Syracuse University Library
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Gerrit Smith Broadside and Pamphlet Collection

To Professor Eaton, of the Hamilton Theological Seminary.

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 424

TO PROFESSOR EATON,

of the Hamilton Theological Seminary:

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PETERBORO, Thursday evening, Oct. 26, 1843.

SIR:

I have this moment done reading your letter of this date. Your assurance, that it is written on your own exclusive responsibility, and without the privity of your associates in the Faculty, is sufficient; and hence my reply is to yourself only.

In your former letter, and in this again, you refer to my intellectual weakness. This you should not have done. My intellectual weakness is my misfortune - not my crime. To taunt me with it is, therefore, ungenerous, unjust. In your former letter, you represent me as "eminently calumnious," as a "raving," "rabid," "insane," "crazy" man, and as a "political demagogue." In this letter, you not only say, that these words were "fitly spoken"; but you lengthen the list of reproachful epithets. I am no more disposed now, than when addressing the Faculty, to vindicate myself from these aspersions. I cannot consent to any straying form the true issue in this controversy. That true issue, is whether you and your fellow instructers are, as you lay claim that they are, abolitionists - true-hearted, faithful abolitionists. I produced facts to disprove this claim. You say, that these facts are falsehoods: and you do not scruple to say, that I knew, when I was representing them to be truths, that they were falsehoods. I readily admit, that I have not personal knowledge that these facts are truths. I readily admit that, for aught I certainly know, they are all untruths. If, however, I was guilty of lying in putting them forth, emphatically guilty of it must have been those of your respectable neighbors and of your own students, who have, from time to time, given me the strongest assurances that the facts are immovably true. But, before I admit, that I, or they, are liars, I will follow you in your attempts to disprove these facts.

My first charge was, the repeated suppression by your Faculty of a Students' Antislavery Society. When you come to treat of this, you talk about the wholly impertinent matters of my having refused your request to publish a certain statement in the Christian Reflector; but, you do not deny the truth of my charge. Now, I confess, that I may have overrated the importance of the fact of the suppression of these Societies. Of that, every one must judge for himself. I confess too, that I may have misjudged, and therefore misstated, the character of the fact. The suppression of the Societies may have been an antislavery, rather than a proslavery fact. Of that, also, every one must be his own judge. But the fact itself remains, unshaken - yes, even untouched - by you. Indeed, you entirely admit its truthfulness, when you refer to the expedient by which, at the time of the suppression of the Societies, your Faculty sought to justify that suppression. It was the practice of proslavery schools, some years ago, when forbidding the organization of Antislavery Societies, to forbid that of Colonization Societies also. This coupling of the latter with the former Societies was done to produce a show of impartiality. No one cared any thing more about a Students' Colonization Society, than about a dead and dried snake's skin. But an Antislavery Society within the walls of a proslavery School would be quite too pregnant with disturbance and danger to be tolerated. Your Faculty also resorted to this expedient for justifying its prohibition of a Students Antislavery Society: and had they resolved that neither a mouse nor a lion should be allowed to range upon the grounds of the Institution, the Resolution would have been equivalent to that of coupling in their proscription a nothing-cared-for Colonization Society, which none of their students desired to form, with an immeasurably dreaded Antislavery Society, for whose organization many of them were eager.

Professor Eaton! know you not well, that it was a piece of hypocrisy in your Faculty thus to couple Colonization with Antislavery Societies? Professor Eaton! feel you not convicted of deep dishonesty, in your present use of this stale trick to gull your readers? Surely had you as much acquaintance with men as you have with books, you would not presume so largely on their credulity. Professor Easton! be your disease what it may, was I not right in saying, as I did in my letter to your Faculty, that it calls for repentance rather than self-justification?

My second charge was, that the doctrine is, or has been, taught in your School, that slavery is not essentially sinful; and, also, that the doctrine is taught in it, that a slave should be advised to return to his master. That the former doctrine is, or has been, taught in your School, you do not deny: and that the latter is not, you but barely "conjecture." Your ridicule, in this connexion, of my "professions of pity," of course cannot, with sound minds, be sufficient to stand in stead of your denial of my charge, much less of your disproof of it.

I spoke of your "conjecture." You perhaps think all conjectures light things. But, not for all this world would a right-minded man stain his soul by putting forth the "conjecture" in question. You know, and so does every teacher and every student in your Seminary, that what I have said on this point of advice to slaves is strictly true. You and they know, too, that your introduction of the name Onesimus is deeply insincere and fraudulent; and that, had you, to compass the object you had in view by this introduction, uttered a direct and bald falsehood, your sin would have been no less than it is now. Students of Hamilton Seminary! from you, as well as others, did I receive the carefully collected information on which I based the charge in question, as well as all my other charges against your Faculty. I call on you to do justice, in this matter, to me, and to the cause of truth. I know that, in doing it, you will incur the disfavor of your teachers; but, better that than the disfavor of your consciences to God. You know, that the circumstances of Onesimus formed no part of the question on which your teacher passed. You know, that a return was advised in all cases - even in those cases where most would be sacrificed by it. Professor Eaton! here, again, is proof that repentance is the medicine suited to your case.

My third charge, that, "during the ten years struggle of the America antislavery cause, not one of you has delivered a sermon or lecture against slavery; not one of you has offered a prayer in an antislavery meeting - nor spoken at all in such meeting, except in the single instance when it was to show that the Southern slaves are well fed." One part of your reply to this charge is: "If we have not identified ourselves with the organized body of abolitionists, we are not therefore proslavery or opposed to the antislavery cause." To this I rejoin, that, whilst my charge makes no complaint of you for not having identified yourselves with the abolitionists; you manifestly need to hasten the identification, if, as you seem to think is the case, such identification is necessary, before you can preach or lecture against slavery. Your further reply to this charge is, that you "have many times heard your associates pray for the slave, in public and private." This reply, however, is as far as the other from meeting the charge. Your further reply is, that you doubt not that your colleagues are willing to pray in antislavery meetings. Pour souls! they can't get a chance to pray in antislavery meetings! Do you think it is so with genuine abolition ministers? You refer to a time when you prayed in an antislavery meeting, and at my instance; and you say, that you have since prayed at such meetings. The meeting to which you refer, was held between six and seven years ago. You are, doubtless, right in saying, that you prayed in it, and at my request. But, I have not the slightest recollection of one thought, or line, or word, in the speech of Mr. Birney on that occasion - a speech, which you now admire so much: nor can I recal one thought, or, line, or word, in the speech made by myself on that occasion - a speech, which you now pronounce both silly and wicked. Forgetful as I am of almost every thing in and about that meeting, the happy effect of it on yourself I shall never forget. You told me, before the close of the meeting, that you cold keep back no longer - that you must join us. I have often mentioned this to illustrate the horribly pernicious effects of a connexion with a proslavery school on a man of noble head and noble heart. Where now is he, who gave me such delightful promise of his devotion to the cause of the slave? So conscious is he, that the world regards him as proslavery, that he feels himself driven to declare, as he does in his letter to which I am now replying, that he is an abolitionist. What an oppressive con-

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sciousness of many eyes upon him must the man have, who exclaims, "I am not a horse-thief!" and the man who exclaims, "I am not proslavery!" Had you joined us, Professor Eaton, in 1837, you would not now, in 1843, have to tell the public that you are an abolitionist: and could you see, how many shake their sides with laughter at your present declarations of your antislavery faith and zeal, you would certainly be more sparing of such declarations.

I cheerfully and promptly retract so much of my third charge, as will be retracted by my admission that you have prayed in antislavery meetings. I must say, however, that it was, doubtless, rarely and long ago that you so prayed; for, when I was collecting the materials for my letter to your Faculty, your neighbors had entirely forgotten that you had ever prayed in antislavery meetings.

No other part of my third charge is contradicted by you. You take exception, however, to an illustration which I employ under the head of this charge. You say, that, "if the Auburn and Andover Professors acted strictly upon the principle of total abstinence, and taught it to their students," they ought not to be censured. Very well - but how does such an hypothesis relieve your case? You and your associates are censured for the very reason, that your actions and teachings, instead of being "strictly" antislavery, are really proslavery.

You admit, that one of your Professors did, in an antislavery meeting - the only one in which any of you, with the exception of the case of your own forgotten prayers, has opened his lips - I say, you admit that he did say a little to show that slaves are well fed. This little I compared to the saying of "a good word for the practice of rum-drinking." You, however, intentionally and guiltily perverting my language, represent that I compared it to the "making a speech in favor of rum-drinking." Here is more proof, Professor Eaton, that the remedial application required in your case is repentance.

My fourth charge was, respecting the labors in Hamilton of that notorious man-thief. Elder Davis.

You represent me as saying, that "the Faculty got Elder Davis to preach for the purpose of reconciling the students to slavery." This, you add, "is false as the Koran, and superlatively calumnious." I admit, that, if big words can kill your man of straw, he is killed: but, it is after all but your own man of straw that is killed. Where have I said, that the Faculty got him for this purpose? I certainly shall not deny, that they got him for this purpose; but, where have I affirmed it? I said that, "Elder Davis's testimony being true," they got him for this purpose, Professor Eaton! when you omitted this essentially qualifying clause, you practised a fraud, as guilty as would have been your robbery from my pocket - a fraud withal to which I am a thousand-fold more sensitive than I would be to such a robbery. Professor Eaton! have you a peaceful conscience? If you have, it is a seared one. Professor Eaton! do you, in your sermons, preach repentance? "Physician, heal thyself" - and with thine own prescribed medicine.

You afterwards, deny that Elder Davis said that the object of his visit was to reconcile your students to slavery. But what candid man can read his letter, and resist the conclusion that he virtually said so?

You would have it understood, that the Elder's declarations are not entitled to confidence. You are aware, that it is a rule in our civil courts, that a party shall not be allowed to impeach his own witness. The sound policy of that rule applies to the case before us, and forbids the impeachment of Elder Davis at the hands of those who have been willing to use him, and make much of him.

Why have you occupied a whole column with an account of your private conversation with Elder Davis? Doubtless, to show, as far as your own unsustained testimony can show it, what good, sound abolition you tried to talk into your man-stealing guest; and, doubtless, for the further purpose of diverting attention from my charge, and of burying it under such relevant trash.

In connexion with your remarks on the charge under consideration, you allude, as you do in other instances, to my "Address to the Ministers of the County of Madison." I have put forth no such Address: and, when you say that I have, you say so out of a wicked heart, and for the purpose of holding me up as the assailant of genuine as well as sham ministers of Jesus Christ. My Address was "to the proslavery Ministers of the County of Madison." What multiplied proofs have we, Sir, that a penitent heart is the only remedy for your dangerous case?

My last charge against you and your associates is, their proslavery voting, and, also, that one of you wrote at least one letter to promote the election of Gen. Harrison and John Tyler. That part of the charge which accuses you of voting for slaveholders and proslavery men, you do not deny. That, on the eve of the Election in 1840, you wrote a letter in favor of Gen. Harrison, and allowed it to be printed, you admit. What you take exception to, on this point, is, that I should call your letter an "electioneering letter." That I have wronged you in calling it such - that is, a letter to promote the election of Harrison and Tyler - is what no just man can say. I add, that it was a skilfully drawn up and most effective electioneering letter: and that it was so, mainly by force of the very character which you so complacently claim for it - the mild and seemingly impartial character under which you so adroitly concealed your partisan feelings.

It appears, that you are constrained to admit the truth of all the facts in my last charge. Wherein, then, does that charge wrong you?

What I said of the "disingenuousness" of your Faculty, in making a merit of the antislavery voting of their students; and what I said of the "disgusting affectation of the longings which they express for the crystallization of the antislavery of the land," much disturbs you. Nevertheless, as these declarations of mine rest on facts which you neither overthrow nor attempt to overthrow, there is no occasion for me to explain or fortify them.

I have now fulfilled my promise, made at the beginning of this Letter, to follow you in your attempts to disprove the charges in my former. Have you disproved them? Not one of them. In respect to one fact in one of the charges, you inform me, that I was not entirely correct; and that, in declaring that no member of the Faculty had ever offered a prayer in an antislavery meeting, I should have accepted yourself.

And, now, the important question arises - "Why, since you could not disprove any of my overwhelming charges against your Faculty, did you write the letter to which I am now replying?" I do not know why you wrote it. But I do know, that there are several reasons for supposing that you wrote it for effect on the approaching Election in this County - to arrest, as far as you could, the strong, and, I trust, irresistible tendency of the County to declare itself, at that Election, on the part of the slave.

You could not have written your letter in the vain hope that you could produce the permanent impression that, in my statements respecting your Seminary, I had trampled on the truth: - for you know, in your heart, that I have not done so, and that I would not do so. I admit, that you and your associates are wronged men: but you have been wronged by yourselves. The least intelligent and least considerate portion of the voters of this County may, perhaps, be swayed for a few weeks by your bold and reckless assertions against my veracity: and if they are, that is perhaps the most you expect from those assertions. That time and truth will award to me a triumphant victory over those guilty assertions is, even in your own esteem, placed beyond all doubt. Nor could you have written your letter, believing that certain things you say of me will make me ridiculous for any great length of time. If I rendered ridiculous by them, until the Election is past, your expectation will, probably, be answered. For instance, you cannot hope that it will long be believed that you are truthful in representing me as but picking up the exploded facts which the President of the Oneida Institute had employed against your Faculty some years ago. It were, surely, no disgrace, if I should follow that wise and good man, whom, to make me despicable, you now extol; and whom, were there an occasion inviting such a display of your insincerity, you would not hesitate to try to make despicable by extolling me. I have not the paper at hand, in which President Green censures your Faculty: but, if I recollect, the only fact which he uses, and which

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I also use, is that of Elder Davis's visit to Hamilton. However this may be, President Green, when at my house a few days ago, remarked to me that, until he read my letter to your Faculty, he was not aware of most of the facts referred to in it. Again, you cannot hope, even if you succeed thereby in getting up a laugh against me "just before Election" by referring to my repetition of James C. Fuller's touching account of his interview with one of Henry Clay's aged female slaves, that the public will make this the occasion of any very protracted mirthfulness. The aged slave in question spoke to Mr. Fuller of Mr. Clay's sale of her children from her. Why should the story of her sufferings be laughed at? If ever you should repent of your proslavery wickedness, and become an abolitionist, you will believe that there are hearts under black skins as well as under white skins; and that the negro's heart, as well as the white man's heart, is capable of being wrung by deep wrongs. Your caricature of my Sunday meetings, and your gross Professors, may, with a few credulous persons, make me ridiculous and odious for a short time - but only for a short time.

I will now mention some of the reasons for supposing that your concern about the coming Election is what has principally actuated you in writing your letter.

1^st. No class of men have more to lose by the ultimate triumph of antislavery principles that to which you belong. This you know: and you know, too, how greatly the success of those principles in this County will contribute to that ultimate triumph.

2^nd. You deferred the printing of your letter (I learn it was written nearly a fortnight ago) until this day - this allowing very little time to put a reply to it into the hands of the electors of the County before they are called on to deposit their votes. Perhaps you would not have printed it at all, but for your hope that the sickness which confines me to my house would disable me from replying to it. My health is indeed deeply, perhaps permanently affected. But, whilst I thank God that my impaired state of health is the result of my excessive labors in the cause of His crushed poor; I also thank Him, that he has spared to me enough of strength to answer, this evening, the public and pernicious letter of one of the guiltiest enemies of that cause.

3d. Your letter is published in an Extra of the Hamilton Palladium; and, going therefore comparatively free of postage, will doubtless to into every nook and corner of the County. It is published under a high commendation of its merits by the Editors of that Whig paper.

4^th. You letter is most emphatically a Whig letter; and, as such, is adapted to arrest the work of repentance which is going on in every part of this County in the breasts of members of the Whig party and of the Democratic party also. That, in the midst of this work of repentance, you should have a heart to justify your guilty vote in 1840, argues but too forcibly that you are, indeed, the subject of that "indurated impenitence" which you suppose it possible you may be. Let us look at that vote. To that vote, and to other votes like it, is it owing, that the present President of the United States is one who buys and sells God's poor, and extorts by the power of the lash their unrequited toil. To that vote and to other votes like it, was it owing that Gen. Harrison became the President of this Nation. And who was Gen. Harrison, that you should vote for him? - that, after his death, you should pronounce a public, and afterwards printed, eulogium on him? - and that, now, you should declare him unsurpassed for "honesty" and "purity" by the best men of any age in any country? I ask not who he was in the esteem of his infatuated followers - than whom none seems more infatuated than yourself. But, who was he, in the light of truth and of heaven? I answer, that he was one who was guilty of striking hands with the bloodiest oppressors, and of contributing to uphold a more abominable system of oppression than any other beneath the frown of God. He is the very man who, to get Southern votes for the Presidency, so answered the questions put to him from Virginia, that his interrogators pronounced him "sound to the core on the subject of slavery." He is the very man who, to get Southern votes for the Presidency, publicly boasted that he had done more than any other man in the Free States to uphold Southern slavery. He is the very man who, immediately after his election, laid down the rule, that no person should have a place in his Cabinet who was justly suspected of being favorable to the abolition of slavery. The religion of the Hamilton Theological Seminary and of our other proslavery Schools may teach that it is right to make a President of such a man; but, nevertheless, it is the religion of Hell instead of Heaven that teaches it; and so, beyond all doubt, you would feel, were your own children amongst the slaves of President Tyler, or amongst those slaves whom President Harrison refused to employ either his private or official power to deliver.

I say not that it was worse to elect Mr. Tyler than it would have been to elect that other slaveholder, Colo. Johnson. I say not that it was any greater crime against the millions of our enslaved countrymen to vote for Gen. Harrison than for Mr. Van Buren - or than it will be to vote for Mr. Clay or Mr. Calhoun. But this I do say - if it is right to vote for any of these advocates of slavery, then nothing is wrong. This I say - if it is a crime to vote for men who are in favor of sheep-stealing, it is an infinitely greater crime to vote for men who are in favor of man-stealing. "How much better is a man than a sheep!"

With all the assurance of the harlot, who wipes her mouth and protests her innocence, you say: "The professor do not dabble in the dirty waters of politics." If they do not, I would say that they did, instead of besmearing themselves with its bloody waters. Better, Sir, to have dirt than blood upon us!

You apprehend that my opposition to ministers will end in my open infidelity. Pardon me, Sir, for saying, that, so far as your votes are the index of your religious character, you are already an infidel; and that so far as your votes bear on the fact, the space between the Bible and yourself is as wide as between the antislavery God and the proslavery Devil. Professor Eaton! your own heart tells you whilst you read these lines, that you would quickly stamp with infidelity your neighbor who should vote to clothe with official power him who would wield it for the continued bondage, rather than for the deliverance, of your enslaved child. I add, that, if ever you shall become an abolitionist, you will feel that the rights of a black child are as sacred and as important as the rights of your own child.

I trust, Sir, that you will be disappointed, greatly disappointed, in the effect of your letter - your letter which ridicules the idea that our County will be carried for the slave at the approaching Election. I trust that, notwithstanding it is put forth, just at this time, and just in this form, and just with this spirit, it will not have the power, which you calculate for it, to turn away the voters of the County of Madison from voting for the bleeding millions on whose throats you and your associates have, for the sake of proslavery Southern and proslavery Northern favor and patronage, consented to plant your feet. After all the influence which your letter may exert, I trust that enough men will remain true to the slave to carry the County for him. Hundreds of men in your own town, where hitherto all but a dozen or two have, along with your Faculty, voted against the slave, will, at the coming Election, vote for him. I long to see such a testimony recorded against your guilty Faculty.

You, and the Whig Editors who have given your production to the world, flatter yourself that you have written with "severity" against me. It is true that you have so written. But, instead of taking pride in it, you should hasten to repent of your abuse and slander of one who you have not the least doubt has intended to speak nothing but the truth respecting your Faculty; and who, you have not the least doubt, has spoken that truth, unprompted by any other motive than that of advancing the cause of truth. With one exception, I feel unhurt by your "severity." Your bluster and hard names are as harmless to me as the volleys which, for many years, other proslavery men have been pouring out upon to me. The only part of your "severity" which has wounded me, is that in which you convict me of having slightly misstated a fact. Your prayers in antislavery meetings should not have been forgotten: and to say, that they could not have been "as nails fastened by the masters of assemblies," would, I admit, be no justification for forgetting them.

My letter is done. It is, as you will see, and feel too, another letter of facts - of facts, too, which will make no less havoc with the empty and unsubstantial words of your second letter than was made of your first letter of words by my first letter of facts. I have addressed myself directly to you in this letter, notwithstanding you would not condescend to address yourself directly to me - and, notwithstanding, too, what you say of its being degrading and humiliating to reply to such a man as I am. I observe your declaration, that your Faculty will not stoop to have any controversy with me. I observe too, that, for the future, you mean to wrap yourself up in the like dignity, and eschew all controversy with me. Now, I confess to you, that my own dignity is a small affair; and that, like other abolitionists, (as you will learn, if ever you become an abolitionist and get thoroughly niggerized,) I have but little care to bestow on my dignity. I declare myself still free, nay more, still bound to talk and write against your guilty self and guilty associates, until you and they repent - still free, and still bound, to pursue you and them into all your hiding-places; and to drag you out before an indignant public, whenever you shall enact some new piece of treachery toward God and His enslaved poor.

Your true friend,

GERRIT SMITH.