Syracuse University Library
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Gerrit Smith Broadside and Pamphlet Collection

To the abolitionists and prohibitionists of the county of Madison.

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 514

To the Abolitionists and Prohibitionists of the County of Madison:

A word with you, my neighbors, ere I leave home this morning to attend the County Meetings, which in my Letter of Acceptance I promised to attend.

I confess my disappointment in you. I had hoped that you would be eager to identify yourselves with this movement to elect to the office of Governor a man, who recognizes no rights of property in maddening liquors when they are offered for sale for a beverage, and who knows no law for slavery any more than for any other piracy.

It is true that some of you are working "arm and soul" for my election. But it is also true that many of you, like many of our friends in other parts of the State, are waiting to see what nominations the Republican and Temperance Conventions will make. To this unwise waiting will it be owing; if our movement to elect a Prohibition and Abolition Governor shall fail. With truth might I add that the failure will be owing to such waiting on the part of our friends in this County. For if only these had all united with me when I accepted the nomination, there would have been no good ground to doubt its success and the triumph in our State of Prohibition and Abolition.

How absurd is this waiting! If the Temperance or Republican Convention shall present a true name for Governor, how easy to drop mine and adopt that ! But if neither shall; and in the light of the past we have but too much evidence that neither will, then how deep will be your regret that you had not been at work all this time to enlist the public sentiment in favor of my nomination! Then you will feel as you ought to feel, that if it is defeated, none will be so responsible for the defeat as yourselves, and none so responsible as yourselves for the election of a man unfriendly to your principles.

I admit that you desire that the Republican and Temperance Conventions may take up, if not myself, some other real and earnest Abolitionist and Prohibitionist. But what are you doing to induce them to do it? Nothing at all. On the contrary, you are strongly influencing them to make bad nominations. For however highly flavored with rum or deeply darkened with slavery those nominations may be, it will very reasonably be expected that they will be supported by men who consent to take your waiting and hanging-on attitude. The men of this dependent and unfeared attitude have hitherto been drawn into the support of such nominations, and why should they not be hereafter?

If the Republican and Temperance Conventions shall indeed nominate a man for Governor who will fully and faithfully represent your professed principles, no thanks will be due to you, who give yourselves up to the temporizing policy I complain of. All the credit of such a nomination will belong to those who by their independent, fearless, and seasonable action compelled the Conventions to make it.

It is nevertheless with a hopeful and courageous heart that I this day enter upon my great labor of carrying into every part of our widely extended State those great truths which this nation must speedily adopt, or be left to perish. The inadequate support of my nomination at home casts the only shadow upon the constantly brightening prospects of its success. All around me I hear the unwise words: "I should be very glad to vote for Gerrit Smith - but I must wait to see what the Republican and Temperance Conventions do. "How sad that by this setting up of a Convention above our Cause - of Parties above our Principles - this chance, which has now come to us, may possibly be lost; this precious chance for making an effective as well as earnest demonstration against the mighty powers of Rum and Slavery!

I could wish that you might be informed through the press of the character and spirit of the Meetings I am to attend. But the press is against me: and no very small part of it will misrepresent the Meetings. I accepted my nomination, knowing that not one Daily, nor one Weekly Newspaper in the whole State had come out for the measure. So great was my faith in the power of the tongue and the truth to overcome even the types! Never before was there opened to me so favorable an opportunity for bringing the truth into hopeful contact with numberless minds. My first Meeting is to-morrow, and in Oswego. Should the weather be pleasant I shall have a thousand hearers. The Newspapers will quite likely reduce the number to a hundred. I mean such Newspapers, as have sought to create the belief, that in the Convention, which nominated me, and in which there were thirty persons from our own County and also persons from sixteen or seventeen other Counties; there were only seven in favor of the nomination.

That the approaching Canvass is to be uncommonly full of bold falsehoods is already manifest. I see it is already denied - yes, and even in the recent State Temperance Convention - that I am trustworthy on Temperance. A poor return this for my more than thirty years of toil and sacrifice in that cause. I see too that I must again encounter the old falsehood, that I did not vote on the Nebraska Bill. This too is another ungrateful return. Inasmuch as I made by far the most elaborate Speech against the Bill, and was the only Member who opposed it on the ground that slavery is a piracy and an outlaw, I certainly deserve a very different reward. That this wicked falsehood should have obtained so widely is not strange. I had neither party nor press; and they who had both were able to give what complexion they pleased to my Congressional life.

I have often thought that the industrious efforts to persuade the people that I have been untrue to Freedom in Kansas present one of the most remarkable instances of the success of a lie against the truth. Having done what I could for her in Congress I came home to do much more for her. My use of men and money to keep slavery out of that Territory has been limited only by my ability.

The true history of Kansas is yet to be written. The impression that she has been preserved from the grasp of slavery by the skill of party leaders and by speeches in Congress is as false as it is common. She has been preserved from it by her own brave spirits and strong arms. To no man living is there so much praise due for beating back the tide of border ruffianism and slavery as to my old and dear friend John Brown of Osowatomie, though he has had at no time under his command more than one hundred and fifty fighting men, yet by his unsurpassed skill and courage he has accomplished wonders for the cause of Freedom. Small as have been the armed forces, which have saved Kansas, their maintenance has nevertheless taxed some persons heavily. My eye, at this moment, is on one merchant its Boston, who has contributed several thousaud dollars to this object. What compared with him has gaseous oratory in or out of Congress done for Kansas ?

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Let it not be thought that mere words have kept slavery out of Kansas; or that mere words will suffice to resist its aggressions elsewhere. These aggressions can be successfully resisted only by such men, as have consecrated to the mighty work head and heart and arm and purse. The demagogues who are busy in slandering them cannot help in this work.

I have just learned that great pains are taken to revive against me your deep displeasure with the resignation of my seat in Congress. I know that you worked hard for my election. I was grateful to you. I know too that in turn I worked hard for you, and that you were bound to be grateful to me. The laborious and faithful ruler is as much entitled to gratitude from his constituents as they are entitled to it from him. What Member of Congress ever worked harder than I did? What one ever made so many Speeches and on so great a variety of subjects in a single Session? But you declared that I was bound to remain in Congress as long as my constituents wished me to remain there. In this I thought you unreasonable. Remember that you put me in nomination against my will. I had entertained no more thought of going to Congress than to the moon. I went there leaving my large private affairs unsettled, and plans unfinished, which, in at least my own view, were plans of usefulness to my fellow men. The Congress of which I was a Member was in session eleven months. Perhaps no Member was more constantly in his seat for the first eight months. I then resigned, and left my constituents without putting them to the pains and expense of a special election to supply my place for the remaining three months. They did supply it with a man of talents and an earnest friend of the slave. Surely in the light of these facts I ought not to be censured for my resignation. Pardon this much speaking of myself. But there seemed to be a necessity for it.

I must stop. My horses are at the door. You may still falter; but I shall still fight. You may still trust in party leaders: - but I shall still trust in truth. I may be defeated in the Election: - though I do not mean to be. Even however if I shall, the honor of having worked bard to avoid the defeat will be mine; whilst all the disgrace of the defeat will fall on those who would have prevented it, bad they been true to their professed principles.

I leave you to your reflections, whilst I go to battle with slavery and rum and party despotism and party machinery.

Your friend,

GERRIT SMITH.

PETERBORO, August 16, 1858.