Ez fer war, I call it murder—
There you hev it plain an’ flat;
I don’t want to go no furder
Than my Testyment fer that.

These lines are spoken in the rustic Yankee voice of Hosea Biglow, the fictional narrator of James Russell Lowell’s satirical “Biglow Papers.” Lowell wrote the first series in 1846–1848 amid fierce U.S. debate over the Mexican–American War, which many Northern antislavery writers condemned as an aggressive expansionist conflict likely to extend slavery. Using dialect verse and a plainspoken moral stance, Lowell has Biglow reject patriotic rhetoric and call war simply “murder,” appealing to the authority of the New Testament (“Testyment”) rather than political leaders or newspapers.

The speaker strips war of its euphemisms: however governments dress it up, killing remains killing. By insisting “I call it murder” and refusing to “go no furder,” the poem dramatizes a moral boundary that cannot be negotiated by appeals to honor, destiny, or national interest. The appeal to the “Testyment” underscores a Christian ethical critique—especially the incompatibility between the Gospel’s teachings and organized violence. Lowell’s use of dialect is not merely comic; it positions ordinary conscience and religious principle as clearer guides than elite political argument, making the satire a vehicle for serious antiwar and antiexpansionist protest.