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Gerrit Smith Broadside and Pamphlet Collection

Second letter of Gerrit Smith to the New York tribune.

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 497

SECOND LETTER OF GERRIT SMITH TO THE NEW YORK TRIBUNE.

PETERBORO, July 31, 1855.

To the New York Tribune:

I have but just now returned home, after a week's tour in behalf of our Maine Law - that excellent Law, which you are defending so ably and so influentially. This accounts for a day's delay in thanking you for publishing my long letter to you. It was manly in you to publish it; and it will be manly in you to publish this also.

The editorial, with which you have seen fit to accompany my letter, does, I confess, both surprise and grieve me. It has made bad worse. You have but multiplied your wrongs against me, instead of blotting out, by the repentance I had hoped for, both the effect and the sin of those wrongs, which you had previously inflicted on me.

Let us first, however, to your allegation, that I have wronged you. You hold, that I "broadly sin against the truth," in charging you with being the chief and most responsible propagator of the calumny, that I did not vote on the Nebraska bill. So far are you from confessing the truth of this charge, as virtually to claim, that your columns have vindicated me from the calumny. This claim cannot fail to astonish your readers: - for they have all believed, and believed it too because they were your readers - that I did not vote on the Nebraska bill. Moreover, they have all believed, that why I did not vote on it was because, in my low self-indulgence, I preferred sleep to duty. I will not deny, that you "published most prominently at the time" my vote on the bill, provided your copying the record of the whole affirmative and negative vote deserves to be so characterized. But whence comes it, that in spite of your doing so, your readers, including even the abolitionists - he forever silly, because forever Whig - cheated abolitionists - have, all along, believed, that I did not vote on the bill? Of course, it comes from the fact, and most naturally too, that you have spoken, so expressly and strongly, against my antislavery integrity, and that you have, also, repeatedly spoken in ways, which, to say the least, imply, that I did not vote on it. All this necessarily had the effect, both to prevent and to erase, so far as my name was concerned, any impression, which your record of the vote was calculated to make. For all this, when it did not have the effect to lead your readers to assume, that my name was not in the record, did have the effect to wear out their recollections of having seen it there. Doubtless, the New York Herald did, also, publish the vote on the Nebraska bill. But, inasmuch as that Paper represented me as having gone over to slavery, and as being engaged in purchasing a Southern plantation and in stocking it with slaves, they, who believe what they find in its columns, were not very like either to receive, or to retain, the impression, that I, a fresh convert to slavery, voted against the Nebraska bill. Now, your readers believe you, perhaps even more than the readers of the Herald believe it. Hence, when they were reading in your column say, in your very editorials - at the time of the agitation in Congress on the Nebraska bill, that I was giving signs of utter apostacy from the cause of the slave, and that the slaveholders, having covered me all over with the slime of their flattery, were about swallowing me entire, it is not at all strange, that the mere fact of my name's being in the record of the vote on the bill should have little or no influence upon them.

But I have not done with defending myself against your charge, that I have wronged you, in holding you up as my principal calumniator in the case in hand. About the first day of the present month, the base charge, with unusually base accompaniments, that I was not present at the taking of the vote on the Nebraska bill, appeared in your columns. On the 16th instant you retracted the charge. But you know, that, to this day, you would not have done so, had you not been compelled to it by my prompt denial of the charge. That denial you refused to publish: and even the miserable thing, which you gave to your readers in its stead, was not published, until you had given the slander a full fortnight, in which to send its poison through the public veins.

So much for your charge of my having wronged you. I have shown how entirely baseless it is. It will never be renewed by you, unless, indeed, you shall come to surpass even yourself in draughts upon the popular credulity. And, now, to your fresh wrongs against myself.

1st. You seek to cover over your gross injustice to me by declarations of your uniform "kindness" and "tenderness" to my "errors" and "weaknesses". That I am an erring and weak man, and that, as such, I greatly need "kindness" and "tenderness" at the hands of my fellow men, is cheerfully admitted by me nevertheless, there is one thing, which I need even more than "kindness" and "tenderness". It is justice. Justice I must have. I can accept no substitute for it. If you will give me that, I will be content, even though you shall not add the grace of "kindness" and "tenderness". But pray what do you mean by your professions of "kindness" and "tenderness" toward me? If but irony, or a mere joke, I make no complaint. But if you intended to have them taken literally, and as sincere, then are they the most impudently false professions, which I have ever known.

2d. You cheapen my letter to you by representing it to be the fruit of an uncontrollable temper. I admit, that the words of an angry man are entitled to all the less consideration for his being an angry man. I think, however, I can safely say, that if I have ever disgraced my manhood by exhibitions of anger, not my neighbors, nor even my family, know it.

3d. You couple with my name eccentricities and "monomania"; and I confess, that I am sorry you do. Desiring deeply, that my efforts in aid of the great and good objects, which I cherish, may tell as far as possible, I am always pained, when I see them crippled by encountering the public suspicion, that I am an eccentric and insane man. I had begun to hope, that, as Temperance and Freedom were getting so well advanced among us, I should soon be entirely exempt from this suspicion. I speak of Temperance and Freedom - since it was not until I became a Temperance man, that any one did so much as hint, that am eccentric, and since it was not until I became an abolitionist, that I was ever called a madman. I was well aware, that I might have saved my reputation for common sense and sanity, had I consented to be a more moderate, or somewhat qualified, Temperance man and abolitionist. But it still seems to me (,perhaps, however, only because I am still eccentric and insane,) that I should, in that case, have been a less consistent, and as time would prove, a less useful friend of Temperance and Freedom.

There are many facts in my Temperance and Abolition history, that have favored the charge of my being eccentric and mad. The fact, that, although it is nearly thirty years, since I espoused the cause of Temperance, I have never, since I espoused it, allowed myself to vote for any man for the office of Supervisor, or Justice of the Peace, until I had first ascertained, that

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he would refuse to license the sale of intoxicating drinks, has favored this charge. The fact too, that, more than twenty years, and even as far back, as when my immediate emancipation (I was always an immediate emancipationist,) was clogged by my colonization, I came under the conviction - a conviction immediately translated into practice - that, among the supplies of my family, there ought to be none - no cloth, no rice, no sugar, no cotton - that are wet with the tears and sweat and blood of the poor toiling and unpaid slave - that fact, too, gave countenance to the charge of my being an eccentric and crazy man. - I believe, however, that the day will come, when such facts will be regarded as perfectly consistent with a rational opposition to drunkenness and slavery. Another fact, which favored this charge, is, that, at a very early day, I became persuaded, that not only no slaveholder, however intellectual or amiable he may be, is capable of representing my views of civil government, but that no non-slaveholder is, whose views of civil government can be represented by a slaveholder. But of this persuasion grew my motto: "Vote for no slaveholder, and for no one, who does vote for a slaveholder": - a motto, which, as it proscribes all Whigs and Democrats, brings me under the disfavor of all Whigs and Democrats. This motto I have never failed to honor at the ballot box. Hundreds of thousands of voters will, I believe, honor it, ere long. I wish you might be among them, instead of neutralizing your testimony against slavery by admitting, every now and then, that you would vote for a slaveholder. Possibly, the clearer light, which shall reveal to you the reasonableness of the motto, will also reveal to you the reasonableness of many other things in my life, which have passed with you for eccentricity and madness. Pardon me, if these lines shall, like some in my former letter, savor, in your esteem, of self-laudation. I loathe self-laudation: but my loathing of it shall not deter me from self-defence.

4th. The way is now prepared for me to take up the principal one of the fresh wrongs you have done me. I call it the principal one, because it is an imputation upon my ingenuousness and veracity. I addressed a letter to my constituents. It was both written and published in Washington, and not, as you represent, at my home. In one part of the letter I present my reason for refusing to join with the minority to prevent the taking of the vote on the Nebraska bill. This reason was, that the minority has no right to baffle and control the majority. In my letter to you I set this forth as my only reason. You say, that I had another reason also; and you add, that I avowed it in my letter to my constituents. his other reason for not joining the minority is, as you declare, that to join it would interfere with my bedtime. And now to the trial of this issue. Hear first my argument, that I had but the one reason, which I stated in my letter to you; and then we will hear yours, that, in my letter to my constituents, I confessed, that I had one more.

1st. My antecedents - especially what I spoke and wrote on the subject of our Senators' refusing to vote on the Canal bill, and on their withdrawing from the Senate Chamber - prove, that I had but to be consistent with my own theory of civil government, in order to refuse to go into the combination for staving off the vote on the Nebraska bill. These antecedents also prove, that my earnestness, in behalf of this theory at this point, needed no additional considerations to induce me to carry it out.

2d. There are the Members of Congress, who urged me to go into the combination. Ask Senators Chase and Sumner, or any other of them, whether they ever heard me give a reason for not going into the combination other than that, which I gave in my letter to you. There too are the gentlemen out of Congress, who argued the case with me. Ask Preston King, or any of them, whether they ever heard me give any other reason. They will all reply, that I gave no other.

3d. Look at the recorded proceedings of Congress. They show, that I was opposed on principle to the combination in question - for they show, that I voted against the devices to consume time and prevent the taking of the vote on the bill. There is the record of my votes on the side of the proslavery majority. Yes, this record shows that I sat, and voted with that guilty majority. Publish, if you please, in the most strongly condemnatory terms, that I was found, in that memorable struggle, in proslavery company - in the company of men, who were guilty of one of the most stupendous and atrocious swindlings ever known. Hold me up, if you please, to everlasting detestation for all that; - for all that is true. Only do not persist in telling of me, what is not true.

4th. There is my letter to my constituents. It speaks for itself. It gives but one reason for my refusing to join the minority in trampling on the rights of the majority. In using such language, I mean no reproach on the minority. They acted out their conscience, and I mine. They thought, that they were upholding rights, whilst I thought, that they were trampling on rights.

We come, now, to your argument for showing, that I avowed, in my letter to my constituents, two reasons for not combining with the minority on the occasion referred to. That I may be certain of doing you no injustice, I will copy the whole of your argument on this point.

"By way of justifying himself and disproving that his hour of going to bed had anything to do with his absence from the Nebraska struggle, Mr. Smith quotes a long passage from an address to his constituents published on his return from Washington and duly copied in the Tribune at the time. In this extract his absence is put exclusively on the ground of principle. The course of the minority in resisting the bill seemed to him wrong and he refused to join in it. This was all right; had he urged no other ground we might have thought him mistaken, but must have respected his fidelity to his conviction. But this was not all. In a part of the very same address, which in the present objurgatory letter he takes care to omit, he used the following words in reference to a letter of his which had been published:

'In leaving the Nebraska bill, I will briefly refer to the censures which have been cast on one of my private letters. The whole or none of that letter should have been printed. I was sorry to see disjointed parts of it in print. The letter is not before me; but I remember that I spoke in it against night sessions of Congress, and declared that had the hour of three in the morning been appointed for taking the vote on the Nebraska bill, I should not have been present.'

The passage of the private letter above referred to was as follows:

'Suppose our House had appointed three o'clock in the morning as the hour for taking the final vote on the Nebraska bill. I should not in that case have given nay vote, for I should have felt it to be my duty to be in bed at that hour. In whom would rest the responsibility of my absence and my missing vote? Some of my friends would say upon myself; but I would say on the House.'

Now, we submit that in view of these declarations it is rather difficult to understand the warmth of excitement with which Mr. Smith now repels the idea that he was absent from that memorable struggle because he wanted to be in bed. He here admits that while on principle he was opposed to joining in the battle waged in the House, he was also opposed to it because it interfered with his bed-time."

Now, I submit, whether, in your zeal to convict me of insincerity, you have not entirely confounded one subject with another. Neither the passage you extract from the private letter, nor that you extract from the letter to my constituents, says one word about the "memorable struggle", in which the majority tried to bring the House to a vote on the Nebraska bill, and the minority tried to stave off the vote. Both of these passages refer to the taking of the vote on the Nebraska bill.

You see your blunder. Men, as able and logical as you are, have been guilty of blunders. Some of them have been magnanimous enough to confess them, and some have not. With which of the two classes you shall identify yourself remains to be

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proved, You ventured to impeach my veracity. I have triumphantly vindicated it. You would, perhaps, consult your popularity by refusing to publish, or to admit, the vindication. But I hope you will prefer to honor yourself and to Honor human nature, even though it shall be at the expense of your popularity.

But although the extracts, which you made, do entirely fail to convict me of any degree of insincerity or falsehood, for the reason that they do not apply to the subject, which, in your haste, you took it for granted; that they did apply to, there is, nevertheless, another direction also, in which you use the extracts against me. You use them to prove, that, in a certain event, I would, by my own admission, have failed to vote on the Nebraska bill. I admit, that they prove it. That, however, has this to do with your former charges against me? These charges regarded what I actually did in actual circumstances. But, now, you arraign me for conjecturing (it could be conjecturing only) what I should do in certain supposable circumstances. You are ungenerous. Since I dial vote in the actual case, you should be ready to forgive my after suppositions, however foolish, that, in an imagined contingency, well nigh impossible to occur, I should refuse to vote. I do not recollect how I came to suppose this 3 o'clock case. It probably was to illustrate the absurdity of entering upon a physical struggle, which was to keep Members of Congress from their tables and beds for weeks, ay for months - for, when it was entered upon, it was a common boast, that it should be protracted for at least six months, if not indeed until the expiration of that Congress in March 1855.

It occurs to me from your language, that you would have it understood, that had the vote on the Nebraska bill not been taken until after 3 o'clock, I would have left the House before the taking of it. My letter to my constituents shows, that I meant no such thing. I had in my mind the outrage and wickedness of appointing, the day beforehand, or days beforehand, a session at an hour so unseasonable, that some would be too feeble; and none would befit, to attend it. You intimate, that, with a dishonest intent, I forbore to quote from my letter to my constituents what it must now be abundantly evident to you there was no occasion whatever to quote. I, in my turn, do now charge you with omitting to quote from it that, which would have explained to my advantage and vindication what I meant in the part, you did quote. I will, however, supply your omission, and quote what is necessary to serve the cause of truth, at this point.

"I might dwell on many objections to giving my countenance to this three o'clock appointment. I will detain you with only a few of them; and with but a glance at these. 1st. Some members of Congress are, either from age or other causes, too feeble to be compelled, unless in a case of absolute necessity, to leave their beds, at such an unusual hour for leaving them. 2d. At this sleepy hour, few persons are in a state for the wise and safe transaction of important business. 3d. As the friend of temperance; both my lips and example shall ever testify against any night-session of Congress, that is not called for by the clearest necessity. What if the majority had appointed the taking of the vote on the Nebraska question, in a dramshop? Would you have had me present? I trust not.

But, I shall, perhaps, be told, that were it, once, understood, that the friends of temperance, and decency, and good hours, refuse to appear in Congress, the latter part of the night; advantage would be taken of the refusal, and that part of the night would be chosen for mischievous and wicked legislation. This supposes two things, however, neither of which, I trust, is supposable. It supposes, 1st, that a majority of the members of Congress would be guilty of such an outrage; and, 2d, that the people would be patient under it. Had the Nebraska bill been passed by calling us from our beds at three o'clock, the people would have seen, in this disgraceful fact, another and a strong reason for condemning this bill and its supporters."

I trust, that your readers will not construe my words to mean, that I would not have gone to a 3 o'clock in the morning session, for the sake of defeating the Nebraska bill. I suppose that, for that purpose, I would have gone to a session at any hour. I voted on it not to defeat it - for it was made manifest some days before, that it would pass by a decided majority. I voted on it for the purpose of recording my name against a perfidious and high-handed assault on the cause of freedom. The voting on the bill "simply recorded", as you rightly say, in your editorial of 16th instant, "a foregone conclusion". Let me add in this connexion, that no man was more determined than myself not to fail to cast his vote on the bill; and that no man was more careful than myself not to miss the opportunity to do so. It is true, that, during the "memorable struggle;" I did not remain in the House, as many Members did; for the purpose of preventing the taking of the vote on the Nebraska bill: - but it is, also, true, that I did remain there, and with as few intermissions as they, watching for the time, when the bill should be put to vote - a time, which might come in any hour of the day or night.

Just here I would say something of this " private letter", from which you have quoted. It was fair in you to quote from it what you did - for I had myself indorsed this much of it in a public letter - in my letter to my constituents. But there are newspapers, especially those little cur newspapers, so proud in their habit of biting at my heels, that quote other parts of it also, for the purpose of damaging me. These newspapers quote from it to prove, that my reason for refusing to go into the struggle to prevent the taking of the vote on the Nebraska bill was, that I would not consent to change my bedtime. Now, in the extracts from it, which I have seen, there is but one sentence, and that a, short one, which speaks of this struggle. Moreover, that sentence was followed by * * *. The whole of the sentence is: "I declined entering into the physical strife - into the question, which party could do the longest without eating or drinking''. But even if there were any thing in these extracts, which might seem to make against my declaration - that I assigned but the one reason, which I declare I assigned, for not going into the combination to stave off the vote - I should still deny the right to quote the extracts against such declaration. 1st. Because, as there are abundant unequivocal proofs to, show what was my reason for refusing to enter the combination, it would be illogical, unphilosophical, absurd to turn away from these to such, as are exceedingly scanty and uncertain. I am known to hold to the antislavery construction of the Federal Constitution. How unreasonable it would be to quote, in the face of the decisive proofs to this end, the few lines in one of my private letters, that might seem to look in an opposite direction! 2d. The extracts should not be used against me, because they are extracts from a private letter - a private letter too, that was evidently written in haste and in a playful spirit. 3d. Extracts from a letter do not prove even its general, much less its precise, tenor and drift. How far these disjointed extracts would be modified by the unprinted parts of the letter, I do not know, for I took no copy of it. 4th. It is important, in order to interpret this letter safely, to know what were the questions put in the letter, to which it was an answer. (I remember them but very generally and very uncertainly.)

But I need say no more of the private letter in question. Indeed, so far as our controversy is concerned I did not need to say any thing of it - for you were at full liberty to quote from it what you did: - your only error, at this point, consisting in your assumption, that the quotation referred to one subject, when, on the very face of it, it refers entirely to another.

My argument is ended. You find fault with my rhetoric. I find fault with your facts. I am a plain man, and I care and know comparatively little about rhetoric. But I love honesty, and, therefore; do I make great account of facts. It is because you wronged me in your facts, that I had to take up my pen. If it is in my rhetoric only, that I have wronged you, then is the balance largely against you.

I need not tell you, that you are worsted in our controversy. You have too much sense not to know it, and too much

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pride not to feel it. But you have no right to complain of the result. Your readers will bear me witness, that I went into the controversy very reluctantly. You had to keep pushing me for nearly a year and a half, before you finally succeeded in pushing me into it.

"Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel: but being in
Bear it, that the opposer may beware of thee."

We both know, and equally well, that I obeyed the former of these two injunctions of the great poet. Whether I have obeyed the latter also, you know better than I.

The "errors", "weaknesses", "eccentricities", "excessive passion" or "monomania", which you attribute to me, have, doubtless, had not a little to do in encouraging you to select me as the person, on whom to vent your ill humors, and practice your weapons of ridicule and detraction. rom the return blows of one so crazy, so foolish, so impotent, as you had pictured me to be, you, of course, felt, that there was nothing to fear. Sorry, however, as is the plight, in which this controversy leaves you, it, nevertheless, is not without its important instructions to you; and so far, therefore, you may console yourself, that the controversy is not all loss to you. Ever hereafter, you will know, ay keenly feel, how exceedingly unsafe it is to judge, in the light of the disparaging and bad names, which you have yourself put upon your opponent, of the measure of his ability to defend himself against your assaults. Ever hereafter, you will be entirely convinced, that a man is not necessarily the poor thing, which it has suited your fancy and your interest to represent him to be. Now, such instruction would be worth something to any body. It is especially valuable to you, who seem to have been so remarkably destitute of it.

I observe, that you say nothing of my proposition to have you print the Speech, which I made in Congress on the Nebraska bill. I am very desirous, that you should show your readers what words I was dropping into the ears of slaveholders, at the very time, when you were making those readers believe in my suppleness to slaveholders, and in my base desertion of the antislavery cause. My offer of $300 for your compensation was perhaps not enough. Hence, I extend it to $500. Your rule to receive pay for advertisements only shall not be in the way of your publishing the Speech; - for you may class it with advertisements, and yet have the $500. Any way you please: - only get it before the readers of your columns.

I observe, too, that you make no argument to show, that I am wrong in denying to the minority the right to control the majority. I add, that you never will, ay never can, make an argument to that end. The passion and prejudice of the moment may drive the minority into an attitude so unwarranted and false. But as long as democracy itself shall remain a truth - and that will be ever - so long also will the right of the majority to vote down the minority remain a truth.

I close with thanking you for your wish, that I may live long to improve myself. Be assured, that I reciprocate the kind and generous wish - and that I do so all the more cordially, because you are in such especial need of improvement.

GERRIT SMITH.