Syracuse University Library
Special Collections Research Center
Gerrit Smith Broadside and Pamphlet Collection

Letter from Gerrit Smith to Rev. Dr. John Marsh.

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 517

LETTER FROM GERRIT SMITH TO REV. DR. JOHN MARSH.

PETERBORO, November 12th 1858.

REV. DR. MARSH, Editor of Journal and Prohibitionist, New York,

DEAR SIR,

I have read in your last No. the Editorial entitled: "Hon. Gerrit Smith almost right."

During the recent political canvass the soundness of my Temperance principles was frequently impeached. But I was so ungenerous, as to believe that the impeachment was thoroughly dishonest, and was put forth for the sole purpose of reducing my vote. It seems however from this Editorial that you really believe me to be unsound on Temperance. And if you do, why may not others also?

I had always understood that the Temperance Societies forbid the drinking, not of all liquors in which there is alcohol, but of those only which actually intoxicate. It is true that small beer contains a little alcohol. So does new bread. But neither intoxicates: and therefore neither falls under the proscription of the Temperance Societies.

But even if the Temperance Societies were to forbid the drinking of all alcoholic liquors, as well those that do not as those that do intoxicate, most unreasonable nevertheless would it be to call on Government to prohibit the traffic in liquors which do not intoxicate the drinker.

I have served the Cause of Temperance for thirty-two years. I drink no liquors that have any alcohol in them. Indeed so much of a cold water man am I, that for more than a quarter of a century I have not so much as even tasted tea or coffee. I aim to vote for no man for any political office who recognizes the sacred rights of property in intoxicating liquors when offered for sale for a beverage. Moreover, the one great duty of Government being to protect person and property, I hold that the Government of this State is unworthy of its name, so long as it authorizes or even permits the dramshop to peril, as the dramshop alone can do, both person and property. In these circumstances therefore I am not content to be called "almost right" on Temperance.

I see in the same Editorial that you are in favor of having Government continue to meddle with our Schools. To me nothing is plainer than that Government should have no more to do with School education than with Church education. I believe that the School as well as the Church should be a religious institution: and I am very unwilling to be taxed to support Schools in which the reading of the Bible and the voice of prayer are forbidden. But so long as Government has to do with our Schools, some of them will, here and there, be of this atheistic character.

In the same Editorial also I see that you are dissatisfied with the answers which I gave in my recent tour through the State to the question whether I would have a legally compelled observance of the Sabbath. My answers both to this question and the School question you pronounce: "bad, very bad." But which day would you have me compelled to observe as the Sabbath? "Sunday" will, of course, be your answer. As however the Seventh day - the same day which Jesus and His disciples kept as the Sabbath - is my Sabbath also, you must indeed have believed me to be a man of amazing liberality, if you expected me to be in favor of having myself visited with pains and penalties for my non-observance of a Sunday Sabbath.

Your friend

GERRIT SMITH.

LETTER FROM GERRIT SMITH TO JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS.

PETERBORO, November 12th 1858.

Hon. J. R. GIDDINGS, Ohio,

MY DEAR FRIEND,

I see that you have addressed another public letter to me. You are determined to have me think better of the Republican Party : - and to this end you again refer me to its Platform.

I once knew a man of not the best life, whose habit was, whenever he was charged with any of his rascalitics, to defend himself by drawing from his pocket a well-signed certificate of his honesty. You remind me of him. You confront the practice of your Party with its Platform: and you would have its past promises of good outweigh all the damning proofs of its present delinquency.

I am willing to admit - at least for the sake of the argument - that the general language of the Platform covers all your specifications, and calls for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia and in other places. But surely there is nothing in the practice of your Party to justify your interpretation of this general language. If, as you hold, the Republican Party is "pledged," under a fair construction of its language, to abolish slavery here and there, nevertheless the fact that it never undertakes such abolition, and never in terms commits itself to it, shows that it never intended it. Said a slave, when told that his deceased master had gone to Heaven: "I think not - for I never heard master talk of going there". Now, just for the reason that I never have heard your Party talk of abolishing the slavery you refer to, I must think that it does not, and never did, intend to abolish it.

I admit that you would be glad to have your Party undertake to abolish the slavery which you say it is "pledged" to abolish. I admit that you would be glad to have the undertaking avowed in the boldest and most explicit terms. For you are

[2]

an honest and earnest man - a sincere and deep hater of slavery - in a word, an abolitionist. But you very well know, that the Republican Party, standing on its present low ground, would consent to nothing, that would drive from it the scores of thousands it has it has now ["won"] by coming down to this low ground. For that Party however to express the purpose of abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia would drive away these scores of thousands as certainly as if it were to express the purpose of abolishing it in the City of New Orleans.

You still defend the Republican votes in the last session of Congress; and you still claim for them the saving of Kansas from the curse of slavery. But no votes and no speeches either in or out of Congress have saved Kansas. With the help of the men, money and munitions that Eastern enterprise and liberality brought to her, Kansas has saved herself. Had all Congress gone against her, she would still have been safe.

The vote for letting Kansas come into the Union with or without slavery as she might choose, is one that you still approve and that I still condemn. Explain away its evil bearings as you will, it has nevertheless sunk the Republican Party down irretrievably to the low level of "Squatter Sovereignty." It has done more than all things else to reconcile the public mind to the admission of Slave States. Nay, the now wide-open-door for such admission will never again be shut until an earnest Abolition Party shall have attained to the power to shut it. All this deterioration is "the legitimate result" of that vote, notwithstanding your claim that the salvation of Kansas was "the legitimate result," which the Republicans "intended."

I have heard of a Church Member who was arraigned for adultery. The testimony went hard against him: and all that was left for him to say was : "I know that my intentions were good." His good intentions however did not excuse him. Nor must the good intentions in the present case (and I cheerfully admit that they were abundant) be allowed to cancel the sin which the Republican Members of Congress committed against the Cause of Freedom and against all sound ethics.

We are all debauched by slavery: and what we most need is to be educated anew in respect to its matchless wickedness. So familiar are we with its abominations and horrors, as not to be disgusted and appalled in their presence. The Republican Members of Congress, although having some just conceptions of the political and economical evils of slavery, were far from seeing it to be an unequalled outrage on human and divine rights. What if the Lecompton Constitution had provided for the murder of the light-haired men of Kansas by her dark-haired men: - would the Republican Members of Congress have voted that it might with her consent become her actual Constitution? No! No !! - not one of them. Why then should they vote that a Constitution authorizing slavery might with her consent become the actual Constitution of Kansas? Is not slavery worse than murder ? Certainly. Every parent would confess it, who should be called on to elect between the enslavement and the murder of his child.

That the Republican Party has failed to abolish any slavery, or even to try to abolish any, is not strange. It invests this unmixed and enormous wrong with sacred rights-for it acknowledges the legality of slavery, instead of holding it to be a piracy and an outlaw. It is the protector of slavery where it is, and wars upon it only where it is not. That the public sentiment should be demoralized and made more and more proslavery by such a Party is no mystery.

But I have a further reason for condemning the Republican Party. It is a one-idea-Party. No political party, that does not identify itself with the whole province and all the duties of Civil Government is entitled to support. We have no right to connect ourselves with any political party, that does not propose to protect its subjects from all wrongs against their persons and property: from the dramshop and land-monopoly as well as from slavery: from one form of oppression as well as from another. Even if the Republican Party were as eminently faithful as it is unfaithful to its one idea of the non extension of, slavery; or even if it were an Abolition Party and were intent on delivering men from the yoke of slavery, still all this would not atone for its neglect of other wrongs. Simultaneous with its duty to protect its subjects from slavery is the duty of Government to protect them from the dramshop and land-monopoly and all the other wrongs against which the shield of Government should be ever interposed.

You and I, my dear friend, have become old men. Our remaining time is too brief to justify us in wasting any part of it on sham and superficial and short-lived political parties. Let us rather betake ourselves to the work of building up a political party, which shall represent every political truth and respond to every political want, and which shall seek honestly and earnestly to actualize the beautiful and sublime ideal of an every way righteous Civil Government. Such a party - so comprehensive and impartial - a party of the whole, because for the whole - could not fail to be among the richest of earthly blessings.

Your friend

GERRIT SMITH.