A first-of-its-kind gathering of the essential texts of the American antiwar tradition, from the Revolution to the war on terror: over 150 eloquent, provocative voices for peace. Library of America presents an unprecedented tribute to a great American literary tradition. War has been a reality of the American experience from the founding of the nation and in every generation there have been dedicated and passionate visionaries who have responded to this reality with vital calls for peace. Spanning from the Revolution to the war on terror, War No More gathers the essential texts of this uniquely American antiwar tradition in one volume for the first time. Classic expressions of conscience like 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 appeals of activists, made in soaring oratory and galvanizing song, and in dramatic dispatches from the front lines of antiwar protests. The voices of veterans, from the Civil War to the Iraq War, are prominently represented, as is the firsthand testimony of conscientious objectors. 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. Featuring more than 150 eloquent and provocative writers in all, War No More is a bible for activists, a go-to resource for scholars and students, and an inspiring and fascinating story for every reader interested in the crosscurrents of war and peace in American history. From the Hardcover edition.

"Kovalik helps cut through the Orwellian lies and dissembling which make so-called 'humanitarian' intervention possible." —Oliver Stone War is the fount of all the worst human rights violations―including genocide―and not its cure. This undeniable truth, which the framers of the UN Charter understood so well, is lost in today’s obsession with the oxymoron known as “humanitarian" intervention. No More War: How the West Violates International Law by Using 'Humanitarian' Intervention to Advance Economic and Strategic Interests sets out to reclaim the original intent of the Charter founders to end the scourge of war on the heels of the devastation wrought by WWII. The book begins with a short history of the West’s development as built upon the mass plunder of the Global South, genocide and slavery, and challenges the prevailing notion that the West is uniquely poised to enforce human rights through force. This book also goes through recent “humanitarian" interventions carried out by the Western powers against poorer nations (e.g., in the DRC, Congo, and Iraq) and shows how these have only created greater human rights problems – including genocide – than they purported to stop or prevent. No More War reminds the reader of the key lessons of Nuremberg – that war is the primary scourge of the world, the root of all the evils which international law seeks to prevent and eradicate, and which must be prevented. The reader is then taken through the UN Charter and other human rights instruments and their emphasis on the prevention of aggressive war.

In the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, nonviolent movements for justice have succeeded where violent campaigns have failed. This book examines fourteen cases—eleven movements that succeeded and three that have, until now, failed—and shows why nonviolent strategies work, drawing on the thought of practitioners and theorists. Later chapters examine violent U.S. interventions abroad and at home, as well as citizen movements for nonviolent conflict resolution. As an introduction to nonviolent movements, this text engages students in recent events from the news as well as the history of modern warfare. Bringing in philosophical and religious texts from a diverse set of traditions, author Michael K. Duffey offers a multifaceted argument for embracing nonviolent solutions to conflict.

Until now, scholars have portrayed America's antiwar literature as an outgrowth of World War I, manifested in the works of writers such as Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos. But in War No More, Cynthia Wachtell corrects the record by tracing the steady and inexorable rise of antiwar writing in American literature from the Civil War to the eve of World War I. Beginning with an examination of three very different renderings of the chaotic Battle of Chickamauga -- a diary entry by a northern infantry officer, a poem romanticizing war authored by a young southerner a few months later, and a gruesome story penned by the veteran Ambrose Bierce -- Wachtell traces the gradual shift in the late nineteenth century away from highly idealized depictions of the Civil War. Even as the war was under way, she shows, certain writers -- including Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, John William De Forest, and Nathaniel Hawthorne -- quietly questioned the meaning and morality of the conflict. As Wachtell demonstrates, antiwar writing made steady gains in public acceptance and popularity in the final years of the nineteenth century and the opening years of the twentieth, especially during the Spanish-American War and the war in the Philippines. While much of the era's war writing continued the long tradition of glorifying battle, works by Bierce, Stephen Crane, Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, William James, and others increasingly presented war as immoral and the modernization and mechanization of combat as something to be deeply feared. Wachtell also explores, through the works of Theodore Roosevelt and others, the resistance that the antiwar impulse met. Drawing upon a wide range of published and unpublished sources, including letters, diaries, essays, poems, short stories, novels, memoirs, speeches, magazine and newspaper articles, and religious tracts, Wachtell makes strikingly clear that pacifism had never been more popular than in the years preceding World War I. War No More concludes by charting the development of antiwar literature from World War I to the present, thus offering the first comprehensive overview of one hundred and fifty years of American antiwar writing.

Three essays present an introduction and history of the emancipation of the slaves during the Civil War.

A compelling collection of speeches, articles, poetry, book excerpts, political cartoons, and more from the American antiwar tradition beginning with the War of 1812 offers the full range of the subject's richness and variety, with contributions from Daniel Webster, Mark Twain, Andrew Carnegie, Patrick Buchanan, and many others. Original.