Tax resistance in the “Peace Churches” →
Quakers →
19th century Quakers →
Nathaniel Richardson
In , a vigorous debate about war tax resistance hit the pages of the Friends’ Intelligencer.
You can find most of this in Volume ⅩⅩ at Google Books… with the exception of the opening article in the debate.
The two pages that contain that article are tantalizingly missing from the on-line volume.
I had to delve into the microfilm in the basement of the Berkeley university library this morning to find it.
First, some context: on , two years into the American Civil War, U.S. President Lincoln signed the Enrollment Act, which organized the first federal military draft in U.S. history.
The Friends’ Intelligencer debate is prompted by this Act, which allowed drafted men to either hire a substitute or to buy themselves out of the draft for $300. The long-standing Friends “discipline” instructed Quakers never to pay such a commutation tax, but, of course, neither could they serve in the military or hire a substitute.
Nathaniel Richardson, who was about 23-years-old at the time, opened the debate (he’s referred to as “N.R.” — “our friend from Byberry”).
The Intelligencer knew they were stirring up a hornets’ nest, and so prefaced Richardson’s piece with an introductory paragraph reading “The subject here brought into view… may be considered as a disputed point, and in giving this essay a place, we of course open our pages to other friends who may feel it right to offer their sentiments.”
I’ll reproduce the whole of Richardson’s argument below (since you can’t find it anywhere else on-line), but I’ll try to briefly summarize it here first:
I acknowledge that there is a Quaker testimony against paying war taxes and commutation money, but this tradition that we have been handed down from our ancestors is unsuited to the present crisis where we are surrounded by difficulties unknown in former times.
Past generations could uphold the testimony against paying war taxes and commutation money without encountering much serious difficulty aside from distraint of property or occasional imprisonment.
Now, though, Quakers who refuse to pay or to fight risk being shot as deserters.
So Quakers ought to closely examine their discipline and make sure it is strictly necessary to uphold their principles.
I think we can abandon this practice without violating our principles.
When the government demands money from us, they are asking for something — property — that is a creation of government.
It is the government’s to bestow or to demand just as surely as the coin with Cæsar’s image on it belonged to Cæsar.
If the government were to ask us to act in violation of our consciences, it would be overstepping its bounds, but not if it merely asks for the return of the property that it superintends.
Some Quakers argue that to pay money in lieu of military service would be a tacit agreement that the government has a right to compel such service (and that such an agreement is itself a violation of our peace testimony).
But this isn’t good reasoning, since, for instance, when somebody settles a lawsuit out of court by paying some portion of the suit’s demand just in order to avoid the expense going to court, nobody insists that this necessarily means that the lawsuit was valid.
Similarly there’s no contradiction between paying the $300 in order to avoid military service and believing that you shouldn’t have to pay to avoid military service.
In the following issue, “W.G.” wrote in to chide the Intelligencer for calling this “a disputed point,” since it was a firmly-settled part of the Quaker discipline that Quakers could not “either openly or by connivance pay any fine, penalty, or tax in lieu of personal service for carrying on war.”
The render-unto-Caesar episode, thinks W.G., doesn’t fit the case, since it did not involve a tax in lieu of personal service or one expressly for funding war.
, “H.S.K.” wrote in to dispute Richardson’s characterization of property as being solely an arbitrary creation of government and therefore the government’s to dispose of as it wills.
H.S.K. argues that since it is easy to come up with examples in which the government enforces property rights justly or unjustly, there must be a law of justice regarding property ownership that precedes and supersedes the arbitrary decisions of government.
Property may be defended (or threatened) by government, but it is not invented by government.
Because of this, Richardson must be wrong when he says that government requests for money are not questionable on grounds of justice.
My money, says H.S.K., “is an instrument of power just as certainly as is my right arm,” and I’m responsible for how I use that instrument.
H.S.K. also disputes Richardson’s lawsuit-settling analogy, saying that settling a lawsuit to avoid the expense of a court battle is a qualitatively different decision than paying a commutation tax to purchase a substitute to fight a war in your place, because avoiding expenses is a morally neutral thing while purchasing a substitute is not.
“What would we think of the moral rectitude of that man who would pay for the support of crime, merely to avoid litigation?”
Meanwhile, the draft proved to be very unpopular.
In mid-July, the New York City draft riots broke out.
One of the frequent complaints about the draft was that the $300 commutation fee allowed rich people to buy themselves out of the war, leaving the poor to fight their battle for them.
Gideon Frost continued the debate in the first issue of the Intelligencer.
He starts by saying that the published discipline of the Society of Friends is explicit and unambiguous about not permitting Friends to pay military exemption taxes.
It’s one thing to say that maybe Quakers ought to reconsider that part of their discipline, but it is improper, says Frost, to do as Richardson did and encourage Quakers to disregard it.
Frost thinks it is extremely unlikely that the U.S. government would actually shoot a Quaker for desertion because he refused to enlist, hire a substitute, or pay a commutation tax, so Richardson’s panic is unwarranted.
Frost also wonders if Richardson suggests Quakers who can afford to do so go ahead and pay the $300, what does he suggest for Quakers who cannot afford it?
Frost also disputes Richardson’s reading of the render-unto-Caesar episode.
He denies that Jesus’s reply suggested that all money belongs to Caesar, or that it has anything to do with a tax in lieu of government service or a tax to pay for war (after all, he suggests, the reign of the Caesar in question was “rather a pacific one”), or that what Jesus had to say about Caesar specifically can necessarily be extrapolated into a teaching about government in general.
“C.O.N.” then writes in, saying, in part, that the property the government seizes from tax resisters by distraint and then sells is just as useful to it in carrying out its war policy as cash money would be, so the practical effect is the same, with the only difference being in the resister’s conscience.
He recalls an episode from his youth when a tax collector came to seize property for such a military tax and, “out of what he professed to be a humane charitable feeling” confiscated money from an unlocked cash drawer instead, so as to cause “the least trouble and distress.”
“W.G.” wrote in again and put the argument this way: Quakers happily render unto Caesar what Caesar is due, but they have determined that Caesar is never due their military service.
Therefore, Caesar cannot be due the monetary equivalent of military service either.
A draftee wrote in next, saying that in spite of his sympathy for the Union cause, he cannot join in the war or pay the commutation money “or even the hundredth part of it” for this “would be bartering my conscience, a gift from heaven… it would be purchasing an ‘indulgence’ for the right of enjoying a divine principle.
It would be giving the means to others to purchase flesh and blood to take my place.
No! the ‘filthy lucre’ proposition on the score of principle is hypocrisy of the worst kind.”
“R.H.” put it this way:
“If Friends cannot themselves fight, it is wholly inconsistent for them to pay a fine or tax in lieu of it, as that would be an acknowledgment that the demand is just, and that liberty of conscience is not our due… Shall we pay our money, to save ourselves, our sons, or our friends, from going to the battle-field to slay, or to be slain, and lay down our testimony against this awful evil, war?”
Nathaniel Richardson then responded to his critics. In his view, when someone asks us for money, he says, the primary moral consideration is always, do you owe the money or not.
If you do owe it, you must pay it, and there is no reason to investigate further and try to decide whether the recipient will spend the money wisely or not before you hand it over.
So when the government asks us to pay a tax, all we should do is ask whether the law requires this tax from us, and if it does, we should pay it without inquiring further.
By doing this we in no way violate the laws of Christianity because “we make no contract, exercise no influence, and are in no respect accountable: we sacrifice no right of conscience.”
That added fresh fuel to the fire.
“Y.T.” replied next, warning that “to allow our money to be made use of to procure substitutes — for that is its meaning — would permit the taunt to be hurled at us that we were too cowardly to fight ourselves, but allowed others to be hired to fight in our places.”
“A.H.L.” noted that the Conscription Act explicitly says that the $300 commutation money is meant “for the procuration of [a] substitute,” and so to pay the money is just an indirect way of hiring a substitute to fight in your place, which everybody agrees is against Quaker principles.
He also disputes Richardson’s argument that the government can create an unquestionable monetary obligation by fiat.
Furthermore, he says there’s something rotten about trying to purchase a conscientious stand — “such a conscience as can be purchased with money and for an advertised price is not worth having.”
He then alludes to a “late decision” that if a conscientious objector refused to fight, hire a substitute, or pay a commutation fine, the amount of the fine would “be made a lien against the Society of which he may be a member.”
That, he says, puts Quakers in quite a spot, and he thinks that either they will stick by their principles, or, by abandoning them to save their meetings they will end up killing “the Society itself, as a true religious body.”
It is wise for us, even in times of ease and tranquility, often to recur to first principles, but how very important this reference becomes, when the stability of our institutions is jeopardised by surrounding commotions!
Such, unhappily, is now the condition of the Society of Friends in relation to some of their long-cherished practices.
The mutations in the elements of human society, which we now behold, threaten the subversion of some of the venerated formula and usages of our predecessors, and which we of this generation have adopted.
But we now find ourselves surrounded by difficulties unknown in former times as regards the manner — the outward formula — by which we have been accustomed to support one of our vital testimonies, and it becomes increasingly important for us carefully to consider our position; and in doing so, to discriminate correctly between the substantial principle and the particular method by means of which we have been accustomed to maintain it before the world.
That manners, usages and forms, may and do change without infringing on the immutable principle with which they are connected, may be seen in many particulars, in which the faithful of different generations vary from each other.
The Society of Friends believe that they have a testimony to bear to the peaceful nature of the Christian religion, — to its being essentially a religion of love — that it teaches and enables its followers to love their enemies, to do good to those that hate them, and to pray for those who despitefully entreat them.
They, therefore, feel bound to abstain from bearing arms and from enlisting in any military service, which it is manifest they cannot do, whilst they love and desire to do good to all.
But in addition to thus abstaining from military service they have thought it right as a further means of upholding their testimony, to refuse to pay money in lieu of such service.
This course they have generally pursued through their whole history, without encountering much serious difficulty; where they have refused to pay money, they have suffered the loss of property of some other kind, perhaps of greater value, or they have suffered imprisonment for a short period in county jails; but no means have been taken to force them into the ranks.
We are now placed under very different circumstances; instead of the mild State legislation, which was satisfied with taking our goods and chattels where money was refused, we now have bearing upon us the more stringent law of the general government, which, though it is willing to take $300, in money, in lieu of personal service, yet where that is not paid, seizes upon the person as a deserter, and conveys him to some military rendezvous, where he will be subjected to the summary and severe discipline usual in military institutions.
In this momentous crisis in our history it becomes us as a Society, and individually, to re-examine the stand we have taken, — to ascertain for ourselves in the light of Truth and an enlightened reason, whether the ground we occupy is all tenable, and should the inquiry result in an affirmative answer, let us endeavor through Divine assistance to maintain it with unflinching firmness; but if, on the other hand, we should discover that any part of our position has been assumed and is held without due authority, let us agree to surrender it with Christian dignity.
The law presents to us the alternative (where drafted) of rendering personal military service, or paying to the government $300, and as we cannot render such service, it remains for us to determine whether we can pay the alternative, the $300. That is the important question; and in order to its solution, let it be borne in mind, that the thing demanded, and for the non-payment of which we are to suffer, is money; that the party demanding this money is the government.
Now, it must be conceded that if the government has, in the nature of things, a right to this money, we, the holders of it have no right to refuse its demand.
The relations which subsist between government and property may be deduced from a remarkable passage in the history of Jesus, as related in the ⅹⅻ. of Matthew.
“Is it lawful,” (said the Pharisees to that great authority,) “Is it lawful to give tribute to Cæsar? and he said, show me the tribute money, and they brought him a penny, and he saith unto them, render therefore unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.”
This reply is full of wisdom and instruction, which should not be confined to that particular occasion, (though even in that sense the Jews were amazed at it,) but it has a wide and enduring import.
Cæsar, the head of the government, being put for the government itself, and for all governments — and the piece of money, that representative of property, being put for property, and for all property.
For as the penny bore the image and superscription of Cæsar, so does property, all property, bear the impress of government.
Examine this subject and turn it as we may, we cannot avoid the conclusion, that property is the creature of government, and we can have no idea of property without presupposing the existence of government, without which it is an unmeaning term.
The conclusion, therefore, seems inevitably to be, Render therefore unto government this thing which is proven to be his.
Friends have always acted in conformity to this view to a large extent; they pay taxes, duties and excise, they buy stamps, receive and pay government notes and invest in government securities; they do these things not only in times of peace, when the expenditures of government are chiefly for civil purposes, but also in time of war, when the money goes for military purposes.
Upon this point they make no distinction, and failing to make distinction here, they appear to admit the relation of government to property as above described, and yet they make a distinction when money is demanded in lieu of personal military service.
Is there valid grounds for such a distinction?
The demands of the government are of two kinds, one of which affects the conscience, for its requisitions are in direct conflict with a Divine law.
The government claims a right to our services in maiming and killing these very persons whom we understand the Divine law enjoins upon us to love, do good to and pray for.
This then is a matter touching the conscience, which we are bound above all things else to keep void of offence towards God.
He is the sovereign lord of conscience; — conscience, of right, bears his image and superscription, and is the very thing which we are to render unto Him, in contradistinction to that which we are to render to Cæsar.
And has conscience no connection with property?
Yes, in many ways: In the mode of its acquisition, that we do no injustice nor be guilty of covetousness; that in possession we should not be proud, nor lose sight of our dependence; and in our expenditures that we should act rather as stewards of Divine Providence in the management of his bounty, than as the absolute owners of it.
And so whilst we justly deny to government the right to control the conscience, we concede to it a measure of the control of property which we call ours, though it is so in a sense which has many limitations.
There are some, however, who object to our paying taxes which go to defray the expenses of war, as inconsistent with our profession, but for this very practice we have the example of our Holy Pattern, of whom it is recorded that he wrought a miracle to enable Peter to pay tribute to a military government, as he said to Peter, “For me and thee.”
It is also argued that paying money in lieu of personal military service is an admission that such service is due; is not this a non sequitur? Do we reason thus in our ordinary business transactions?
Demands which are held to be unjust are often paid to avoid litigation, &c., without any suspicion that our so doing is an admission of the justice of the claim.
But should any fear they will be misconstrued, it would be easy for them to deny the inference.
I related a debate that took place in the pages of the Friends’ Intelligencer in .
As it turns out, though, I should have kept hunting, as parts of the debate slipped my notice during my first pass through that volume of the journal.
Here, for example, is Nathaniel Richardson’s response to his critics, written in :
“Reasoning at every step he treads Man yet mistakes his way.”
— Cowper
It was believed by the writer hereof to be his duty to cite, for re-examination, certain traditionary views of the Society of Friends — long cherished and embodied in their Discipline.
This he endeavored to do in an essay which appeared in the 16th number of the current volume of Friends’ Intelligencer, which was followed a few weeks later by another essay, intended further to elucidate the subject.
The views which he has thus presented have been assailed by nearly a dozen different writers, who have, in some instances, even called in question the propriety of such subjects being discussed in a Friends’ periodical.
These numerous articles have been carefully read and considered by N.R., who, with desires for the prevalence of truth, has, he trusts, but little of the feelings of an antagonist towards their several authors.
And now being more and more confirmed in the correctness of his views, and consequently thinking that he sees in the objections of his commentators, both fallacy and error, he believes it right for him to review and reply to some of their most prominent arguments and conclusions.
He presumes that none of them will ascribe to all that is contained within the lids of our book of discipline, so high a degree of sacredness as must forbid to the members of the Society on whom their rules are to operate, all enquiry and all discussion of their correctness.
Such enquiries and such discussion we are accustomed to hear in our public meetings, particularly those for discipline, and the reason is not very apparent why this liberty of speech should be approved, and at the same time, the pen and the press be placed in thraldom, and their use gravely denied for the expression of similar concernments.
We, as a people, believe in the peaceful nature of the Christian religion, and there is every reason for believing that those whose minds are imbued with its spirit, whose wills are subjected to its power, will continually, in their daily walk, bear a living testimony that peace is its essential character.
But is there not a manifest and wide difference between this kind of heartfelt testimony, which shines with its own Divine light, and a prescribed rule or form?
If there is a difference, then was N.R. correct in making a distinction between them, characterising the first as a principle, and the latter as the manner prescribed for bearing a testimony to it.
The first, he regarded as immutable; but the latter, as the deduction of an argument, which argument he held to be open to the scrutiny and judgment of the human understanding.
The correctness of this view has been denied in words, but confirmed in practice, by nearly every one of his opponents; for they use many arguments to show that the rule or form is a fair deduction from the principle.
Much has been written to show the impropriety of employing the faculty of reason on the subject, by those who have in the same article indulged largely in reasoning about it.
Several of the commentators have, perhaps inadvertently, substituted other terms and phrases for his, and have thus built up absurdities of their own, which they could easily demolish; for instance, in speaking of the relations of government and property, he has called property the creature of government, which the commentator has treated of as though he has ascribed to government the power of creating the various objects in nature, which, by the influence of government, are liable to become property.
Again N.R. has said that it is government which enables man to possess or hold property.
Now for this word “enables,” the commentator substitutes the word “right,” and goes on to show its absurdity; for, as he says, rights are inherent and inalienable, and were before government.
Now N.R. would observe that ability and right are not exactly synonyms of each other, that they are sometimes in opposition, as in the sentence “The slave has the right to liberty, but has not the ability to attain it.”
These are but samples, the list might be largely extended, but they are enough for the present occasion.
In reference to man’s accountability, it is well to consider what he is accountable for, whether it is the motive which really prompts his action, and the meaning and intention with which it is performed, or is he accountable for what others impute to him as being his motive?
Thus, if a man from feelings of Christian benevolence, administers to the wants of a sick or wounded soldier, will he receive condemnation, because some bystander charges him with having done it in approval of the soldier’s military career?
And so when our sons are drafted, and are offered the choice of either paying a specific sum of money, or of entering the army ranks, what are the ruling motives which prompt the parent to part with a portion of his property, and thus ransom his son?
Is not the motive a combination of all the finer feelings of his nature, and of the Christian virtues of his heart, and whilst attentive to these, and actuated by them, is he to be condemned, because some one — the Government — calls it a “commutation,” says it is paid in lieu of something else?
There surely is nothing criminal in the act of parting with so much money; the motive it is that gives to the act its substance and character, or the motive is essentially itself the act.
The subjects involved in this discussion are numerous and of great importance to the welfare of the Society of Friends.
The line indicated in these essays, as forming the boundary between those requisitions of Government, with which Friends could yield a ready compliance, and those with which they cannot at all comply, is broadly and distinctly marked by the palpable difference in the natures of the matters demanded, being on the one hand property, and on the other, personal service affecting the convenience.
To do justice to the subject might occupy a volume, but having done all towards developing his views of it, which he thinks can be accomplished by such short essays as are adapted to a periodical of this character, the writer will here take his leave.
N.R.
Byberry, .
Also in , an anonymous writer responded to Richardson’s latest argument as follows:
In some of the essays on this subject that have appeared in the Intelligencer the writers appear to lament that any thing should have been published tending to lessen the obligation the members of the Society of Friends should feel to uphold the discipline in relation to their testimony against war.
Truth rarely suffers by a free and candid examination, and a mind that is properly balanced will remain undisturbed by the sophistry of false reasoning, and will settle down again in its original conviction.
This we believe will be found to be the result of the arguments pro and con on the subject of government requisitions.
And notwithstanding an energetic effort has been made to shake the ground on which our Society has stood on this point, so far as there has been an opportunity for a comparison of views in any official capacity, all branches of the Society of Friends still look upon the voluntary payment of a sum of money to buy an exemption from military service demanded by the government, to be a violation of the Society’s testimony against war.
It is contended that this view, coeval with the existence of the Society is the result of an argument.
Can there be no convictions of Truth on the mind other than such as may be considered to be fundamental?
Cannot the mind of Truth be sought for and obtained as to the mode by which a principle may be upheld to a gainsaying world?
Evidently so.
“A good man’s ways are ordered of the Lord.”
This view, though not received and adopted by the world, is eminently characteristic of the Society of Friends.
They profess at least to move under the teachings of the spirit of Truth, not only in giving forth the abstract doctrines of the Society, but in the more important concern of the advancement of practical righteousness.
To this end, they have at various periods adopted certain articles of discipline, as to them best wisdom seemed to direct, and not as the result of an argument, but from a feeling sense of its being right in the Divine sight.
And in this view it is a remarkable fact that the Society has rarely, if ever, so changed its discipline as that at one period its provisions have conflicted with those of another.
It is true that changes have been made, but these, it is believed, have been in accordance with further openings of the same divine light, and with the great objects originally in view and not antagonistic to them, but suited to the changed conditions of Society in the different periods of its existence.
Assuming therefore that the mode and manner of upholding a testimony is not necessarily the “result of an argument,” but may be equally the mind of Truth as the testimony itself, it necessarily follows that the foundation laid by N[athaniel].
R[ichardson]. is not on a stable basis; and when compared with the life-long feeling sense of the Society, must be shorn of its tendency to weaken our position on this important testimony, in this eventful period of the world’s history.
Earlier , the Intelligencer printed the following from “W.M.W.”:
I suppose that all are ready to admit, that the true and living disciple of Jesus Christ is not his own, but the servant of another, to whom he has yielded himself to obey in all things; for no man can be my disciple, said the Divine Master, except he take up his daily cross and follow me.
These, have no difficulty in discovering the true path, for his sheep know his voice, and follow him, and will not follow the voice of the stranger — he ever goeth before them, and in the time of uncertainty, saith, “this is the way, walk in it.”
Such a man, while he is passive to the government, and performs all its requirements which are consistent with his duty to his heavenly Father, holds with [William Ellery] Channing, that, “man’s first duties are not to his country, and his first allegiance not due to its laws.”
And while he very properly appeals to the reasoning powers, in order to convince his fellow man of the truth or falsehood of a proposition, he is satisfied that he cannot in this way know his duties to God, for these will ever be revealed in the soul by his divine spirit, which alone can comprehend the deep things that belong to his everlasting kingdom.
Hence, if we will but cease from man, whose breath is in his nostrils, our duty in these times of commotion and violence will be clearly manifest; we shall not be in doubt in regard to taking up arms, finding a substitute, or paying an equivalent.
Our fathers had a testimony to bear against war; many of them suffered extremely, on account of their unwillingness to bear arms. The Divine Spirit, the light of Christ, which they as humble devoted children looked to at all times, as their bishop to oversee them, their shepherd to feed them, and their prophet to reveal divine mysteries unto them, led them out of all war and contention, and firmly established them in his peaceable kingdom, which is ever taken by entreaty, and kept by humility and lowliness of mind.
This testimony was not to them as it is to the great mass of their descendants, a mere tradition, but a living conviction, that burned within them.
Now the all-important inquiry for us to make individually, is this, have we this testimony to bear? do we feel, that the Divine Spirit requires this testimony at our hands? or is it a mere tradition from the fathers, that has simply recommended itself to our judgment, through the intellectual man, and which we are at liberty to hold or cast aside, as shall be most convenient.
Are some of us ready to doubt, that the religion of Jesus, requires us to sheathe our swords at a time like this, when all the powers of hell, if I may so speak, are arrayed against truth and right; at a time, too, when the government is contending for man’s right to be free, for the inestimable blessings of civil and religious liberty.
The Divine Master led our fathers out of all war, without any regard to the purpose for which it may have been carried on, and the same spirit, will not lead the children into that which it led the fathers out of, for truth never goes backward, but is ever onward and upward.
We may rest assured that we are benighted, and overcome by evil when we turn backward.
Our testimony is against war as a means, and most assuredly if we feel as the fathers felt, if we appreciate this great testimony as they appreciated it, if the Divine Master lives and speaks in us, as he did in them, if we know in whom we believe and in whom we live, as they knew, and feel the certain evidence of his power and spirit, in us and over us, as they felt, we cannot take up arms to destroy our fellow men, creatures of the same God, and inheritors of the same blessed promises.
Feeling and knowing, that the great God has called us to peace, and forbidden us to take up carnal weapons, we cannot obey man, and go forth into the field of carnage and blood, neither can we employ an other, for this we must feel is equivalent to doing it ourselves, and would thereby offend our heavenly Father, whose favor we seek and desire more than all else beside.
Nor yet can we do the third requirement, if we are sincere in our objection to the first.
Not however because the money will be used to carry on war, for I agree with N[athaniel].
R[ichardson]. that if the money is due the government we have no right to withhold it on the ground, that it may be devoted to a bad purpose; we might on this plea get rid of paying many of our honest debts.
When Cesar asks for tribute, we should pay him without asking any questions for conscience sake; but when he requires us to deny our Divine Master, or otherwise pay a ransom, we should boldly answer him, as the apostles Peter and John did the multitude, “whether it be right to hearken unto you rather than unto God, judge ye.”
I think that N[athaniel].
R[ichardson]., on a little more reflection, will admit that the three hundred dollars is not due the government from the truly conscientious man.
God is sovereign lord of conscience, and government (which is nothing more than a combination of individual men) has no right, in the first place, to compel any man to violate his conscience towards God.
The conscientious man refuses to fight, not that he desires to thwart the purposes of government, but because God has called him to peace; ho is already a conscript in the Lamb’s peaceable warfare, hence owes no military service to any man or combination of men, and can owe none, unless man has the right to stand between his fellow-man and his God, and say thus far and no farther shalt thou obey the great King of kings.
Now it is evident if he does not owe the service, the equivalent is not due, and that it is an equivalent is plain from the fact, that it is asked of none but those whose services have been required, and it being such, he cannot pay it without violating his conscientious convictions; yet N[athaniel].
R[ichardson]. says, “he would be only violating an argument.”
Government asks him to do that which he believes his Maker positively forbids him; now if he voluntarily renders an equivalent, he thereby acknowledges its right to require it at his hands, and therefore balks his testimony to peace.
He makes a positive contract with the government, that he will pay three hundred dollars, in lieu of his body in the field; he closes the bargain by paying the money required, receives a receipt clearing him for a specified time; from what?
Why from actual service in the field, and has therefore purchased with filthy lucre the heaven-born privilege of serving God, rather than suffer for the testimony of truth.
But when and where have the martyrs of any age been willing to pay a bonus for the privilege of serving God?
Surely we have forgotten our lathers, who suffered months and years of imprisonment, rather than pay their jail fees, lest they by so doing should acknowledge the justice of their commitment.
We should ever bear in mind, that the highest aim of the disciple of Jesus, is to know his Master’s will, and to do it, nor has the Good Shepherd left him without a witness, in the deep recesses of the soul, that he is compelled, in emergencies like the present, to search the letter of the Decalogue or even the record of the doings of Jesus and his apostles.
The same merciful Father, that sleepeth not by day, nor slumbereth by night, that revealed himself to the prophets and apostles, still continueth in these last days, to set up his kingdom in the hearts of his obedient children, and those whom he now calls to peace, will not acknowledge by word or action, that the government under which they live, has a right to require them to embrue their hands in their brother’s blood.
He that is true to God and his own soul, will not seek for pretexts to violate God’s commandments; the question with him (as a Friend) is not, how shall I act so as to avoid the penalties of the discipline of society, but how shall I keep a conscience void of offence both towards God and towards man?
In perusing the different essays that have appeared on the subject of military requisitions, this query forcibly arrested my attention, “who shall decide when doctors disagree?”
It is evident that we have an umpire to refer all doubtful questions that arise in the mind relative to our duties which is independent and superior to all arguments and theories.
Acquaint thyself with God and be at peace with Him, is the highest law, the grand tribunal to judge in the mind; for it is from Him alone all true wisdom is derived.
He sees the motives that govern our actions, the spirit that animates us, and by that alone He judges, let our outward appearance to men be what it may.
Nothing is more clear than that we are not all called to perform the same duties nor walk the same path through life, neither have all arrived to the same religious growth.
Each of the Father’s devoted children has his way cast up day by day, as He in his wisdom sees meet and their duty is humbly to follow it.
Through the want of duty considering this condition of things, some professing Christians become censorious and uncharitable towards their brethren, because they do not pursue the same line of duty with themselves; judging improperly their motives and faithfulness.
As instances of this spirit we can refer to some eminent members, who, advocating freedom to the slave, have felt it right to abstain from the proceeds of their labor; and, applying the same law of duty to others who did not refrain from these products, argued that as the receiver of stolen goods is as bad as the thief, consequently those that participated were as guilty of all the enormities of slavery as the master, and the slave trader.
All sin is an infraction of a Divine law plainly written or impressed on the mind of man by Deity himself.
We have reason to believe thousands of faithful Christians have departed to their everlasting rest, at peace with their Maker, who have never been required to attend to this subject of abstinence from slave labor.
That truly good man, John Woolman, among other testimonies borne to what he saw to be right, argued that the practice of dying cloth was wrong.
His reasonings were conclusive, no doubt to his mind, but how few are called to follow his example.
Also in our testimony against war it is evident that we have different ideas of duty, and that we shall pursue paths diversely from each other; and we have need to act widely and charitably in all respects towards our government and each other.
Our nation has endeavored to act as leniently as justice to others would admit, and those that disobey its injunctions by refusing to contribute to its aid, should feel that not through arguments or theories, but through obedience to Divine requiring, they refuse.
And if called to suffer the penalty of the law, let it not be with pride like Jehu, “come see my zeal,” but let them suffer with the meekness and patience of a disciple of Christ.
We all have need to examine ourselves closely to see what manner of spirit we are of.
The spirit of war may exist under a plain garb as well as under military trappings; and if the spirit of envy and revenge against a brother, or the love of power and covetousness rule in the heart, the lusts that war in our members from whence wars and fightings come are there.
I.H. .
The same issue also featured the following letter from “Y.T.”:
A number of essays on the above subject have appeared in the Intelligencer for some time past.
The subject matter of most of them I approve; but there are some points presented in some others that seem to me to require comment.
Of this latter class, is that of “N[athaniel].
R[ichardson].,” in the issue of the 12th.
This essay, if I understand it, (and I do not wish to misrepresent “N[athaniel].
R[ichardson].,” or any other writer,) seems to create the impression “that property is the creature of government;” that government is necessary; that it is “the power of government that in any sense ‘enables us to hold property;’ ” and that “by paying to that government ‘a certain sum of money,’ we do not violate the Decalogue, or any of the precepts or examples of Jesus, or the precepts or examples of the Apostles;” and that we have no right to inquire what government intends to do with this money, even though we know that the meaning and intent of this commutation money is to enable the government to provide a substitute for those who prefer paying to going themselves into the army.
Now it seems to mo that the foundation of this position is wrong, and the whole superstructure consequently fallacious.
Government in no sense gives us the right “to hold property;” it prescribes how property may be held — how it should be disposed of, &c.; but the right to property is above and beyond law: it is one of those inalienable rights co-existent with that to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;” for liberty and happiness could not exist without it; and the declaration that those rights are ours, did not give us those rights; they belonged to freemen before declarations and constitutions were written.
When the Creator commanded Adam to “subdue and replenish the earth,” he plainly implied the right of property to be in him, for he could not perform those functions without tools and implements.
Look at the pioneers in our western domain; when they go out beyond the jurisdiction of laws, they acknowledge the right of property to be inherent in each individual; and they act under this right, and mutually protect each other in it when they make locations.
If I understand the testimony that Friends have hitherto borne against war, it is that we are not to take up arms against our fellow-men in any case, Christ having commanded us to “love our enemies, to do good to those that hate us, to pray for those that despitefully use us and persecute us;” and as we cannot take up arms ourselves without violating this command, we cannot employ another to do so for us, or pay a commutation to a third party, to enable that third party to procure a substitute in our place.
To do either, would, in my estimation, alike implicate us.
I was very much pleased and interested by a letter said to have been written by a young man who had been drafted, published some weeks ago in the Intelligencer.
That letter presents a right view of the subject, and corresponds with what I conceive to be the testimony of the society of Friends, as heretofore held.
And I exceedingly regret to see language used that would insinuate that in paying “a specific sum of money,” in lieu of personal service, “we only violate an argument.”
I believe that, by so doing, we as much violate the “precepts and examples of Jesus,” and the principles and testimonies of our society, in the one case as the other.
To call this principle “a misnomer,” and the argument founded upon it “a fallacy,” appears to me to lower our testimony, so that there will be little left worth possessing.
For to allow our money to be made use of to procure substitutes — for that is its meaning — would permit the taunt to be hurled at us that we were too cowardly to fight ourselves, but allowed others to be hired to fight in our places.
The society of Friends have testimonies against both war and slavery; but there is danger, under present circumstances, of allowing our testimony against war to be modified or lessened, from the fact that this war will certainly be the means of putting down slavery.
This war having been begun by slaveholders more firmly to secure themselves in their authority over slaves, we cannot be sorry to see that authority overthrown; yet it is done by a means that we, as Christians, cannot recommend or uphold.
The principles laid down by Christ were designed to apply to all circumstances under which his followers could be placed; and we are not to set them aside from motives of human policy.
This would be to deny him before men.
“N[athaniel].
R[ichardson].” appears to me to be in error when he says, “there are also numerous claimants to abridge our ownership;” (that is, of property;) “the claims of our families — the claims of charity — and claims for the public good,” &c. These claims, so far from abridging our right to property, are strong arguments in favor of that right — for these claims could not be fully carried out without it.
We should be careful not to bring the testimonies of our society to “the scrutiny and judgment of the human understanding” alone; there is a Divine understanding promised by Christ to his followers, which has been graciously given to all true seekers, by which we should regulate ourselves; and as this is lived up to, we shall be less solicitous to make alterations in our discipline, than to endeavor to live up to its spirit.
The present is a time of deep proving and trial to our society, and it is much to be desired that Friends everywhere may seek for the guidance of the Holy Spirit, so that we may be enabled to advance and carry out the testimonies given to our forefathers, and not confer with flesh and blood in so doing.
Y.T. .
At the upcoming national gathering of NWTRCC at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, I’m going to be presenting a summary of the history of war tax resistance in the Society of Friends (Quakers).
Today I’m going to try to coalesce some of the notes I’ve assembled about how the Quaker practice of war tax resistance evolved, particularly in America, during the period of time surrounding and including the United States Civil War.
The U.S. Civil War period ()
Once the United States was an established fact, it took a little while for the individual state governments to solidify their constitutions, and for the federal system to evolve into something stable.
In the early years of there were some interesting debates in state legislatures when they were discussing laws (or sometimes new state constitutions) and trying to delineate the boundaries of legal conscientious objection to military service.
Frequently such bodies were aware that Quakers would not serve in the military or provide substitutes, and that it was a waste of time to try to force them to, but many felt that if the citizenry in general was going to be burdened with involuntary military service that it would be unfair to let Quakers off the hook entirely, so they tended to impose a tax or fine on conscientious objection (which Quakers generally would not voluntarily pay, but which the state could recoup through distraint).
Quakers occasionally appealed to their legislatures to exempt them from such fines, without much success, but these appeals bring out another interesting facet in the debate.
The peacefulness, charity, and self-reliance of Quakers was brought forward in their defense as to why they should not also be burdened with military defense.
Here is Maine legislator Samuel Reddington making this point in :
They pay their taxes for other purposes, but they cannot discharge a military assessment.
They do not wish their property or lives to be defended at the cannon’s mouth.
They never give offence to others, and history can furnish no example of their wars.
In reality however they pay more than an equivalent for military services.
They support their own poor, and this alone is more than an equivalent.
No poor Quaker was ever known to apply to the town for relief.
In addition to this, they pay their proportion for the support of the poor of the towns in which they live.
They also support their own schools, and they never asked or received any public lands of the Legislature.
North Carolina’s version of the law expressly allocated the militia exemption fines to the “literary fund” — hoping that such an obviously innocuous destiny for the money would make the Quakers give in.
No such luck.
The North Carolina Yearly Meeting declared: “[I]t is inconsistent with our principles for our members to pay any tax or fine on account of their refusal to muster or serve in the militia, although such tax or fine may be applied to the most laudable and humane purposes.”
Much of the documentation I have collected from concerns this debate over how far states could or would go to humor Quaker conscientious objection.
At the same time, the militias were becoming more slack and more ridiculous in their peacetime practice, and the tax collectors were becoming more corrupt and brazen in their plunder.
Quaker war tax resistance was also growing lax in some areas, with Quakers resorting to various subterfuges to have their militia exemption fines paid on their behalf without risking being denounced by their meeting by paying it directly.
A writer going by the name Pacificus complained about this in a letter to The Friend (Orthodox) in 1835:
The secret payment of this fine in lieu of military service or training, or the connivance at its payment by others, is a direct encouragement of the onerous militia system.
If Friends were faithful to maintain their testimony against war in all respects, even keeping in subjection a warlike spirit in relation to this very oppression, and no one through mistaken kindness being induced to pay the fine for them, in a very little time the system would be exploded.
Were nothing to be gained but the incarceration of peaceable citizens in prison for conscience sake — no reward but the accusations of a troubled spirit — no honor but the plaudits of militia officers and the averted looks of the considerate of all classes, it would require stout hands and unfeeling hearts long to support the system.
Yes! let it be impressed upon the weak and complying among us that they are supporting this oppressive system — that it is to them, mainly, that the militia system, as far as regards Friends, is prolonged — that they are binding their fellow professors with this chain, and that if entire faithfulness was maintained on the part of all our members in refusing to pay these fines or allowing others to do it, the spoiling of our goods and the imprisonment of our members for this precious cause — the cause of peace on earth — would soon be a narrative of times that are past.
In , Pennsylvania changed its law so that a small (50¢) militia exemption fine would be quietly added to the ordinary state tax of anyone who was not enrolled in the militia.
This caught some Quakers off guard, and the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting was quick to send out warnings to Friends to carefully inspect their tax bills and see if there was an extra charge on it, and if so, not to pay it.
This again brought up the difficult topic of “mixed taxes” and whether this militia tax had somehow become uncontroversial because of the new way it was being applied.
The smallness of the fine, and the muddled way in which it was assessed, made it easy for Quakers to casually overlook it and neglect their testimony.
When the Civil War came, the sympathies of most U.S. Quakers were very much with the North and with the abolitionist cause, and many Quakers bent over backwards to make excuses for paying the new and newly-elevated taxes the U.S. government was using to raise funds to fight the Confederacy.
Joshua Maule has left us a series of poignant and pleading essays from this period.
When the government levied an 8½% war surtax atop its regular general tax, though the tax was explicitly for war, it was not a new tax but a new increase of an old tax.
Many, perhaps most Quakers who had paid the former mixed tax also paid the new surtax, reasoning that it was really just another part of the mix and was therefore unexceptional.
Maule and some others felt that because it had been explicitly added as a war tax, they could not pay it, and they withheld this 8½%.
Maule found that the people in leadership roles in his meeting were paying the tax and discouraging those who felt they could not, and he wrote:
I have no doubt the sin was less with many who, without proper consideration and ignorant of the precepts and commands of Truth, went into the field of battle, than with those whose eyes had been enlightened to see the peaceable nature of the Redeemer’s kingdom and were professing to uphold it, and who yet voluntarily paid the wages of the warrior in a war that imbrued the nation in blood.
Nathan Hall, on the other hand, set forth a good set of arguments for why paying the new surtax should not be objectionable if paying the rest of the tax was not:
[W]hether we pay less or more of that tax, a certain proportion of it goes for military or war purposes.
And it avails nothing to say: “We did not pay it for that purpose, and if wicked and bad men so apply it, it is their lookout, not ours.”
We can say that of all the tax as well as a part.…
To illustrate it more fully I will suppose a case which I believe is strictly parallel, thus: We both have a testimony against the use of ardent spirits, but are, being very thirsty, placed in a situation where we can get no water except some that has a small portion of whiskey in it.
Being under the necessity of taking something, you may, by inquiry and calculation, find what proportion of the objectionable article is contained in it, and leave just that much in your bowl — while my understanding will be that in partaking I partake of both good and bad, and in refusing refuse both.
Maule had a hard time convincing Friends that other taxes that funded the general fund and that had been increased because of war expenses were okay for Quakers to pay, but the surtax, only because it was explicitly called a war tax by the powers that be, was not.
In some places, many Friends slipped even further, and paid militia exemption taxes, although this was still, in most Meetings, an offense against the Discipline.
This backsliding was by no means universal, and there were Friends who suffered on both sides for their unwillingness to either fight or to pay a fine.
In a few cases in the Confederacy, Quakers were drafted into the military, and, being unwilling to either serve or to pay a tiny exemption tax, were cruelly tortured.
In the North seemed that it would surpass the South in cruelty when a draft law was enacted that would enable draftees to get out of service by providing a substitute or by paying a $300 commutation fine (which was explicitly declared to be for procuring a substitute, and which Quakers could not pay in any case) but that did not allow for distraining and selling property in order to pay unpaid fines.
Draftees who failed to enlist, to provide a substitute, or to pay were to be treated as deserters and were subject to be shot.
This was too much “suffering” for the stomach of some friends.
Nathaniel Richardson wrote an op-ed for the Hicksite Friends Intelligencer in which he advanced the idea that since currency is a creation of government, the government should be able to ask for it back at any time without Christians having any reason to complain, under the “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s” principle.
This led to spirited dissent in the pages of that magazine from defenders of the ancient Quaker testimony against paying militia exemption taxes or for substitutes to serve in their places, but showed that war tax resistance was losing its footing and had become a debatable part of Quaker doctrine.
In , a modified version of the dreaded Union law was passed, which designated the $300 militia exemption tax to go toward the care of sick & wounded soldiers rather than to the procuring of a substitute, and which would enable conscientious objectors to be drafted into non-combatant roles like hospital service.
The (Orthodox) New York Yearly Meeting decided that it would be okay by them if Quakers in their Meeting took advantage of these options, and a Friends Review (Orthodox) editorial agreed (editorials in the Friends Intelligencer and in The Friend disagreed).
While Friends were splitting hairs about some of these particular explicit war taxes over which they had once had fairly universal agreement, resistance against mixed taxes and war-funding seigniorage had ground to a halt.
A Friends Review editorial remarked casually that “the universal practice of Friends tacitly acknowledges” that Quakers may and ought to pay “national taxes levied in large degree for the support of war, and… the purchase and use of the national currency — popularly known as ‘greenbacks’ — which was issued mainly ‘for the payment of the army and navy.’ ”
After the war, there was a “bounty tax” which was meant to fund the bonuses that had been paid to recruits by the Union army.
This was a clear war tax of the sort that Quakers normally could not pay, but, for instance in Ohio, this tax was collected at the same time as other state and local taxes.
A taxpayer was told the total amount of taxes owed, but the taxpayer would have to do some research to determine how much of that amount represented the “bounty tax.”
Many Quakers apparently did not do this research, and taking cover under the theory that the total tax amount represented an unobjectionable “mixed” tax, paid the whole thing.
This led to a division in the orthodox Ohio meeting.
When I read the material from this and from the previous periods, the impression I get is that while in the period between the French & Indian war and the Civil War much of the American Quaker writing about war tax resistance is about efforts to broaden and radicalize war tax resistance, most of the writing from the Civil War period is about defending traditional Quaker war tax resistance practices from weakening or from being disregarded or ignored.
The practice was clearly in decline.
By the time of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in , only a single monthly meeting reported any “sufferings” for refusal to pay a military tax.
But interestingly, around the end of the U.S. civil war, a non-sectarian (though still largely Christian) peace movement began to flourish in the United States, and it began to take seriously the questions Quakers had long grappled with concerning their peace testimony, including war tax resistance.
Some of the groups in this movement took up the cause of Zerah C. Whipple, a “Rogerene” Quaker (not exactly part of the Society of Friends, but a closely-related off-shoot, similar enough that Whipple was often described as a Quaker) and secretary of the Connecticut Peace Society, who had been imprisoned for failure to pay a militia tax.
His case became a cause célèbre amongst the various peace societies in the American peace movement.
This cross-pollination between the Quaker and non-Quaker peace movements would become important in reseeding war tax resistance in the Society of Friends after the Great Forgetting period when Quaker war tax resistance almost vanishes from the record.
