The Name of War

by Jill Lepore

  25Wharton, New-England’s Present Sufferings, 4.

  26Hutchinson, Warr in New-England Visibly Ended, 103. The argument that the colonists were being punished for their persecution of Quakers and other dissenters is most fully elaborated in Folger’s poem; for example, “Let us then search what is the sin / that God doth punish for / … Sure tis not chiefly for those sins that magistrats do name … but its for the saim cryinge sin / that writers will not owen … / the sin of persecution …” (Folger, “Looking Glasse,” 307). See also Wharton, New-England’s Present Sufferings, 6—7; S[amuel] G[roome], A Glasse for the People of New-England ([London], 1676), 16-17.

  27On the practice of days of fasting, humiliation, and thanksgiving see W. DeLoss Love, The Fast and Thanksgiving Days of New England (Boston, 1895), especially 192-204; Bercovitch, The American Jeremiad, 80-83. On Plymouth Church’s days see John Cotton’s Plymouth Church Records in Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts 222 (1920): 147-55. In Massachusetts printed broadsides declaring such days were posted beginning in June 1675. See At a Council held at Boston, September the seventeenth 1673 (Cambridge, 1675); At a Council held at Boston the 23th of June, 1673 (Boston?, 1675); At a Council Held at Charlestown, June the 20th, 1676 (Cambridge, 1676). John Eliot gives an intriguing summary of the debate in June 1676 over whether to declare a day of fasting or of thanksgiving (“Rev. John Eliot’s Records of the First Church in Roxbury, Mass.,” NEHGR 33 [1879]: 299).

  28Wharton, New-England’s Present Sufferings, 4. Rowlandson, Soveraignty, 360. Mather, Brief History, 125. Wheeler, Thankefull Remembrance, 247, 249. News from New England, 5, but see also Mather, Brief History, 128-29; Saltonstall, New and Further Narrative, 85; Hubbard, Narrative, 1:205-6. Many of these actions, and the taunts that accompanied them, are quite similar to the acts and taunts used by Catholics and Protestants in religious riots (see Natalie Zemon Davis, “The Rites of Violence,” in Society and Culture in Early Modern France [Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1975], 152-87). I believe much of this similarity can be explained by understanding that New England Indians were indeed attacking a particular brand of English Protestantism, with which they themselves (especially renegade Christian Indians) were quite familiar; many no doubt employed methods they may have heard or read about in learning about Protestant martyrs, while others simply identified at what points the religion was most vulnerable (the fickleness of God’s favor, for instance). The similarity may also be explained, however, by the colonists’ disposition in reporting the events of the war to portray themselves as Protestant martyrs; hence some of the reports may have been stylized inventions intended to provoke the sympathies of Protestant readers.

  29Saltonstall, New and Further Narrative, 86. Indians probably also commonly stole or destroyed Bibles they found. On their return from attacking Medfield, Mary Rowlandson asked one of her captors if he had a Bible, and he gave her one out of a basket of plunder (Rowlandson, Soveraignty, 330).

  30Daniel Henchman to John Leverett, June 30, 1676, transcribed in Bodge, Soldiers in King Philip’s War, 57.

  31Hubbard, Narrative, 1:71. The English subsequently pulled down these body parts and threw them into a river (Massachusetts Council to John Pynchon, July 10, 1675, Winthrop Papers, MHS).

  32Farther Brief and True Narration, 4.

  33Mather, Brief History, 47, 212-13. Mather may well have been responding to a request from Josiah Winslow that he help vindicate Plymouth Colony; to that end Winslow sent Mather a copy of his own “Narrative” (Josiah Winslow to Increase Mather, May 1, 1676, transcribed in Mather, Brief History).

  34Mather, Brief History, 47,56.

  35William Hubbard, The Happiness of a People (Boston, 1676), 46.

  36John Bishop to Increase Mather, July 8, 1676, MHSC, 4th ser., 8 (1868): 299. Harris, A Rhode Islander Reports, 18.

  37Josiah Winslow to John Leverett, July 6, 1675, Davis Papers, MHS.

  38Randolph, “Short Narrative.” Randolph charged the Massachusetts magistrates with calling Philip to court, when in reality it was Plymouth. See the response by the Massachusetts Council to the Lords of the Privy Council, June 28, 1678, Stevens Transcripts, JCB.

  39PCR 10:439. Easton, “Relacion,” 9. Josiah Winslow to Weetamo and her husband, July 15, 1675, Winslow Papers, MHS.

  40Josiah Winslow to John Winthrop, Jr., July 29, 1675, MHSC, 5th ser., 1 (1871): 429; John Bishop to Increase Mather, July 8, 1676, MHSC, 4th ser., 8 (1868): 229. John Eliot to John Winthrop, Jr., July 24, 1675, MHSC, 5th ser., 1 (1871): 424. PCR 10:362-64. John Pynchon to John Allyn, August 25, 1675, Pynchon Papers 1:149-50.

  41PCR 10:364-65.

  42Massachusetts Council, “To Our Brethren.” Andros to the governor and Council of Massachusetts, January 24, 1676, Hutchinson Papers 2:209-10. CSP 9:317-19.

  43Roger Williams to John Winthrop, Jr., December 18, 1676, Winthrop Papers, MHS.

  44Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1954), 99; Arthur H. Buffinton, “The Puritan View of War,” Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts 28 (1931): 69, 76. Grotius was not the only influence on the colonists’ notions about what constituted a just war. Scripture, classical philosophy, English Puritan theology, and folk wisdom were all mixed into the stew of colonial political theory. Miller identifies the four principal sources of New England’s intellectual heritage as European Protestantism, seventeenth-century preoccupations and interests, humanism, and medieval scholasticism (Miller, New England Mind, 92-100).

  45Hugo Grotius, De Jure Belli Et Pacis, trans. Francis W. Kelsey (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925), 1:171.

  46Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (New York: Basic Books, 1977), 21.

  47John Leverett to “All people,” September 12, 1676, mss. bound, MHS.

  48Urian Oakes, The Soveraign Efficacy of Divine Providence, Preached September 10, 1677 (1682), 26. John Richardson, The Necessity of a Well Experienced Souldiery (Cambridge: J. Richardson, 1679), 1. Anthony Ashcam warned, “For as Warre introduces the greatest of evils, viz. the taking away of mens lives, and that which is equivalent to life: so right reason and equity tells us, that it ought not to be undertaken without the greatest cause, which is the keeping of our lives, and that without which our lives cannot be kept, or if they could bee kept, yet they would not be any value to us, seeing there may be a life worse then death” (Anthony Ashcam, A Discourse wherein is examined, what is particularly lawfull during the confusions and revolutions of government [London, 1648], 98-99). Or, in William Ames’ words, “every light and small injury is not a just cause of Warre, because Warre being such a thing which punisheth men with the most grievous punishments, it is not to bee undertaken, but upon some injury, which is great or heynous, either in it selfe, or in the consequences” (Ames, Conscience, 186).

  49Establishing that the war was strictly defensive was not necessary for it to be considered just; Grotius, after all, had made provisions for offensive wars. And in the original Articles of Confederation the commissioners of the United Colonies were given authority to pursue “all just warrs whether offensive or defensive,” provided at least six of the nine commissioners consented to it (Articles of Confederation, PCR, 10:3-8). But offensive wars had been controversial for the colonies in the past. In 1653, when Connecticut Colony wanted to pursue an offensive war against the Dutch, Massachusetts balked, claiming that such a war was inconsistent with the Articles of Confederation, and asked: “Whether the commissioners of the united Collonies have power by articles of agreement to determine the Justice of an offecive or vindictive warr and to engage the Collonies therin.” Finding a loophole in the original articles, the Massachusetts representatives argued that, while the commissioners could call for a defensive war and could decide the legitimacy of an offensive one, they lacked the authority to compel all the colonies to participate in an offensive war (PCR 10:26, 56, 74-88, 428-29; Records of the Colony or Jurisdic
tion of New Haven, from May 1653, to the Union, ed. Charles J. Houdly [Hartford, Conn.: Case, Lockwood & Co., 1858], 8).

  50Wheeler, Thankefull Remembrance, 239-40. Since Plymouth’s initial involvement in the war had been subject to considerable criticism, Massachusetts and Connecticut always explained their involvement in the war as merely helping Plymouth. Increase Mather was quick to observe that “It is known to every one, that the Warr began not amongst us in Matachusets Colony; nor do the Indians (so far as I am informed) pretend that we have done them wrong. And therefore the cause on our part is most clear, and unquestionable: For if we should have suffered our Confederates, and those that were ready to be slain, to be drawn to death, & not have endeavoured to deliver them, when they sent unto us for that end, the Lord would have been displeased; nor should we have acted like the Children of Abraham, Gen. 14. 14. Yea, all the world would justly have condemned us” (Mather, Brief History, 212-14). Samuel Nowell also cited Genesis 14:14 in reaching his conclusion that “To take up arms for the defence of friennds and Allies is lawfull … Hence our late War was justifiable, though the Quarrel was firstly with our neighbours.” In addition, Nowell argued, this story demonstrated that “it is lawfull by war to defend what we lawfully obtained and come by, as our possessions, lands, and inheritance here, to which we have as fair a title as any ever had, since Israels title to Canaan” (Nowell, Abraham in Arms, 276).

  51Such metaphors can be found in Joshua Moodey, Souldiery Spiritualized: or the Christian Souldier (Cambridge, 1674); Samuel Willard, The Heart Garrisoned, or, the Wisdome, and Care of the Spiritual Souldier (Cambridge, 1676); J. R., The Necessity of a Well Experienced Souldiery (Cambridge, 1679); Urian Oakes, The Unconquerable All Conquering & more-then Conquering Souldier (Cambridge, 1674).

  52J. R., The Necessity of a Well Experienced Souldiery, 7.

  53Walker, “Captan Perse,” 91. Walker compared the Indian enemies to Cain, Nero, Diocletian, and Domitio, all “monsterus beasts” who “atend only an evil speritt suggested by satan” (84). Therefore, any means necessary could be used to subdue them: “Tis very Just to doea the best wee Can / to yous all mens by sword or poysned dram / to send such souls to ther own place mor fitt / If god sucksed & say amen to it” (83).

  54Quoted in Robert A. Williams, Jr., The American Indian in Western Legal Thought: The Discourses of Conquest (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 30. For further articulation of the distinction between secular and holy war see Frederick H. Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975); James Turner Johnson, Ideology, Reason, and the Limitation of War: Religious and Secular Concepts, 1200-1740 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975). The distinction was not absolute. As Russell observed: “In the heat of combat and controversy belligerents forsook the more restrained just war for the holy war. At the moment a just war was deemed necessary, it easily became a holy war that pursued the supreme goal of the belligerents” (2).

  55Williams, The American Indian in Western Legal Thought, 13-15, 43-46.

  56MCR 5:49-50.

  57Quoted in Williams, The American Indian in Western Legal Thought, 194-98.

  58Michael Walzer, Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), 57-66; Stuart,” Tor the Lord Is a Man of Warr,’ “523, 526; George, “War and Peace in the Puritan Tradition”; and Roland Bainton, “Congregationalism and the Puritan Revolution from the Just War to the Crusade,” Andover Newton Bulletin 35 (1943): 1-20. The most comprehensive treatment of this phenomenon can be found in Johnson, Ideology, ch. 3. Johnson identifies six characteristics of English holy war thought: “(1) religious purpose, (2) expansion of classic just war doctrine to include defensive war by the state as warranted for defense of religion, (3) introduction of a concept of offensive war for religion, usually enunciated as a concept of war ‘comanded’ by God, (4) assertion of the necessity that soldiers for the right be personally godly, usually accompanied with the assumption that those on the other side are personally sinful, (5) a change in the meaning of the term just’ war from justifiable’ to justified’ war, implying a thoroughly righteous cause and thoroughly righteous or godly (justified’) champions for it, (6) occasionally the requirement or suggestion that holy war must be prosecuted more scrupulously according to the dictates of charity, in tension with an equally occasional insistence that holy war be fought without restraint” (Johnson, Ideology, 132).

  59On Ames’ influence in New England see Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century.

  60Most ideas about war were based in the “law of nature” (or natural law), which, according to who was doing the philosophizing, was either innately known by all of humankind, commonly shared by all who know God, or easily deducible by all those capable of reason. If non-Christians did not even “know” natural law, what rules would dictate wars against them? Grotius’ answer to this dilemma, however, was not very much of an answer at all. Initially he claimed that all people know the law of nature since, by definition, that law is universally known: “That is according to the law of nature which is believed to be such among all nations.” But then again, maybe not. “Or,” Grotius added, perhaps a consensus on natural law exists only among those nations “that are more advanced in civilization” (De Jure Belli, 1:42-43).

  61Johnson, Ideology, 155-58. For another useful summary of Vitoria’s writings see Etienne Grisel, “The Beginnings of International Law and General Public Law Doctrine: Francisco de Vitoria’s De Indiis prior,” in First Images of America: The Impact of the New World on the Old, ed. Fredi Chiapelli (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 305-34.

  62Francisco de Vitoria, Political Writings, ed. Anthony Pagden and Jeremy Lawrence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 239-44, 250, 263—72.

  63“Vitoria assumed the truth of Thomas Aquinas’s belief that natural law could be known quite apart from revelation by the correct use of human reason. This meant for the Spanish theorist that the Indians inhabiting the New World could, even though they were not Christians and might never have heard of Christ, know the natural law. Thus the Spanish could treat with them and had a right to expect a certain sort of behavior from the Indians encountered” (James Turner Johnson, Just War Tradition and the Restraint of War: A Moral and Historical Inquiry [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981], 76-77).

  64As Williams argues, “From this point of view, international law was conceived of as mutually binding on all nations still in a state of nature by virtue of their sovereignty, and was binding on them in exactly the same way as the prepolitical law of nature had been binding on individuals when they also lived in a state of nature” (Williams, The American Indian in Western Legal Thought, 97-107).

  65Ultimately, as Williams argues, “Vitoria’s Law of Nations provided Western legal discourse with its first secularly oriented, systematized elaboration of the superior rights of civilized Europeans to invade and conquer normatively divergent peoples…. Only Christian Europeans could offer the Indians a rationalized existence, which the Indians by the Law of Nations were obliged to accept.” Having thrown out the pope’s mediating role, Williams argues, Vitoria replaced it with more acceptable Thomistic humanist foundations: “These foundations stressed the autonomy of human reason and the universal obligations of a Eurocentrically constructed natural law. The savage could be conquered and colonized by Christian European nations seeking to enforce or inculcate the rational norms binding on all humankind under a natural Law of Nations” (Williams, The American Indian in Western Legal Thought, 97-107).

  66Peter Hulme has argued that the “colonial discourse” describing the Virginia massacre of 1622 employed the same strategy: “it was quite clear under the Law of Nations that it was not lawful for Christians simply ‘to usurpe the goods and lands of these Heathens.’ Such usurpation could only be justified by infractions of Natural Law” (Peter Hulme, Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Car
ibbean, 1492-1797 [London: Methuen, 1986], 159-61).

  67Grotius, De Jure Belli, 1:22-23.

  68Johnson writes that Grotius’ “natural-law doctrine on war applies to all men since it is knowable by reason. Christians, by faith, possess some additional knowledge, which in part supplements and in part replaces that which natural reason provides. If warring nations are Christian, then, they are bound by limits that are unknown to other nations and therefore do not bind them. In wars between non-Christian nations natural law alone provides the rules by which war should be fought” (Johnson, Ideology, 210-11).

  69Hugo Grotius, On the Origin of the Native Races of America (1642; reprint, Edinburgh, 1884, ed. Edmund Goldsmid).

  70The European “discovery” of the New World exerted an incalculable influence on Western political philosophy. As Johnson has argued, “By thrusting Europeans into contact with people totally outside the traditions of European civilization,” the encounter with the New World “stimulated the attempt to create a natural law/just war theory” (Johnson, Just War Tradition, 172-73). See also Arthur J. Savin, “The American Principle from More to Locke,” in First Images of America, 139-64.

  71John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (1690), 34.

  72Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Michael Oakeshott (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1947), 82-83.

  73Thomas Morton, New English Canaan or New Canaan (Amsterdam: Jacob Frederick Stam, 1637; reprint, Prince Society, Boston, 1883), 140.

  74Quoted in Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., The White Mans Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 37. On Indians’ actual religious worldview see Simmons, Spirit of the New England Tribes, 37-64.

  75Karen Kupperman, Settling with the Indians: The Meeting of English and Indian Cultures in America, 1580-1640 (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1980), 54-55.

  76Massachusetts Council to the Indian Sagamores, March 31, 1676, Mass. Arch. 68:193.