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Gerrit Smith Broadside and Pamphlet Collection

To the voters of the State of New York : Peterboro, October 10, 1846.

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 442

PETERBORO, October 10, 1846.

To the Voters of the State of New York:

I have, this moment, finished the reading of the New Constitution. I may be charged with immodesty for lifting up my voice to hundreds of thousands of my fellow men. But the feelings of shame, sorrow, indignation, alarm, which fill tree, will not stop, and need not stop, to consider the claims of modesty. A woman, however delicate and shrinking, might, were her child in danger of being kidnapped, rush into the street, and cry so loud for help, that all her neighbors could hear her - and she, nevertheless, remain uncensured, even by those, who are most observant of the proprieties of life. Thus, do extraordinary circumstances justify not only, but highly commend, the act, that would, otherwise, be exceedingly offensive. It is in such circumstances, that I have now taken up my pen: - and may not this gain me a pardon for beginning my Circular with so wide an address? May not this shelter me from the charge of immodesty and egotism for presuming to speak to so great numbers?

A deep and cruel wrong has been devised against the fifty thousand colored people of this State. It is meet to call upon, you all to help them, - for you are all able to come to their help. It is meet to call upon you all to help them - for they, who have devised this deep and cruel wrong, call upon you all to sanction their device and carry it into execution.

You are called on to adopt a Constitution, which contains the provisions,

First, That a man, for having a colored skin, shall be unrepresented in the Legislature. In other words, that, for this cause, he shall not be counted in the apportionment of members of the Legislature.

Second, That a man, for having a colored skin, shall be denied his right to cast a vote.

To be guilty, under a representative, and, withal, a republican, Government, of shutting out a part of the people from a representation in the Government, is to be guilty of a partiality for which there is, certainly, no excuse. It is to be guilty of a wrong, as palpable, its would be their exclusion from the common air and common water. It is, simply, a triumph of the strong over the weak - of the many over the few. The triumph, in the present instance, is over persons born upon our soil, and of parents, many of whom shed their blood in its defence. And as if to make the triumph most insulting and withering, the New Constitution prefers the white pauper, who subsists on the public charity, to the colored mail, who earns his own bread. The Old Constitution, in the apportionment of members of the Legislature, excludes the pauper, as well as the colored, man. The New Constitution leaves the colored than in the disgrace of such exclusion; and greatly deepens that disgrace by lifting lip the pauper out of it.

The right to vote is not less sacred, and it is more valuable than the other right, of which the New Constitution robs the colored man. The right to vote is indispensably protective of all the other rights of him, who wields it. Emphatically true is this in the case of him, whose humble condition exposes hill, to aggressions. Hence, when Pennsylvania stripped her colored people of the right to vote, it made, as the sequel proved, all the other rights of that afflicted people an open and easy prey. But, that they were without the respectability and influence of voters, the colored people of the City of New-York had not been mobbed in 1834: - and that white persons were mobbed along with them, was, because such persons had magnanimously identified themselves with a people, whom our laws and usages degrade.

As in the case of their being denied political representation, so in this of their being denied a vote, the colored people suffer a wrong and is loss far less tolerable than they would from the plunder of their property. They might be plundered of their property, and yet be respected by others, and their self respect also not invaded. But the denial of the right in question degrades them, both in their own esteem and the esteem of others: and, doing this, it contributes to multiply obstacles in the way of their subsistence, respectability, usefulness and happiness, so great and so numerous, as to compel a debasement of character, from which it is well nigh miraculous, that so large a share of them escape. God be praised, that they do escape! The few of us, who have made ourselves acquainted with the colored people of this State, and have east in our lot with thorn, can testify, that it is truly a large share of them, who escape the debasement of character, which their adverse and wretched circumstances force upon there. Would, that the white people of this State could throw down their prejudices against these colored brethren, and look candidly and patiently at their history! They would never take up those insane and murderous prejudices again. Repentance would break their hearts; and they would, thenceforth, love and admire those, whom they had previously hated and despised. No where have there been more triumphant struggles against the assaults of vice upon virtue; against the onset of despair upon hope; and against mean, malignant, mighty, oppressions, than those, of which great numbers of colored men and colored worsen in this State have shown themselves capable. In the midst of those temptations to low vice and utter abandonment, which, in such mighty hosts, assail extreme poverty; in the midst of discouragements the most appalling; in the midst of such persecutions, as strike their iron deepest into the soul; their indomitable courage and unbending integrity have, under the Divine blessing, still borne them along, and brought them off conquerors.

The political disabilities in question are to be deprecated, not for the sake only, or even mainly, of the colored people of this State. The three millions of American slaves will suffer from them. Their chains will be made tighter by them. As sinks the colored freeman, so sinks the colored slave: and as rises the one, so rises the other. To be able to say, that the colored people of the North are ignorant, abject, wretched, is to have the most plausible argument for his oppression that the Southern slaveholder has ever coveted: and never are Northern men more effectually doing the slaveholder's wicked work, than when engaged in disfranchising their colored brother, and multiplying impediments in the way of his obtaining science, property, respectability, and happiness. Let, however, the colored man of the North but have the rights of the white man of the North; and let the way be as open to the one, as to the other, to acquire wealth, and character, and power; and the Southern oppressor, instead of continuing to look Northward for justifications of his guilty relation, will find influences pouring in upon it, from that quarter, which will quickly dissolve it. The colored man of the South, when the capabilities of his race shall have been proved by the colored man of the North, will present himself ill a new light to his master. Despised and hated before, he will then have become in object of respect and affection. The master will no more task, and lash, and chain, his victim. Of all such work his hand will then be weary. It will be palsied by the truth, which has flashed upon him, that he, whom, ere this, he had mistaken for a brute, is, in reality, a man - his fellow man - and his equal.

I have intimated the strong tendency of these political disabilities to degrade the subjects of them into the subjects of ignorance, vice, and trine. Their tendency is also to destroy in the subjects of them, all attachment to the Commonwealth, which inflicts so cruel and unprovoked a wrong. Our State cannot afford to inflict this wrong; - for it cannot afford its consequences. The public morals cannot afford, that so considerable an element in our population should be stamped with an almost necessarily characteristic debasement. Our political safety cannot afford, that scores of thousands, who, else, would equal the most patriotic of their fellow-citizens in devotion to the public good, and in capacity to promote it, should be converted into a fruitful source of disaffection and danger.

That in the year 1846, and after fifteen years of earnest, faithful, investigation of the wrongs, and manly, and eloquent, assertion of the claims of colored Americans, a Convention to prepare a Constitution for the State of New-York should propose these outrages on their political rights, is, indeed, amazing. One would have thought, that the sorrows, in which this unhappy people had, for centuries, been steeped, were enough to satiate the malice of the most fiendlike heart. One would have thought, that, by this time, hatred toward these poor outcasts had begun to exhaust itself; and pity begun to take its place. So far from this, however, the year 1846 surpasses every former year in conspicuous and flagitious measures of the white Americans against the colored Americans. The first of these measures is our war. Mexico had not wronged us. But, to perpetuate the slavery of colored Americans, the must have more territory to soak with their sweat, and tears, and blood: and, hence, have our armies gone forth to dismember that Nation. The annals of the world are searched in vain for a war, prompted by motives so base and diabolical. It is, withal, a war of eminent cowardice on the part of our country - a war, not only as unrighteous, as Mexico is unoffending, but as cowardly, as she is weak and distracted. Again, the most influential religious Association in the land, to avoid giving an occasion for pressing it, in the name of consistency, to question the piety of slaveholders and their fitness for Church membership, has, within a few weeks, actually refused to say, that it is wrong to vote notorious adulterers into the Church of Jesus Christ. Again, scarcely had the heard of this virtual and authoritative indorsement of American slavery, ere news of another, and still more authoritative and influential endorsement of it came from the other side of the Atlantic. The late World's Convention in London threw wide open to the buyers and sellers of human flesh a door of admission into the World's "Evangelical Alliance." The declaration of those American gentlemen in the Convention, who are in Church fellowship with slaveholders, that slavery is the creature of law, and their pretty broad hint, that, if they were required to give up their proslavery, the European delegates should be required to give up their rum-drinking; - these, together with the sympathy, which the Convention very naturally felt for men, who would rather pray than eat; prevailed to open that door. Slavery the creature of law - and, hence, the slaveholder is innocent! Lotteries the creature of law - and, hence, the dealer in lottery-tickets is innocent! Rumselling the creature of law - and; hence, the rumseller and rum-drinker are innocent!

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I have glanced at a few of the recent crimes against colored Americans. The Convention for revising your Constitution would have you add another crime to this cluster of crimes. In apportioning members of the Legislature, and in prescribing the qualifications of voters, it asks you to pass over the poor black man, as no man. What will be your answer? God grant, that it may be, that "A MAN IS A MAN." God grant, that your answer may be an indignant rejection of the man-trampling and God-despising paper, which you are asked to adopt. That it is God-despising, as well as man-trampling, is as evident as that to His great and loving heart all branches of the human family are equally dear. "God is no respecter of persons" and who, that truly loves him, is? Alas, what counterfeits of the religion of Heaven are current among men!

I am aware, that some of you, for the purpose of getting your votes for the adoption of this wicked paper, will be referred to the separate proposition in behalf of colored men, which the Convention has submitted. But this proposition is an Amendment to the New Constitution, rather than apart of it. It is a good Amendment: and every than, who does not suffer prejudice to tyrannize over his understanding, and the spirit of caste to shrivel his soul, will eagerly vote for it. But, however good may be the proposed Amendment of a Constitution, and however likely to prevail, it does not follow, that we may, therefore, approve of the Constitution itself, ere the Amendment has prevailed. It is, surely, time enough to approve of a thing, and to vote for it, after it is made right. We are not at liberty, because it may possibly, or ever so probably, be made right, to indorse it, whilst it is yet wrong. But the Amendment in question was proposed without the least expectation on the part of any one, that it would prevail: and, as to the great majority of the Convention, it was proposed, without the least desire, that it should prevail. Some members of the Convention, and, among them, the respectable gentlemen from my own County, sincerely and warmly desired, that it should prevail. But, the dastardly and malicious provision in the body of the Constitution for disfranchising the colored than, whilst it exerts the mightiest of all the influences for the defeat of the Amendment, indicates also, most unequivocally, the desire of the great majority of the Convention for its defeat.

What, if, after all, this Amendment, put forth so coldly and hypocritically, should prevail! God has done even more improbable things than this for the cause of his poor, and His own glory.

We could not vote for the New Constitution, even were it right on the point of voting. Its crime against our colored brother, in excluding him from political representation, is, of itself, sufficiently great to disentitle it to the votes of all persons, who, believing, that a man is a man, believe that, in the apportionment of members of the Legislature, the colored man should count, as well as the white man.

To get votes for the New Constitution, it will also be said, that, unless it be adopted, we shall have to live another quarter of a century, under the Old one. Why, however, should we need to live three years longer, under it? Having rejected the New Constitution, why need we lose a moment in taking steps for another Convention, that shall present to us another Constitution? Whether; indeed, it be rejected or adopted, why need we lose a moment to this end?

One thing we may reasonably hope for. It is; that, if we have another Convention to frame a Constitution, it will, to a great extent, be composed of then, who perceive and appreciate the true intent and uses of Civil Government; of men, who believe, that the chief design of God, in His merciful gift of Civil Government, is to provide protection therein for the poor, and ignorant, arid weak, and helpless; of men; who believe, that the Civil Government, which plunders, instead of protecting, such, is unworthy the name; is, indeed, not a Civil Government, but the meanest and most detestable of pirates. A Convention, composed of persons of this description, would present us with a Constitution, meriting the name of the poor man's Constitution. For it would be a Constitution, that would not only secure to the poorest of the poor, (what, because they are such they need more than others) the indispensably protective right of voting; but it would be a Constitution, that would secure to every than his home. That, in every Nation and every State with but one exception, the poor man's home is at the mercy of his creditors, is, surely, no indication of a progressive civilization or a progressive christianity. Every man's house should, emphatically, be his "castle": and the laws should permit no creditors to be strong enough to drag him from it. There should be one roof in the wide world, beneath which the poorest man should, for the consolation of his anxious heart, be allowed to feel, that he and his wife and their little ones, may lie down unmolested. There should be one spot - one speck - of this good earth, which our merciful Father in Heaven has given to us all, that the poorest man should be allowed to feel is his own.

I trust, that our next Constitution (and may it be speedily obtained!) will exempt every homestead from the grasp of creditors - be that homestead a dwelling in the City, or a dwelling and garden in the village, or a farm in the Country. Where the farm exceeds some twenty-five or thirty acres, let the excess be at the disposal of creditors.

I know not, that I was ever more pleased at the passage, of a Resolution, than I was, last Thursday, when the Liberty Party Convention of the County of Madison passed the following Resolution:

"Resolved, That Liberty men should never cease, no, not for a day, to strive for a new Constitution for the State of New York, so long as its existing Constitution fails to recognize the right of am an to his vote, whatever maybe the color of his skin, or the right of a man to his honestly obtained home whatever the debts he may we."

It will be objected to this Constitutional protection of the homestead, that some men, to escape paying their debts, will convert all their property into a splendid and costly dwelling-house. But, surely, laws can be framed to prevent the success of this, as well as another, fraud. Again, it will be objected, that some men, who have no other property to satisfy their debts, will continue to live in houses, which, though obtained with no fraudulent views, are, nevertheless, many times more expensive than comports with their narrow circumstances. Such cases would, doubtless, occur; but they would be rate. The general operation of the proposed provision would be to exempt from alienation, against the will of the owner, the humblest class of dwellings. The owner of a magnificent and costly house, who had come to be possessed of no other property, would, in the vast majority of such cases, get a cheaper house, to the end, that the difference in the cost of the two might furnish his family the means of subsistence. I repeat it, that the provision in question would be a provision, not in behalf of a splendid and luxurious living, but in behalf of a lowly and frugal condition. The Constitution, containing it, would be, what in this respect the Constitution of every State should be.

That the Constitution, now presented to you, is any thing else than the poor man's Constitution, should not surprise you. The Convention, which framed it, is said to be distinguished for only one thing - and that is, the vast aggregate wealth of it members. Now, that a Convention of rich men should frame a Constitution of peculiar adaptation to the necessities of the poor, is as unnatural, as that water should run uphill. The rich are the oppressors of the poor. The divinely inspired question: "Do not rich men oppress you?" although addressed to the poor, eighteen hundred years ago, is as pertinent now, as it was then. Combine with the opulence of a large share of the members of the Convention, the more significant fact, that, with but very few exceptions, they all think men, who chain, and lash, and buy, and sell, the poor, are fit for civil rulers; and you will wonder - not, that the Constitution, which they present to us, is no better - but, that it is no worse. "Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles"?

Strike, now, my fellow citizens - strike now - for another Convention and another Constitution: - and, though you shall have to agitate, and agitate, every year of your lives, for another Convention and another Constitution, be never content, until you have obtained a Constitution, which robs no poor man of his vote, and which secures to every poor man his home.

Would, that I were permitted to close this Circular with a stronger hope, that you will do what my whole heart has just called out to you to do. But, my hope is faint. When your party leaders and party presses were influencing us in the choice of Delegates to the Convention, a large share of them sought to make us believe, that for nothing did they desire a New Constitution so much, as to elevate by it the colored man of this State, and by means of his elevation, to help his enslaved race at the South. We were suspicious of them, then. We are more suspicious of them, now. We had, repeatedly, seen their antislavery professions followed by proslavery voting - even by voting for traffickers in human flesh. And, now, we not only see this heinous crime unrepented of, but added to by their tame and quiet acquiescence in the outrage of the New Constitution on Colored Americans; by, I might, perhaps truly, say, their heartfelt approval of that outrage.

Voters of the State of New-York! be on your guard against these party leaders and party editors. They will ask you to vote for the New Constitution; and some of them will put on an antislavery face, when they ask the favor. Ask them, in turn, if they are ready fbr a practical adoption of such mottos, as these:

"No slaveholder for civil office; and no person, who thinks a slaveholder fit for it:"

"No man for civil office, but a republican: and no slaveholder is a republican, and no person, who thinks a slaveholder fit for civil office; is a republican."

If they are not ready for it, then consent to be counselled by the Calhouns and McDuffies, who vote, as they talk, rather than by those, who go for the slave with their lips and their pens, and stab him to the heart with their votes.

Your friend,

GERRIT SMITH.