Appendix E: Bibliographic Essay on The History of American Peace Writings

Teaching peace history, and its allied fields of peace studies and peace education, as a separate course or as part of the larger surveys is certainly feasible and encouraged because of the wealth of scholarly monographs and peace education curricula. These resources are available, in turn, because of the dedicated efforts of those who chose to recount the stories and create the learning aids related to the struggle for peace in the United States and international contexts. The field itself has its own story to tell.

From an historical perspective, the main currents of American peace historiography, the principal focus of this essay, have flowed along four primary tributaries. Many of the works mentioned in this introductory overview will be discussed in more detail below. Thus, these four tributaries consist of first, the writings of pacifists and peace activists, which was primarily religious and sectarian responsible for organizing the movement from the eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth century. For instance, The Journal of John Woolman, edited by Quaker historian Frederick Tolles in 1961, represents a model of eighteenth century Quaker pacifism and nonresistance. The Revolutionary War saw the appearance of Thoughts on the Nature of War (1776) by Anthony Benezet, whose views were reinforces by Benjamin Rush, the Surgeon General of the Continental Army and a Quaker. Rush, in fact, offered his own plan for peace and the establishment of a national peace museum in “A Plan for a Peace Office, in the United States.” In the early nineteenth century new works appeared such as Noah Worcester, A Solemn Review of the Custom of War (1815), David Low Dodge, War Inconsistent with the Religious of Jesus Christ (1812), and William Ladd, The Essays of Philanthropos on Peace and War (1827), among others. By the end of the century, Benjamin F. Trueblood of the American Peace Society offered his own thoughts in The Federation of the World (1899).