The commenters who insist on saying that Mr. Mill was misquoted are flat wrong, and, not surprisingly, are historically ignorant. Sounds like you found a certain interpretation and regurgitated it verbatim. So here's HISTORY 101 for those people:

The Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776 and JSM was born in 1806, 6 years BEFORE the War of 1812 (referred to as the "second war of Independence"). The historical "context" of this is that the people we were fighting were primarily the British Army--mostly made up of conscripts (draftees forced into military service). This historical context explains the part of his quote that is often left out because it does not apply to the American forces, who were all volunteers (...'when a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets'....) This is a very clear reference to the British forces, commanded by elitist officers and using conscripts as "mere" bullet catchers, lined up and ordered to stand firm or be shot by their own officers, and all for the purposes of doing the bidding of a King who was often seen as a tyrant. These passages are often left out because they do not apply to us as Americans (at the time). But what he WAS talking about were the portion of so-called Americans who were against the war. Those that thought that we should have surrendered to British rule instead of fighting for our freedom. "...A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice, a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice is often the means of their regeneration." This part is also often not included, but is there any possible way you can read those words and NOT understand that this part of his quote refers to us? Americans? The "rebels" fighting for our freedom from the tyrannical injustice of Britain's king? Seriously? If he were around to read your comments, he would have had to change his quote to add "smarter men than themselves." Class dismissed.