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Gerrit Smith Broadside and Pamphlet Collection

Speech of Gerrit Smith in the Kansas meeting, at the capitol in Albany : March 13th 1856.

Smith, Gerrit, 1797-1874.

Digital Edition.

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Call number: Smith 502

SPEECH OF GERRIT SMITH

IN THE

KANSAS MEETING, AT THE CAPITOL IN ALBANY,

March 13th 1856.

I deeply regret, that Mr. Thayer, whom we all hoped to hear, has not yet arrived. He is the President of the New England Emigrant Aid Society: and I wish he were here, were it only, that he might improve the occasion in vindicating that much aspersed, but nevertheless highly judicious, liberal, honorable and useful Society. By the kindness of Governor Clark, I have, since coming into this Hall, been permitted to read a communication, which he has just received from Missouri. We learn from this communication, that they have actually begun to organize Emigrant Aid Societies in that State also. But how different are they from the New England Society! A Missouri Society offers a large bounty to those, who will become actual inhabitants of Kansas, provided expressly however; that they are "proslavery." The New England Society, on the contrary, give no bounty to any. It gives information and advice impartially to all, who wish to emigrate to Kansas, and it builds mills and hotels in Kansas for the equal accommodation of all, be they proslavery or antislavery. Surely, it is with an ill grace, that they, who see nothing wrong in one of these Missouri Societies, should impute officiousness and unfairness to the New England Society.

But to my subject. I will say nothing just now of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, except to say, that the repeal was very perfidious and very wicked. And but little need be said on this occasion of the doctrine of "squatter sovereignty." That doctrine is absurd, because, inasmuch as a Territory belongs to the whole people of the United States, they the whole people are bound to govern it. It is not competent for them to abdicate, and to leave to a handful what belongs to all. They have no right in such case to substitute another government for their own.

It is, however, entirely immaterial to the purposes of this meeting whether "squatter sovereignty" is right or wrong, or whether the repeal of the Missouri Compromise is right or wrong. Enough for this meeting to know is the condition and wrongs of the people of Kansas. What is that condition, and what are those wrongs? As the gentleman from Kansas (Gen'l Shankland) has described them to you, I need not go into an extended account of them.

The people of Kansas went to that surpassingly fertile and beautiful portion of the earth to find homes for themselves. They then undertook to make a government for themselves. But a parcel of unmitigated and desperate scoundrels in Missouri, under the lead of such fellows as Atchison and Stringfellow, were determined, that the people of Kansas should not make a government for themselves. They, these scoundrels, would make it for them. Accordingly they marched into Kansas. I say marched - for, in many cases, they entered Kansas in a military conquering style, with drums beating and flags flying. They took possession of the ballot-boxes, and elected whom they would. Instead of a Kansas government, a Missouri or border ruffian government was set up in Kansas. That a government, brought into being in this wise, should enact the most diabolical and infamous statutes, is not to be wondered at. A specimen of these statutes is that, which makes it a penitentiary offence to express an opinion against the rightfulness of slaveholding. The border ruffians now insisted, that the people of Kansas should obey these statutes, and be loyally subject to the government, which had been forced upon them. The people of Kansas could but refuse. To have yielded would have been to prove themselves to belittle less base than their oppressors. It was now, that these oppressors marched an army into Kansas to enforce subjection. But, as General Shankland has told us, their whiskey gave out - and with it their courage. Moreover, what they heard of a new kind of rifle in the hands of the brave men of Kansas - a kind invented by one Sharp - produced a great quaking among them. At any rate, so it was, that they marched back again. All this time the Federal Administration - the powers at Washington - had done nothing, and said nothing, openly. Beyond doubt, however, they were all this time countenancing and encouraging the outrages, of which we have spoken. And now when the terror-stricken border ruffians had fallen back, the Administration came forward with its messages, and proclamations, and threats. I will not say, that it came forward to embolden the ruffians to a fresh invasion ; nor to take their place: but I will say, that it came forward to do their work - the work of compelling submission to this foreign and ruffian government. Hitherto the Administration had been loud for the doctrine of "squatter sovereignty," and for the right of every people to govern themselves - even the handful, that might be scattered over a broad National territory. In their eyes the chief glory of the Nebraska Bill was this doctrine. But now this slavery-serving Administration trampled this doctrine under foot, and utterly repudiated in practice what it had so ardently clung to in theory. For, now, it demanded, in the name of all the military power of the nation, that the people of Kansas should submit to a government, not chosen by themselves, but forced upon them by others. In this wicked and cruel demand it still perseveres. Wicked and cruel I say - for not only does it know, that the government in question is a sheer and shameless usurpation; but it also knows, that the statutes of this government cannot be obeyed - cannot be endured - by any in whose bosoms there is the least spark of self-respect, the least vestige of manhood.

Such then is the unhappy condition to which the people of Kansas are reduced - such the wrongs, which they are suffering at the hands of the Federal Administration and the Missouri ruffians. And the sole terms, on which these combined powers will consent to let the people of Kansas remain in Kansas - nay, will consent to let them live - is that they shall acknowledge this impudent and abominable despotism, which has been set up on their soil, and that they shall pollute their souls by perjury, and debase and extinguish their manhood by submitting to whatever their oppressors may lay upon them.

I hear one thing of the people of Kansas, which I am sorry to hear. I hope it is not true. It is, that they shall be willing to submit to this ruffian government, provided the Federal Government shall require them to do so. But in no event must they submit to it. They must resist it, even if in doing so they have to resist both Congress and President. And we must stand by them in their resistance. Let us bring the case home to ourselves. Suppose the legislators, who meet in this building, were to enact a statute depriving us of the freedom of speech, and making it a penitentiary offence to express an opinion against the rightfulness of slaveholding would we submit to the statute? No, we would rather march into this building, and hurl from their seats the men guilty of such a perversion of their official powers. And we would be no less prompt to do this, even though all the Congresses and Presidents on earth were backing them. Surely, surely, in the light of the past we are forbidden to

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indulge a blind veneration for an American Congress or an American President. It is but little more than five years, since an American Congress passed the Fugitive slave bill, and an American President signed it - yes, that same Millard Fillmore, that same shameless servant of the slave-power, for whom we are now called on to vote. How unequalled the impudence, how matchless the insult, of asking us, who believe in the fatherhood of God and in the brotherhood of man, to vote for him, who from his high place of power called authoritatively on the American people to plunge poor innocent men, women and children into the hell of slavery! Perhaps, in some parts of the State, there may be found persons base enough to obey this call. But not so in my part of the State. There we pour contempt upon the Fugitive slave statute, and trample it underfoot. There, when put to the test, we know no law for slavery. There we are "Jerry rescuers". We took poor Jerry out of the strong hands of the Government ; knocked off his irons; and walked him over that statute as over so much white paper.

No, the people of Kansas must make no more concessions to the slave power. They have made one; and that they must hasten to recal. For the sake of peace with that power, and of gaining its favor, they have voted to shutout the free colored roan from their territory. ut the people of Kansas need to retain God. This, however, no people can do, who proscribe and ostracize their brother. God goes with the wronged and outcast: and the men, who vote away freedom, or suffrage, or a home from the black man, vote away God from themselves. All this will be seen as in sunbeams, as soon as the true Christianity shalt have taken the place of our conventional and spurious Christianity.

I referred to the violation of the Missouri Compromise. That violation was indeed ineffably treacherous, ineffably base. But, after all, it was not one of the most lamentable of things. On the contrary, it may turn out in its results to be one of the best things. In my speech on the floor of Congress against the Nebraska bill (if the egotism of such a reference can be pardoned,) I likened slavery to the greedy dog in the fable, who, on opening his mouth to seize another piece of meat, lost in the deceitful stream the piece he already had: and I predicted, that slavery would lose its present dominion in grasping after more. There are multiplying indications at the present time, that this prediction will be fulfilled. Slavery, instead of finding in Kansas a reinvigorated and new life - a wide field, in which to repeat its horrors and achieve its greatest triumphs, is not improbably destined to meet there with defeat and death. Yes, Kansas may prove to be the grave of American slavery. The tide of war, once set in motion there, as the maddened slave-power seems intent it shall be, and it will rise and rise, and never subside, until it shall have overwhelmed and swept away the whole of American slavery.

I said, that the violation of the Missouri Compromise was not one of the most lamentable things. There was another thing infinitely, more lamentable - and that was the enactment, the establishment, of that Compromise. here, was the great mistake of our fathers. They should not have permitted liberty to make a bargain with slavery. They should have sternly held, that slavery is incompetent to be a party to any bargain. They should have denied it all legal existence ; and not only all right to do, but all right to be. They should have known slavery only as a piracy and outlaw-the most stupendous and atrocious piracy-the most unqualified and naked outlaw. A farmer finds a wolf in his sheepfold. Is he to propose a compromise with him, and to let the devourer have one half the sheep, provided he will stipulate to leave the other half unharmed ? No, all will agree, that the farmer is, at once, to take the ground, that a wolf, in the light of the uniformly and excessively bad character of wolves, is a gentleman not to be bargained with, because a gentleman not to be trusted in any bargain, and not fit to be a party to any bargain. All will acquiesce in the farmer's conclusion, that a wolf has but one right - and that is the right to be killed. Just that one right, and only that one right, has slavery - the right to be killed. And the people of the North, in letting slavery live, and in making bargains with it, act no less absurdly than would the farmer, who should treat with, and share with, the wolf. What folly to suppose, that slavery can be appeased by the concessions of liberty ! Live up to the wolf one half of the flock, and his feasting on that will but make him the more eager for the other half. So too is it, that every concession we make to slavery but whets its appetite for another. Certainly, so far as slavery is concerned, the people of the North have proved themselves to be exceedingly credulous and silly. They rival the idolaters and flatterers of old King Canute. Those simpletons believed, that even the waves of the sea would obey the voice of their king; and great was their astonishment at finding, that they would not. rom time to time, the people of the North have told slavery, that it might come so far, but no farther, - and when they have seen it coming and, instead of stopping, keep coming, they have been as much astonished at its disobedience, as were the subjects of Canute at the disobedience of the sea. The simple truth is, that, so long as you tolerate slavery, its surges and encroachments are no more to be controlled than the surges and encroachments of the sea.

Yes, the compromise, that liberty made with slavery in 1820 was most disastrous to liberty. It was the first compromise between those powers in the history of our country. I do not forget how generally it is believed, that a compromise between them is to be found in the Constitution. How strange it is, that the people of the North should so generally have come to take the slaveholders' interpretation of the Constitution for the Constitution itself! Apply to that instrument the legal rules of interpretation, and you will not find in it one word for slavery, nor indeed one word on the subject of slavery. How could slavery get into that instrument, in spite of the manifest determination of its framers to have the instrument wear a clean and fair face for liberty ? And what right have we to assume, that, if the Constitution had been expressly; clearly and certainly in favor of slavery, the people would have adopted it? I say expressly, clearly, and certainly - because slavery is matchless injustice, and because no paper, if legally interpreted, is for injustice, unless the injustice is open and avowed, unmistakeable and certain.

But I will say here by the way - that even if there is in the Constitution a bargain between liberty and slavery, liberty is released from keeping it for the simple reason, that slavery has broken it. If after the bargain, in which the foolish farmer has consented to divide with the wolf, the wolf is found among the farmer's half of the sheep, the farmer will be guilty of no perfidy,

if in turn he goes among the wolf's half, and rescues all, that are left. Nay, the farmer will be no covenant-breaker, even if he shall, gun in hand, pursue the wolf into the very heart of wolfdom. On the same principle, even if there was the imputed bargain, is liberty entitled to pursue slavery: - for all that slavery asked, at the time of that imputed bargain, was but some twenty years, in which to prepare itself for a natural and easy death. Such, in that day, was the humble attitude of the monster, who, by means of his subsequent bold and ceaseless aggressions, is now in the ascendant!

I repeat it - the compromise of 1820 was the great, the fatal mistake. It was that, which indorsed, and dignified, and emboldened slavery. From that day to this slavery has felt itself to be a power in the land - an admitted and respectable power. Its claims to at least an equal standing and an equal share with liberty are put forth every where, and acknowledged every where. It is the protege and pet of the Federal Government. Even in its diplomatic correspondence with foreign nations, that Government is shameless enough to urge the claims, and provide for the protection, of slavery. The recent very able Address of the Republican party gives an instance of this prostitution of our diplomacy during the Administration of President Tyler. I am sorry to say, that repeated instances of it can be found in the Administration of even John Quincy Adams. It will surprise and perhaps offend some, who are present, to hear me say, as I am bound to say, that no Secretary of State ever used his office more industriously than did Henry Clay to uphold slavery. Not to speak of his negotiations with the British

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and Mexican Governments for the surrender of American slaves, it was he, who stopped the meditated invasion of Cuba by Colombia and Mexico. Those States were intent on expelling Spain from Cuba, emancipating her slaves, and republicanizing her institutions. But Mr. Clay, having reference to our slaves, gave those States to understand, that our Government could not quietly witness proceedings of so contagious an influence ; - and that, in a word, such proceedings would be deemed by our Government a just cause of war. Our antislavery Whigs are very slow to believe, that a Whig slaveholder, and especially Henry Clay, is as bad as a Democrat slaveholder. But they must outgrow this prejudice, and open their eyes to the truth; that a slaveholder is a slaveholder, whether he be a Democrat or a Whig, or even a Henry Clay; and that, with few exceptions, the first purpose and the last purpose of every slavebolder is to uphold slavery.

I referred to the universal acknowledgment of the claims of slavery. This is true, even at the present time. Even now and notwithstanding all its recent outrages, we treat slavery as having rights - rights, that are to be most sacredly respected. For instance, if we deny it the right to be in Kansas, we hurry to atone for the denial by admitting in the same breath, that it has the right to be in Missouri. It is by such admissions, that we lose all our power against slavery. If slavery has either the moral or legal right to be in Missouri, it has the same right to be in Kansas. If it can have a moral or legal right to be any where, it can have a moral or legal right to be every where. Would God, that a few of our Northern statesmen, who have a strong hold on the public confidence, had the earnestness and bravery to speak out what is in their hearts, and say, that slavery has not, and cannot have, either amoral or a legal right to be anywhere. Very soon then would it be in vain to look for it any where in this nation. The American people - I mean not only the mass of the Northern people, but a considerable share of the Southern whites also, are entirely ready to destroy slavery. All that they wait for is the leaders to lead them on to the work of destruction. What a pity, that some of our statesmen will not throw away their cowardly, calculating, cyphering caution, and bid the masses march! - not with bayonets in their hands, but with ballots. he right ballots could kill slavery this year. But delay a few years, and it will take bayonets to do it. It must be killed in one way or the other - and, that too ere long. It was in the power of my noble and beloved friend Governor Chase to give slavery a death blow, the other day. If, when he learned, that Cincinnati was invaded by pirates and kidnappers, in their pursuit after innocent human prey, he had summoned a force to capture them, or to shoot them down if they did not surrender, neither Ohio, nor any other Free State, would ever again have been subject to a similar invasion. Such action on his part would have brought up the question distinctly and intelligently, whether there is in this nation such a thing as a State Government: - and whenever that question is thus brought up, American slavery will go to the wall, and America will be free. I said, whenever the question is brought up distinctly and intelligently - for a State Government, in any intelligent view of it, is one, that suffers no innocent person to be dragged from its soil. That deserves not the name of a civil government, which does not hold its shield constantly, faithfully, effectually over all within its jurisdiction - even the least baby, ay, the least black baby. That does not, necessarily, deserve the name of civil government, which protects such persons as ourselves - such persons, as crowd this chamber. For we, with our various powers and influences, can, in the main, protect ourselves. We need but little help from Government. hat, and that only, is entitled to the name of civil government, which protects the humblest and obscurest - the poorest of the poor and the weakest of the weak.

But to return to the people of Kansas. Do we pity them? We do. Will we do for them what we can? We will. Were we in their circumstances and they in ours, we would have them limit their aid to us only by their ability. Let us pass the Resolutions before us, and give to the Committee what moneys we can, and go back to our respective neighbors and beg them to give likewise. Is it asked for what the money is needed ? I answer, it is needed to buy bread for the people of Kansas - for their oppressions must have reduced many of them to poverty. Then they should have been left to their industrious and peaceful pursuits, and to earn the means of their livelihood, they have been compelled to march to the relief of this, that, and the other threatened community; to muster in camps ; to carry their arms by day; and to sleep upon them at night. The money is needed too to purchase the means of their defence. And it is also needed toward defraying the emigrating expenses of a part of the thousands of strong and brave men, who will, we trust, leave our State the present Spring to become actual, permanent, useful inhabitants of Kansas. refer to that part of these thousands, who, because they have but little property, are entitled to our help.

I have done. I have spoken too long. I have made a speech, when the occasion hardly called for - hardly justified - a speech. We came together to raise money rather than to make and hear speeches: - not so much to give words to each other, as to give help to Kansas. It is a time to be sparing of our words, and free with our money. Let us now turn from talking to doing - to prompt as well as liberal doing. It should be prompt - for the necessity is present and certain, not prospective and doubtful. All that is most precious in Kansas - all that is most precious in the whole nation - is in imminent peril. What we do we should do quickly. "Now's the day and now's the hour."