One to destroy, is Murder by the Law,
And Gibbets keep the lifted Hand in Awe.
To murder Thousands, takes a specious Name,
War’s glorious Art, and gives immortal Fame.
O great Alliance! O divine Renown!
With Death and Pestilence to share the Crown!
When Men extol a wild Destroyer’s Name,
Earth’s Builder and Preserver they blaspheme.Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist, philosopher, aphorist
Poor Richard (1747 ed.)
(Source)
This lengthy poem is not original to Franklin, but was penned by English poet Edward Young (1683-1765) in 1728, as the 7th Satire in his collection of poems, Love of Fame, the Universal Passion, l. 53ff, dedicated to Robert Walpole. Interestingly, Franklin reordered the passage; in Young's original the two quatrains are reversed. Franklin also changed the passage "dearth and pestilence" to "death and pestilence."
Quotations about:
war-making
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The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
Letter (1848-02-15) to William H. Herndon
(Source)
Lincoln understood Herndon to be proposing that the President, on their own initiative and judgment, was entitled to preemptively invade another country to repel an anticipated invasion. Herndon felt this principle justified Polk's sending of troops into disputed territory, which led to the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), though Polk didn't justify his actions in that way.
