Syracuse University Library
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Gerrit Smith Broadside and Pamphlet Collection

To Mr. : Peterboro, February 24, 1843.

Smith, Gerrit, 1797-1874.

Digital Edition.

This digitization project was supported by Regional Bibliographic Databases and Interlibrary Resources Sharing Program funds, awarded by the New York State Library.

Call number: Smith 420

PETERBORO, February 24, 1843.

To Mr.

SIR: - You are an elector of the town of Smithfield: and hence it is fair to presume, that you are deeply interested in the present warm battle between the anti-slavery and proslavery voters of our town. I have a few words to say to you about this battle; and I beseech you to hear me candidly.

I have this day seen a handbill, the top line of which is: "Union Temperance Nominations." The handbill virtually indorses the report, so industriously propagated throughout the town, that I am resorting to "coercive power," and overriding my fellow-electors' "dictates of judgment and promptings of conscience," in order to carry our town for the slave, at the approaching Town Meeting. If any man has evidence that. I have endeavored to coerce - to compel - him to vote for the slave, let him expose my crime. But, if no such evidence be produced, then I ask that you regard the report in question as no less false than the reports that I have, at former Elections, pushed up some men to the polls, and dragged up others by the collar; as no less false than the report, that I have, recently, turned two of my clerks out of my office, and turned them out because they would not consent to vote as I wished them to vote. Should you, however, find me guilty of the crime alleged against me, still you would have no excuse for voting against the slave, as they who allege the crime wish you to do, and aim, by alleging it, to have you do. Whatever and however gross misconduct you may find me guilty of, do not punish the innocent slave for it.

I confess that I have, from year to year, for many years, plead earnestly with my fellow-men to remember the poor, bleeding, crushed slave at the polls, and not to vote for those who will refuse to wield their official power to repeal the laws, under which millions of our countrymen are robbed of all the rights of manhood, and classed with brutes and things. Have I plead too earnestly? - more earnestly than you would have had me done, had your own children been in slavery? Will my children, when I am sleeping in dust, hang their heads with shame, at the recollection of these pleadings of their father for down-trodden and crushed humanity? Will the future historian of our little town pass by, with disgust and horror, names identified with the earnest struggles of this day in the cause of impartial and universal liberty? If, in my entreaties with you to vote for the deliverance of bleeding millions, I have sometimes carried my earnestness beyond the bounds of decorum, you must be so generous as to pardon something to the goodness and greatness of the cause which inspired my excessive earnestness. You must, in such case, make some allowance for the fact, that I have devoted to this cause the best years of my life, and no small share of the property comprised in my stewardship.

The advocates of the "Union Temperance ticket," or (as a better distinction) of the "Brigham Temperance ticket," profess, in their handbill, great love for the cause of temperance. But two or three facts are worth a whole bushel of professions. Where is the proof of their peculiarly great love of the cause of temperance? Is it to be found in the fact, that they refuse to vote the Liberty ticket, every name on which is the name of one who abstains from drinking intoxicating liquors? Or is it to be found in the fact, that. they have nominated, in opposition to this ticket, one, every name on which is not the name of a person who abstains from drinking intoxicating liquors? Do men prove their very great love of temperance by opposing the election of the friends of temperance, and voting for rum-drinkers ? Do they prove their very great love of temperance by expressing their apprehensions that a rum ticket will be nominated and elected, when they, at the same time, are opposing the only ticket composed exclusively of the friends of temperance, and are endangering it by putting up a sham and rum-tainted temperance ticket, which they know cannot get more than fifty votes? The upshot of this matter is, that these boasters of their very great love of temperance do not love this good cause any better than their neighbors do.

The handbill asserts that my frequent prediction, that the Unionists would not put up a Temperance ticket, is falsified. But, is it falsified? Have they put up a Temperance ticket? - or a ticket to catch the votes of rum-drinkers? Ask P. W. Brigham, who, although one of their candidates, has this day declared that he is not a Temperance man-but that he has, to use his own language, "no objection to taking a little, when he wants it." This same gentleman, whose name graces and even gives name to the Union ticket, has not the most distant idea of voting it. He will undoubtedly figure in the political caucus to-morrow evening. - No, the Unionists dared not to put up a ticket of such a character as would oblige them to look for the support of it to Temperance men only. But what if they had put up such a ticket, and thereby proved me to be a false prophet? Would that have justified their crowing over my unfulfilled prophecy? Suppose I say of my neighbor, that he will never kill himself; and suppose that, to falsify my prophecy, he dashes out his brains against the first stone-wall he comes to - would that be a case to be referred to in disparagement of my wisdom and foresight? - or would it not rather be a case to prove that there are instances of folly and madness so rare and monstrous, that a rational mind cannot anticipate their occurrence? I confess that I did not - that I could not - believe that the intelligent and worthy men who threatened to put up a Temperance ticket against the one already in nomination, and especially when they saw that it could not get fifty votes, would fulfil their threat. Suppose, however, that they had fulfilled it, and put up a genuine instead of a spurious Temperance ticket, would that have convicted me of wild predictions? or would it not rather have convicted themselves of the infatuation and blindness of party zeal?

The handbill asserts that "of the one hundred fifty names appended" to the call for an Anti-slavery Convention, "a large number still avow their determination to support our (the Union or Brigham) ticket." To this strange assertion, I but oppose the assertion of my own belief, that not one of the one hundred fifty will vote that ticket.

But I took up my pen mainly for the purpose of commenting on the following passage in the handbill:

"We know that many of the advocates of a Union Temperance ticket are denounced in the recent anony-
"mous publications as proslavery men - as in favor of slavery. Another thing we know, far more impor-
"tant to us, if not to our accusers, and that is, that the charge is groundless. We know not a man in favor of
"a Temperance ticket, who does not scout the rightfulness of slavery."

In this passage lurks a more insidious and dangerous foe, than can be found in any of the other doctrines and declarations of the handbill. The authors of this handbill know full well that abolitionists do not charge

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the people of the North with loving slavery. Our charge against them is, that notwithstanding they abhor slavery, they allow themselves so to vote as to favor the continuance of it. They cling to National parties, every one of which is necessarily proslavery: for the South will come into - will abide in - no party that assails slavery. They cling to these parties, because they desire to be in the majority, and to get a National Bank or Sub-Treasury, or a High Tariff or Free Trade, or some other advantage, to obtain which they are so anxious as to be willing to leave the poor slave in his chains - so anxious, as to be willing to set up over the millions of this land, who are the poorest and most oppressed of all God's oppressed poor, such tyrants as Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun - so anxious, as to be willing to elect to Congress men who, if they will but promote the dollars and cents questions which their constituents have at heart, are permitted by those constituents to harden their hearts toward the tens of thousands who, in the District of Columbia and in Florida, groan in slavery under the laws of Congress. Now, what if this proslavery voting does not spring from the love of slavery, but from the love of party, or of a Bank, or Tariff, or Sub-Treasury - does that relieve it of its criminality? or does that make the bearing of such voting any less severe and fatal on the slave? Is it not all the same to me, whether I am murdered for the sake of my purse, or from sheer blood-thirstiness?

Now, the handbill (and I shudder to think of its guilty presumption) goes to relieve the public conscience of the sin of upholding slavery. It intends to allege that "not a man in favor of a Temperance ticket" contributes to uphold slavery. But if men who are in favor of a Temperance ticket do not uphold slavery, then no men do: for temperance men no less than anti-temperance men vote for proslavery then and slave holders. Men do not cease to be proslavery, nor even to be slaveholders, by becoming the friends of temperance. Gen. John H. Cocke of Virginia and his son own eleven hundred slaves. Nevertheless, the General is the President of the American Temperance Union.

If, then, this doctrine of the handbill be right, we have what is surpassingly strange: an enormous crime - the crime of American slavery - and yet no criminal! The Southern States are full of slavery, and yet no one is responsible for the stupendous fraud on human rights! Our Presidents and Vice Presidents and Congress uphold slavery in the District of Columbia and in Florida and elsewhere, and yet their constituency - and yet the people of the North, who are more than twice as numerous as the free people of the South are irresponsible for this atrocious piracy!

Perhaps it will be said that the handbill refers but to the Temperance men of Smithfield, in its virtual declaration that the friends "of a Temperance ticket" are not guilty of contributing to uphold slavery. But if this is true of Smithfield, why not of every other Northern town? We accuse Mr. Huntington and Mr. Dana, Mr. Curtis and Mr. Stone, of this town, of contributing to uphold slavery, because they cast votes for proslavery men and slaveholders: and it is for this cause and this only, that we accuse temperance men of other towns, who cast such votes, of contributing to uphold slavery.

Deeply do I regret that the handbill contains a doctrine which tends to make the voters of this town insensible of their guilty share in upholding American slavery. Formerly I was proslavery in my own votes. as many of my townsmen still are. But large numbers of my townsmen have, along with myself, ceased to be thus guilty. I had hoped that ere long nearly all the voters of this town would have undergone this desirable change. But the proslavery voter who shall imbibe this doctrine of the handbill, will feel himself guiltless of the crime of slavery, and be out of the reach of anti-slavery appeals to his conscience.

How sad that peace, peace, should be cried to us on the subject of slavery, when we so greatly need to be awakened out of our guilty slumbers! When this nation began its existence, there were but little more than half a million of slaves in it. Now there are two millions and three-quarters. Since that time, Congress has authorized slavery in vast territories which did not belong to our nation when it began to exist, and has received into the Union seven slave States. American slavery is now subjecting to its iron yoke more than a hundred thousand fresh victims every year. It has made the Southern half of our nation a land of tears and anguish, of violence and bloodshed, unparalleled by any other portion of this earth's surface, howsoever afflicted and cursed. It has created a scene of universal bankruptcy at the South; and that bankruptcy has sent poverty and distress throughout the Northern States. When, if not now, shall we sound the alarm throughout the North? When, if not now, shall we say to the North, "the Philistines be upon you?" Liberty and slavery are now engaged in a death-struggle. If slavery shall prevail, the sun of American liberty will be blotted out forever; and the laborers of the North, as well as of the South, will then wear the yoke of slavery, and so fulfil the predictions and desires of the Calhouns and McDuffies and Pickenses. Be it your solemn purpose, that your vote shall never be wanting to ensure the triumph to Liberty.

Respectfully yours,

GERRIT SMITH.