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Gerrit Smith Broadside and Pamphlet Collection

To the faculty of the theological seminary in Hamilton.

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 423

To the Faculty of the Theological Seminary in Hamilton:

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GENTLEMEN:

The present hour brings me the No. of the Liberty Press containing your letter. I am, doubtless, right in regarding it as your letter, notwithstanding it is entitled "Professor Eaton to Gerrit Smith." And here let me add, that the choice which you have made, in this instance, of a representative and organ, is very agreeable to me. I bear strong love toward Professor Eaton, notwithstanding the six years quarrel of my pen and lips and heart with him. Paradoxical as it may seem, that love has fed that quarrel.

I pass over all that you say of myself. I am but an untitled and an odious individual; and, therefore, whether I am the "eminently calumnious," the "raving," "rabid," "insane," "crazy," man - the "political demagogue" - which you call me, cannot be very material in the public esteem.

You are laboring, gentlemen, under a disease: and my first thought, on reading your letter, was, that you had mistaken your remedy. Your true and only remedy is repentance. That, which you are vainly trying, is self-justification.

Your disease is wickedness of bowing down to a corrupt, proslavery, public sentiment. If you are, now, beginning to straighten up, and even to talk and write against slavery, it is, I fear, only because that public sentiment has, through the Divine blessing on the efforts of the men whom you still vilify, become less proslavery. It would not be strange, if, in your outward man, you should yet become entirely straight on the subject of slavery - if, indeed, you should yet be seen riding the very topmost wave of the antislavery enterprise. Though you have not had the courage to give chase to the monster, it is not at all improbable that you will so contrive as to be "in at the death" of slavery.

I have specified your disease: - how justly, is manifest from several facts.

Nine years ago, the then few and scattered friends of the slave were cheered by the intelligence, that a portion of your students had organized an anti-slavery Society. But, scarcely was it organized, before you suppressed it. The tender plant, which you should have sacredly cherished, was trodden under your feet. You allow, you encourage, your students to organize Societies in behalf of the heathen of every other land: but you chime in with the proslavery sentiment of your patrons, and forbid the organization of a Society in behalf of the heathen of your own land. The not-to-be-suppressed sympathy of your students produced another anti-slavery organization. Of this, your letter does not speak. The second organization shared the fate of the first. Proslavery tyranny crushed it. It is a fact, not to be forgotten, that the members of those societies were required to withdraw from them, on pain of expulsion from the Seminary. One excuse for suppressing these Societies was, that the leave of the Faculty to form them had not been asked. At a subsequent period, the sincerity of this excuse was put to the test. The Constitution for a students' antislavery Society was drafted, and presented for your approbation: - but, your determination not to have an antislavery Society within the walls of your Seminary was found to be unchangeable. Where is your repentance for this repeated crime against your enslaved brethren? - for this repeated invasion of the God-given right of your students to associate their efforts for the deliverance of those brethren? Said I not truly, that it is repentance, instead of self-justification, which your case requires?

It is but a few years, since one, if not more, of your Professors was actually teaching in the recitation-room the absurd and guilty doctrine, that slavery is not essentially sinful. Whether it is taught by any of you now, I know not. The horror of the Professor in question at the idea of contributing to the security of a fugitive from the great Southern prison-house, is not less ludicrous than wicked. To this day, he teaches his classes, that, whenever they have the opportunity of giving advice to a fugitive slave, they should improve it in promoting his return to his master. Within the last year, he was asked in the Recitation-room, whether, in the case of a slave who had escaped for the sole purpose of learning to read the bible, he would advise a return to bondage. The answer of his tender conscious was, that, even in such a case, "he would not dare to advise the contrary." Even my old friend Ephraim Gray of Lebanon, who says that, were he a slave in Algiers, he would not dare to incur the guilt of stealing by running away from his master, has not a more deep and sacred sense of the right of property in man than has this Professor. But, to be serious - what conception of the wickedness of the relation of slaveholder and slave can he have who would advise a voluntary entering into it? To consent to be a slave, is as clearly sinful as to consent to be a slaveholder. To consent to the corporeal and moral disabilities of a slave, is to consent to the guiltiest type of suicide. A man has no more liberty to yield up his right to learn to read the bible, than he has to yield up his right to use his limbs. I close my remarks under this head with the inquiry, whether it is self-justification or repentance which the disease of this proslavery Professor requires?

During the ten years' struggle of the American anti-slavery cause, not one of you has delivered a sermon or a lecture against slavery; not one of you has offered a prayer in an anti-slavery meeting, - nor spoken at all in such a meeting, except in the single instance when it was to show that the Southern slaves are well fed. Neverthelesss, you wish the abolitionists to believe that you also are good and true abolitionists. What would you think, gentlemen, of the claim of the Faculty of Andover or Auburn Theologicial Seminary to be regarded as the friends of the Temperance Reformation, if not one of their number had ever preached a discourse against intermperance, or taken any part in a Temperance meeting, excepting to say, on one occasion, a good word for the practice of rum-drinking? Why are not Professors Eaton and A.C. Kendrick, those giants in the Temperance war, giants in the Anti-slavery war also? The answer is, that, whilst the patrons of our National Schools have no jealousy of temperance, they strenuously resist the identification of those schools with the anti-slavery cause. This, I say, is the answer; and I admit that it is not that those Professors love slavery. Their proslavery is adopted from policy - not from the love of it. That this, however, makes it the less guilty, I cannot admit. The Northern members of the Whig and Democratic parties do, almost all of them, hate slavery. Nevertheless, their consent to uphold it is quite as guilty as if is sprung from their love of it.

Again, I ask, gentlemen, is it self-justification or repentance that can work the cure of your disease? I observe the excuse which your letter assigns for your neglect to advocate the cause of the Savior's enslaved poor. It is, that you must "attend punctually to the duties of their (your) station." It is, that labors on your part for the slave would be "extraneous labors." Wretched preparation for the gospel ministry must be that received at your hands, when praying, preaching, lecturing, for one-sixth of your countrymen wallowing in the dust and gore of slavery is "extraneous" to that preparation! What strange notions of religion have some men! In speaking of a good ruler, God says: "He judged the cause of the poor and needy: then it was well with him: was not this to know me?"

It is manifestly vital to the success of the anti-slavery cause, that the authority and influence of proslavery, especially of slaveholding, ministers should be destroyed. Whether the efforts to this end have been seconded by yourselves may be seen in the fact of your getting Elder Davis, a slaveholding minister of Georgia, to preach in your chapel, and, his testimony being true, to reconcile your students to slavery. The report which this notorious slaveholder made of his labors in Hamilton, is in the following words:

"I proceeded, at the request of Professor Maginnis and others, to Hamilton, in the Northern part of New-York, where, at their request, I delivered an address on the subject of slavery, as it is in the South, abolition, &c. I addressed them three hours in feeble health,

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but, at the close of my address, the abolitionists attacked me again. They doubled files upon me, pitting two of their best speakers against me. A debate, of course, ensued, which lasted nearly two days and nights. The contest was warm for a time, and they thought certainly there they would get the voice of the people against me, especially as I was found to be quite sick under the effect of cholera morbus, from overheat, I suppose. But, with all these advantages over me, and even in a hotbed of abolition, the voice of the people at the conclusion was in my favor, as you will no doubt see in accounts given of the discussion and its effects upon the people. The audience was large, and much excited during the whole discussion. I shall forever remember with grateful feelings the kind treatment I received there from the Professors of the Baptist Theological College, especially from Professor Magninis. All their pupils attended the discussion, and they think much good will be the result of the discussion, even among the pupils. I found in this Institution a brother Talbird from South Carolina, and a brother Graves from Georgia.

*** "I have now met all their able debaters and lecturers in New-England and New-York, except one Gerrit Smith, of whom I have heard much, and been often referred to as a great debater. He was sent for to meet me, but did not come: whether it was for fear he would fare the fate of the others, I cannot tell; but, I know this, he did not come - and I am now on my way home, and leaving the hot-beds of abolition, without having been once foiled. God be praised for sustaining me. I give him all the glory, for without him I am nothing."

How well pleased you were with the public exercises of this man-thief, whom you invited to your pulpit, may be safely inferred from the language in which one of your Professors speaks of him He came to Hamilton, says that Professor, "in the name and breathing the spirit of his Master;" and that the Professor does not mean to intimate that the Devil is the Elder's Master, is evident from his calling the Elder "an accredited servant of Christ."

I put it to you, gentlemen, whether your sin, in telling a man-thief and your students that he was fit to stand before them in the place of Jesus Christ, calls most for justification or repentance.

In the year 1840, when the American people were peculiarly "mad upon their (political) idols," the friends of holy freedom made a strenuous effort to dissuade their fellow-citizens from the sin of voting against the slave. Through the blessing of God upon this effort, they were enabled to muster nearly 7,000 (now swelled to 70,000) who would not bow the knee to Baal. Were any of you amongst those 7,000? No; you were all amongst the guilty idolators: and one of you was so infatuated as to write I know not how many electioneering letters for "Tippecanoe and Tyler too." I saw one of them in print, any my heart ached over it. To this day you have continued to cast proslavery votes. Not one of you has ever cast a vote for the poor bleeding slave. What say you gentlemen, - is there not, in this part of your history, a wickedness which needs to be repented of, rather than justified?

There is one piece of disingenuousness in your letter of which I did not suppose you could be guilty. To disprove my charge of the proslavery character of your Seminary, you say that "a majority of the votes cast in the town for the Liberty party comes from the Seminary." And this merit you presume to make of the anti-slavery voting of your students, whilst you yourselves are guilty of casting proslavery votes; nay, more, whilst you yourselves, seeing the tendency of your students to vote for the slave, do actually advise them not to attend the polls. No wonder, since you can resort to such means to sustain yourselves in an argument, that you have the effrontery to say, in the very face of your proslavery voting. "Now, the professors of the Seminary never engaged in any political contest with Mr. Smith. They never stood in his way in any respect, least of all in this. He had a clear field for all the obstacles which they threw in his way." No wonder, in view of your amazing disingenuousness, that you can say that you are "in favor of acting politically against slavery.

And where shall we find a specimen of more disgusting affectation than in the longings you express for a more pure, holy and effective organization against slavery. The present and past efforts against the abomination do not come up to your high mark. Ministers of the gospel, who have never preached a sermon, nor delivered a lecture for the slave, and who are guilty of voting the lash upon his back, and the chains upon his limbs, and the bible our of his hands, talk of their burning desire to belong to an anti-slavery corps of "crystal" purity! Was ever such impudence before! As well might men who curse and swear and get drunk talk of improving the character of the Church, and of becoming the subjects of a more perfect sanctification, as you, are reeking with proslavery, of purging and elevating the character of the anti-slavery enterprise. No, gentlemen, you must first "cease to do evil" before you can "learn to do well." You must first repudiate your connexion with slaveholding ministers, and your "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" and other proslavery political associations, ere you can be competent to advise the friends of the slave how to carry on that work of mercy, which has thus far encountered your hostility and treachery. You are but a company of proslavery men; and your Seminary is one the bulworks of American slavery.

You call on me to testify the good treatment of "the sable sons of Africa" within your walls. I am not aware that you have ever had more than one such amongst your students. I am happy to say that I learned from his own lips that both you and your students treated him justly and kindly. How exceedingly wicked must be those Presbyterian and Episcopal and other Denominational schools which exclude the colored students, whilst in your Seminary, proslavery as it is, he obtains his dues.

You speak of my "standing," "influence" and "high example" - and deplore the wide-spread effect which they give to my present desecration of the Sabbath. I believe that the preaching of politics on the Sabbath is an important, and imperative duty. You think it a desecration of that day. Should one or more of your number condescend to meet me in Hamilton within a week or two, to discuss publicly the question: "Is it right to preach politics on the Sabbath?" thousands would witness the discussion, and the cause of truth be greatly promoted by it.

My letter is done. Yours is a very long letter. Mine a comparatively short one. Yours a letter of words. Mine of facts. The havoc which my facts make of your words, none can feel so forcibly and painfully as yourselves. But even these facts, stubborn and irresistible as they are, will be harmless to you if, instead of justifying yourselves, you shall repent of your proslavery, and take your stand openly. "before Israel and the sun," by the slde of your enslaved and trodden-down brother. You call my charge, that you are proslavery, "eminently calumnious." The facts in my letter will make it very easy to decide, whether I have calumniated you, or me. I have no fear of the decision. But, painful forebodings of it will seize you, ere you shall have got half through the reading of my facts: and your folly in supposing, that, because you were trying to hide your own eyes to these facts, they were invisible to others, will then be as astonishing to yourselves as it has long been to the public.

I confess to you, gentlemen, that I covet both your love and respect. Of the former I may fail. But the latter I must have. And, now, I appeal to your candor, whether I should not forfeit all claim to your respect, if, pitying, as I do, the enslaved millions of my countrymen, and believing, as I do, in the truth of all the facts which this letter arrays against you, I were not to stand in stern opposition to you and your Seminary.

Repeating the already oft-repeated leading idea of this letter, that your disease is one which requires repentance, instead of self-justification,

I remain, respectfully, your friend,

GERRIT SMITH.

PETERBORO, October 3, 1843.