David Low Dodge

• David Low Dodge
• Born: June 14, 1774
• Died: April 23, 1852

Founder of the New York Peace Society, was born on a farm in Brooklyn, Connecticut, the son of David Dodge, a New Englander of English and Welsh colonial stock, and Mary (Stuart) Earl Dodge, reportedly the daughter of a Scottish noble.

David Low Dodge was largely self-educated, having attended school only during the winter months and working the remainder of the year on the farm in Hampden, Connecticut, to which his family had moved. Despite his limited opportunities for schooling, Dodge by the age of nineteen was serving as a schoolmaster, continuing in that profession for several years.

In June 1798 Dodge married Sarah Cleveland, daughter of the Rev. Aaron Cleveland of Norwich, Connecticut, who was later well known as an opponent of slavery. Introduced into business as a dry-goods merchant by his wife’s cousins, the Higginsons, who were prominent Boston importers, Dodge opened stores in Hartford and Litchfield, Connecticut. Prospering, he transferred to New York City in 1807, establishing a jobbing firm in partnership with the Higginsons. Reverses suffered by the Higginsons during the Napoleonic wars forced the firm to shut down. Dodge continued to do business in New York City and Norwich, Connecticut.

In New York City Dodge took an active part in religious and philanthropic efforts. An elder of the Presbyterian church, rigidly Calvinist in theology, and a respectable member of middleclass society, he became deeply imbued with the evangelical and philanthropic spirit of his time, and this spirit was the main source from which his pacifism sprang. Initially, however, he did not question the conventional Christian acceptance of war; he exercised with the militia and carried firearms on business trips for defense against highway robberies.

An incident at an inn in which he nearly shot the landlord after mistaking him for a robber prompted Dodge to question the compatibility of carrying arms with the practice of Christianity. Studying the question for three years, he became disturbed by his discovery that although the letter and spirit of the Gospel seem to rule out armed defense and the practice of warfare by Christians, theologians and moralists had almost unanimously upheld the right to use force in self-defense or for a just cause. Bearing in mind the example of the American Revolution, Dodge struggled to satisfy himself that defensive war in extreme cases might be tolerated by the Gospel. However, in 1808, after an almost mystical experience during a nearly fatal attack of spotted fever, Dodge was converted to a position of total nonresistance and vowed to devote himself to furthering the cause of peace.

Dodge’s vow resulted in the anonymous publication in New York of his tract The Mediator’s Kingdom Not of This World but Spiritual, Heavenly and Divine (1809), the first non-Quaker publication in America exclusively devoted to the cause of peace. Based heavily on the Sermon on the Mount, the tract used scriptural arguments and the example of the early Christians to support Dodge’s thesis that Christianity excludes all warfare, as well as personal self-defense, and that love, forgiveness, and prayer should be the Christian’s only answer to enmity and hatred. Dodge suggested reliance on God’s protection as the alternative to violent methods of resisting evil.

Dodge’s pamphlet attracted considerable attention, and the thousand copies of the first edition sold out within two weeks. Although his ideas were sharply criticized, Dodge succeeded in persuading a group of friends who decided to join him in forming a peace society, the first such organization in the world. The outbreak of the War of 1812 caused them to postpone implementation of the plan out of fear that their cause would be confused with the purely political opposition to the war.

In the interim Dodge composed a longer essay on the relationship between Christianity and war entitled War Inconsistent with the Religion of Jesus Christ. Publication of the essay, like the organization of the peace society, was postponed until peace arrived in 1815. Designed primarily to challenge public acceptance of the institution of war, particularly by Christians, the book added economic, political, and humanitarian arguments to Dodge’s previous scriptural ones. War, he contended, is a waste of human resources and of God’s gifts; although most damaging to the poor, it hurts the economic interests of all classes. Dodge’s experiences with his firm’s losses during the Napoleonic wars may have contributed to his awareness of economic arguments against war. War corrupts morals, he argued, and is biologically unsound, killing off the young and fit disproportionately and multiplying the numbers of widows and orphans politically, it is self-defeating. Citing the recent history of France, he depicted war as destructive of civil liberty; violent revolution leads only to the imposition of a worse tyranny. Moreover, defense against aggression is itself a source of war; Defensive measures precipitate counter-measures, producing an escalating arms race. Distinctions between offensive and defensive wars Dodge saw as mere quibbling; in practice, he contended, it is impossible to distinguish between them.

In August 1815 the New York Peace Society, Dodge’s instrument for propagating the doctrines peace, came into being, with Dodge as President. The society initially numbered between thirty and forty, mostly respectable middle-class New Yorkers, with a sprinkling of well- to-do Quakers and some members of the clergy. Within a few years membership doubled and then began to decline. Headed and controlled by convinced pacifists, the New York Peace Society nevertheless made some effort to enroll less doctrinaire peace lovers behind its banners. Rather than aiming to become a broad-based, popular organization, the society hoped by means of discussion in small groups and the circulation of peace literature to spread the word gradually.

The resourceful Dodge is said to have packed boxes of the society’s literature along with boxes of his own merchandise. However, he failed to cooperate effectively with the Massachusetts Peace Society, formed in 1815 by Noah Worcester, largely because of its greater tolerance for those who believed that Scripture justifies defensive war. Dodge also had a prejudice against Quakers. Consequently his society did not cooperate effectively with other peace groups, most of which had Quaker leaders and members. In 1828 the society decided to fuse with the newly founded American Peace Society. Although the influence of the New York Peace Society was minimal outside New York City, and although its membership was restricted to a handful of the well-to-do, it served as a pioneer in the peace movement.

Dodge retired from business in 1827. He presided over the organizational meeting of the American Peace Society in May 1828 and became a member of its board of directors in 1829; he was later named a life director. He was also active in the founding of the New York Bible Society and the New York Tract Society. Dodge died at the age of seventy-seven. His pacifist and other reform activities were carried on by his son, grandson, and great-grandchildren.

Dodge’s autobiography was published under the title Memorial of Mr. David L. Dodge, Consisting of an Autobiography. .. with a few Selections from his Writings (1854). His pamphlet War Inconsistent with the Religion of Jesus Christ was republished in 1905, with a biographical introduction by E. D. Mead; it was reprinted along with writings by James Mott and Noah Worcester in P. Brock, ed., The First American Peace Movement (1972). On Dodge’s career, see P. Brock, Pacifism in the United States From the Colonial Era to the First World War (1968); M. Curti, The American Peace Crusade, 1815-1860 (1929) and Peace or War: The American Struggle, 1636-1936 (1936); and the Dictionary of American Biography (1930).