Charles Martin | Terminal Colloquy
Grace Paley | Cop Tales: Devastation | Women’s Pentagon Action Unity Statement
George Zabelka | “I Was Told It Was Necessary”
Yvonne Dilling and Mary Jo Bowman | Revolutionary Violence: A Dialogue
Don Benedict | (from) Born Again Radical
Eugene J. McCarthy | The IRS’ Plan for the Hereafter
Wally Nelson | “One Race, the Human Race”
Thomas Banyacya | “Like the Elders Say”
Gene R. La Rocque | The Role of the Military in the Nuclear Age
Donald Wetzel | (from) Pacifist: Or, My War and Louis Lepke
Bill Watterson | Calvin and Hobbes: “How Come We Play War and Not Peace?”
Bernard Offen | To: Internal Revenue Service
Thomas McGrath | War Resisters’ Song
Yusef Komunyakaa | 2527th Birthday of the Buddha
Tim O’Brien | On the Rainy River
Adrienne Rich | (from) An Atlas of the Difficult World
Gregory Nevala Calvert | (from) Democracy from the Heart
William Heyen | The Truth
S. Brian Willson | The Tracks
Naomi Shihab Nye | Jerusalem
June Jordan | The Bombing of Baghdad
Gina Valdés | Hearts on Fire
Barbara Ehrenreich | Fighting War
Phyllis and Orlando Rodríguez | Not in Our Son’s Name
Barbara Lee | Speech on House Joint Resolution 64
Barbara Kingsolver | A Pure, High Note of Anguish
Barack Obama | Weighing the Costs of Waging War in Iraq
Maxine Hong Kingston | (from) The Fifth Book of Peace
Jonathan Schell | (from) No More unto the Breach
Robert Byrd | America’s Image in the World
Zack de la Rocha | March of Death
Minnie Bruce Pratt | Driving the Bus: After the Anti-War March
Kent Johnson | Baghdad
Brian Turner | Sadiq
Camilo Mejía | (from) Road from ar Ramadi
Andrew J. Bacevich | I Lost My Son to a War I Oppose. We Were Both Doing Our Duty
*Philip Metres*| For the Fifty (Who Made PEACE with Their Bodies)
Austin Smith | That Particular Village
Nicholson Baker | Why I’m a Pacifist: The Dangerous Myth of the Good War
Anne Montgomery | An Interview with Sister Anne Montgomery, RSCJ
Mike Kirby | (from) An Honorable Discharge
Jane Hirshfield | I Cast My Hook, I Decide to Make Peace
Contributors

Jane Addams
Andrew J. Bacevich
Joan Baez
Nicholson Baker
Obadiah Ethelbert Baker
Emily Greene Balch
James Baldwin
Adin Ballou
Thomas Banyacya
Robert Bashlow
Don Benedict
Daniel Berrigan
Ambrose Bierce
Albert S. Bigelow
Robert Bly
Randolph Bourne
Mary Jo Bowman
Ray Bradbury
Omar N. Bradley
Robert Byrd
Gregory Nevala Calvert
Shirley Chisholm
Thomas Corwin
Henry Cosby
Stephen Crane
E. E. Cummings
Angela Davis
Dorothy Day
Zack de la Rocha
Eugene V. Debs
Floyd Dell
David Dellinger
Barbara Deming
Yvonne Dilling
David Low Dodge
Barbara Ehrenreich
Gloria Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
William Everson
Alexander Gardner
William Lloyd Garrison
Arturo Giovannitti
Emma Goldman
Paul Goodman
Abraham Joshua Heschel
William Heyen
Joe Hickerson
Joe Hinton
Jane Hirshfield
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Clinton Hopson
Julia Ward Howe
William James
Kent Johnson
Edgar L. Jones
June Jordan
Walter Guest Kellogg
John F. Kendrick
John Kerry
Martin Luther King Jr.
Barbara Kingsolver
Maxine Hong Kingston
Mike Kirby
Yusef Komunyakaa
Ron Kovic
Tuli Kupferberg
Ellen N. La Motte
Gene R. La Rocque
Barbara Lee
Denise Levertov
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Robert Lowell
Norman Mailer
Charles Martin
Joe Martin
Eugene J. McCarthy
Ed McCurdy
Country Joe McDonald
Thomas McGrath
Camilo Mejía
Herman Melville
Thomas Merton
W. S. Merwin
Philip Metres
Warner Mifflin
Josephine Miles
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Anne Montgomery
A. J. Muste
Lowell Naeve
Juanita Nelson
Wally Nelson
Reinhold Niebuhr
Naomi Shihab Nye
Barack Obama
Tim O’Brien
Bernard Offen
J. K. Osborne
Timothy H. O’Sullivan
M. C. Otto
Grace Paley
Theodore Parker
Minnie Bruce Pratt
Cyrus Pringle
Jeannette Rankin
Naomi Replansky
Paul Reps
Adrienne Rich
Phyllis and Orlando Rodríguez
Muriel Rukeyser
Benjamin Rush
Bayard Rustin
Pam Sawyer
Jonathan Schell
Howard Schoenfeld
Karl Shapiro
Pete Seeger
Austin Smith
Joseph Smith Jr.
William Stafford
George Starbuck
Leo Szilard
Sara Teasdale
Henry David Thoreau
Dalton Trumbo
Brian Turner
Mark Twain
Gina Valdés
Kurt Vonnegut
Bill Watterson
Donald Wetzel
Walt Whitman
S. Brian Willson
Edmund Wilson
John Woolman
George Zabelka
Howard Zinn

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