Syracuse University Library
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Gerrit Smith Broadside and Pamphlet Collection

Thoughts for the people.

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 531

THOUGHTS FOR THE PEOPLE.

NO PEACE, THAT DOES NOT PUT AWAY THE CAUSE OF THE WAR!
THE GENERATION GUILTY OF THE WAR SHOULD PAY THE COST OF THE WAR!
AMERICA'S SIN IF THIS IS NOT AMERICA'S LAST WAR

During the Rebellion it was premature to think of Peace, or indeed of any thing else than to bring the rebels to unconditional submission. But now, when the Rebellion is dying, and may be regarded as dead, thoughts of Peace are in order. Nevertheless, it is even yet premature to be studying the terms of Peace with the rebels. Whether she will consent to make her Peace with God is this Nation's first question. More over, she can have no true Peace with man, until she ceases from her wickedness of warring with God. "There is no Peace, saith my God, to the wicked": - no Peace with either God or man. It is Peace with God that prepares the way for Peace with man. "When a man's ways please the Lord, He maketh even his enemies to beat Peace with him." And this is true, as well philosophically as scripturally. To identify ourselves with justice is to bring ourselves into a state of Peace with God, and to please God. But by such identification we commend ourselves to men - even to bad men. By means of it we disarm our enemies - commanding their respect and admiration, if not attracting their love.

Why did God suffer this horrid War to come upon us ? Because of our cruel oppression and utter proscription of one of the races of his children. How can we make Peace with Him, who is one of the three parties in this War ? By ceasing from this oppression and proscription and from making race or origin the ground either of enjoying or forfeiting rights. This done - our heart right at this point - and we can pass on to make Peace with the rebels.

Let the first condition of Peace with them be that no people in the Rebel States shall ever either lose or gain civil or political rights by reason of their race or origin. God would have no right, social, ecclesiastical, nor any other, turn on such peculiarities. But to apply this condition of Peace to any other than civil and political rights would be manifestly improper. Let me here say - that a Peace, which denies the ballot to the black man, would be war: - and perhaps the worst of wars - a war of races.

Let the next condition of Peace be that our black allies in the South - those saviors of our nation - shall share with their poor white neighbors in the subdivisions of the large landed estates of the South. And this, not merely to compensate them for what we owe them: - and not merely because they are destitute of property: - and not merely because they have ever been robbed of their earnings and denied the acquisition of property: - but, more than all these, because the title to the soil of the whole South is equitably in them, who have ever tilled it, and profusely shed upon it their sweat and tears and blood. There are, who would have our soldiers also share in these subdivisions. But, beside that such a quartering of soldiers and strangers upon the South would be offensive to her, we are abundantly able to reward them otherwise; and abundantly should we reward them.

Let the only other condition be that the rebel masses shall not, for, say, a dozen years, be allowed access to the ballot-box, or be eligible to office ; and that the like restrictions be for life on their political and military leaders. Without such restrictions there would be no safety for either the blacks or loyal whites of the South; and no adequate security against the nation's sinking into a condition worse in some respects than that from which she is now emerging. Without such restrictions our ingratitude to the blacks would be as signal as is their magnanimity in forgiving us, and in serving and saving us at personal risks greater than white men could possibly incur. I do not say that I would have all black men vote. I certainly would, were the rebels allowed to vote. But, with the proposed restrictions on rebel suffrage, I would be quite content that none, black or white, who cannot read their vote, should be permitted to cast it. As a general principle and in ordinary circumstances, I would not have the ability to read a qualification for voting.

In connection with this subject of negro-voting I would speak of Louisiana. The President has, within a few days, revived the agitation of the question whether Louisiana shall be allowed, by force of her recently-formed Constitution, to renew her relations to the Union and return to the fellowship of the States.

I have read much for and much against those who, including prominently General Banks, had part in producing this Constitution. I believe that they were ruled by right motives, and had at heart the welfare of the negro. Moreover, I think that their Constitution is, considering all the circumstances, one of remarkable concessions and good-will to the negro. In this respect it puts to shame the Constitutions of most of the Northern States. Nevertheless, I should deeply regret the recognition of it by Congress, and the continued favor of the President to it. The former however I do not fear: and the latter I regard as by no means certain. For, amongst the evidences that the President is both a great and good man, is the fact that he is willing to learn, and not ashamed to change. That this new Constitution of Louisiana does not accord suffrage to the negro is a conclusive objection to it. If adopted, it would curse Louisiana, and open the way for a similar curse upon all the other Rebel States. For, manifestly, no one of them would be either disposed or required to render this justice if Louisiana is not.

But, although it is not probable that this new Constitution will stand, is there not reason to fear that the Peace we are nearing will withhold the ballot from the black man, and therein signalize the re-establishment of the Union by the basest and blackest ingratitude the world has ever seen ? The basest and blackest - for the negroes of the Rebel States are the saviors of this nation. Lost would she have been, had they gone to our enemies, instead of coming to us! - and lost will she yet be, if she shall now be so infatuated, as to put these saviors under the feet of their and her enemies! She will put them there, if she leaves them without political power and she will make this doubly certain by giving political power to the disloyal whites of the Rebel States. If she shall do the former, she will surely be guilty of the latter also. For the spirit, in which she shall withhold political power from the blacks, is the very spirit to accord it to the disloyal whites. It is the caste-spirit: it is the spirit, which has long clamored, and which still clamors, not amongst Democrats only but amongst many Republicans also, to have this nation made into a nation for white men only: it is the God-defying spirit, which refuses to some of the races of His children an equal right with the others to choose their dwelling-places on the earth.

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Alas, and must the denying of political power to the black man, and the granting of it to his demonized enemies, and to the demonized enemies of the loyal whites of the South, and to the demonized enemies of the nation - alas, must this be the winding-up of a war, which has cost us treasure so vast that it cannot be counted, and rivers of tears and blood! Better perhaps than this to have yielded in the outset, confessing ourselves to be too debauched and too debased to strike so much as one blow for Freedom and Justice. Say you, that the slave has gained his liberty? No thanks to us for it. It was wrung from our reluctant hands. His freedom became our necessity, else we would not have yielded it. Is more proof needed that we had no heart to yield it? Such proof will be present and in abundance, when we shall refuse him political power and grant it to his foes.

It is said that the Louisiana Constitution allows the Legislature to give suffrage to the negro. I admit that it does, and that it is an honorable feature in it. But if suffrage is not given to the negro now, when our sense of his saving our country is so fresh, how unreasonable to hope that it will be given to hire after time shall have dulled this sense! The negro helped us in the War of the Revolution. Nevertheless, his constant falling away from the ballot-box dates back almost, if not quite, to that event. It would seem as if every proof he gives of marked capacity and patriotism but serves to inflame our jealousy of him. How abundant was such proof in his defence of New Orleans under General Jackson! Nevertheless, his lot was harder afterwards than it had been before. Within my flay, State after State has stripped the negro of suffrage; and none conferred it upon him. And may we not fear that the rights, which the South shall feel constrained to yield him in her new Constitutions, wilt be recalled unless they are accompanied by the all-protecting and vital right of suffrage The President regards the Louisiana Constitution as the "egg" of the black man's rights, and holds that we shall better serve him "by hatching than by smashing it." Admitted. But the "egg." instead of being in the hands of his friends who would hatch it, would be in the hands of his enemies, who would not only refuse to hatch it, but who, in all probability, would smash it.

I commended as an honorable feature in the Constitution of Louisiana its provision for the conditional voting of the blacks. I acknowledge the concession in this instrument, that the blacks may vote when the whites shall let them; the loyal race when the disloyal shall let it; our friends when our enemies shall let them. But I ask, whether if the Constitution must make one of these parties dependent on the will of the other, the dependent party should not have been the disloyal and hostile whites rather than the loyal and friendly blacks ?

The President would have the Louisiana Constitution confer suffrage on colored men, if they are "very intelligent," or if they "serve our cause as soldiers." But would he make these the conditions of voting on the hart of the Southern whites also ? With such impartial conditions there would be more black than white voters in the South. For, beside that the armed blacks of the South greatly exceed in number the armed white loyalists of the South, the mass of the Southern blacks fall, in point of intelligence, but little, if any, behind the mass of the Southern whites. But I pass from this comparison to say that, in reference to the qualifications of the voter, men make too much account of the head and too little of the heart. The ballot-box, like God, says: "Give me thy heart." The best-hearted men are the best qualified to vote: and, in this light, the blacks, with their characteristic gentleness, patience and affectionateness, are peculiarly entitled to vote. We cannot wonder at Swedenborg's belief that the celestial people will be found in the interior of Africa: nor hardly can we wonder at the legend, that the gods came down every year to sup with their favorite Africans.

But to return from this digression - I bad, just before it, said what, in my judgment, should be the conditions, the only conditions, of Peace. And here I shall be asked, if I would have none of the rebels, not even their guiltiest leaders, doomed to death? I answer, no - not any of them : nor any of them to imprisonment, nor any of them to banishment. Why not ?

1st. Because the masses of the Southern whites do, though some persons doubt it, love their leaders, and would therefore sympathize with their sufferings, and be soured, if not exasperated, by them. And surely, such a state of mind would be very unfavorable for their experience of those happy changes of character, which are so needful for the nation's as well as their own welfare.

2d. Because these masses would be ever and deeply grateful to the Government whose remarkable clemency had spared those leaders from the penalty of their crimes.

3d. Because these leaders are not so depraved but what they themselves, by an amnesty so unexpected, and without precedent in other nations, might be won to love our kind and forgiving Government, and to feel and confess the boundless wrong of having risen up against it.

4th. Because the heart of the whole world would be softened, and all its civilizations improved by such an absence of revenge, and by such pity for those, who had done so much to provoke revenge.

5th. Because monarchists would justly ascribe to the educating power of our free institutions this unprecedentedly generous treatment of the greatest offenders, and would be touched with shame for their disparagment and defamation of those institutions.

6th. Because the civilization of our Northern States - which, but for the barbarizing influences of slavery, had been, if indeed it is not now, of a higher type than that enjoyed by any other people - would call for all this pity. It would be called for by that same civilization, which did not respond to the clamors for the retaliatory starvation and murder of prisoners. Just here, we see that a highly civilized people are at great disadvantage in carrying on a war with a pre-eminently barbarous one. The South could starve and murder prisoners: but the North could not. And do we not also see, just here, that war is a barbarism! .

7th. But for a reason weightier than any or all other reasons, would I have the North deal kindly and mercifully in this case. The slaveholding spirit brought on this war. But the North, as well as the South, is responsible for generating and fostering this spirit. It is not too much to say that the trade, politics and religion of the North were in the service of slavery. If I sit down to the bottle with my companions, and we get warm over it, and one gives me a black eye - I am not, when I get sober, to judge him harshly for it. I am to remember my own responsibility for the blow rather than to desire him to be punished for it. I am to accept uncomplainingly the legitimate consequences of the drinking bout. My great concern in the affair should be to learn from it to avoid the bottle. So too, the great concern of our nation should be to learn from this War, for which the whole nation is responsible, not only to put away slavery entirely and forever, but also that spirit of caste and contempt of race, which nourishes and upholds it wherever it is, and prepares the way for it where as yet it is not. It is almost universally held that the Southern opposition to Anti-Slavery was the cause of this War. It was the proximate cause of it: - but the far more responsible cause was the Northern favoring of slavery. If I be asked why then, in the light of my drinking illustration, I would fight the rebels ? - I answer, that it is for the security of the future, rather than for the punishment of the past.

Let me here say, that I do not forget there are persons, who would have this War end in a Peace of no penalties at all for even the greatest offenders and the guiltiest criminals. But such persons are either swayed

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by a foolish and unprincipled sentimentalism, or by an unconscious, if not indeed conscious, sympathy with the spirit and aims of the Rebellion. To have but one treatment for our Southern friends and our Southern foes would be the deepest injustice to those friends, and the most influential encouragement to the commission of the most heinous crimes. Thus to confound guilt with innocence is to bring into peril the highest interests of mankind, and to insult Him, who ordained the wide and everlasting distinctions between moral right and moral wrong.

Quite extended is the belief, and the fear far more so, that a troubled and unhappy, instead of a peaceful and prosperous, future awaits our country. For to many it seems that, after all that has passed, the South can never be at peace with the North. But only let the settlement of the present controversy be characterized by this proposed kindness, and the South will welcome the tens of thousands of yearly emigrants from the North, freighted with the intelligence and the institutions, which will rapidly mould the Southern people into homogeneousness with the Northern people.

Then it is apprehended that we shall be reduced to bankruptcy and ruin by our great debt and the necessity of maintaining a large standing army. But such army, beginning at the close of the War with, say, fifty thousand, may, no doubt, with entire safety be rapidly reduced to half that number. I will mention some of the reasons why the present generation should pay the whole of our national debt.

1st. It is most wickedly responsible for the War - the North as well as the South - and should therefore pay the whole cost of it.

2d. It is abundantly able to pay it. The Government has rolled up this immense debt by paying nearly double prices - nearly twice an equivalent - for its loans and supplies. This vast profit, left in the hands of the people, has served to give an unprecedented impulse to all forms of industry and to all forms of accumulation. Some of it has been used to tax the manufactory to its utmost extent; some of it to search the earth for oil and silver and gold; some of it to stimulate an existing industry; and some of it to start a new one. War is impoverishing. And yet this War has, in the ways I have here indicated, returned to the North probably more than halt the wealth it has taken from it.

3d. This generation, by undertaking to pay, the whole debt, would deepen its honesty and enlarge its patriotism. It would, moreover, give to America such an honorable standing and pecuniary credit with other nations, as no other nation has ever enjoyed. Her bonds, drawing an interest of four per cent, would in that case sell at par if not indeed at a premium - and this, moreover, to any extent she might desire for helping her pay debts or for other purposes. To supply itself with the means for paying interest and, say, a hundred millions a year of principal, Government might, for the present, keep the Tariff Taxes and Revenue Taxes substantially as they now are. The people, from being accustomed to them, would be like to be more contented with them than with any essential changes in the means for supplying the wants of Government. At the end of, say, every two years, Government might reduce the taxes somewhat in proportion to the reduction of its debt. It might also, from time to time, throw out some of the items, and especially such as are more annoying than productive. That we may feel the more able to pay off the great debt in a single generation, we must bear in mind that it is the Bounties to Soldiers, which have made our taxes so heavy; and that there probably will be no further occasion for such Bounties.

But may not the future of our country be afflicted by Rebellions ? Nothing but slavery could have produced a Rebellion against this the best of all forms of national government. Hence, slavery being killed, we are not to fear that there will be another Rebellion, unless indeed slavery shall return. To shut the emancipated blacks away from the ballot-box is to threaten them with reduction to slavery.

And will we not go to War with England? For what? To get Canada ? We do not want Canada unless she wants us. Now, that slavery is mortally wounded and is soon to disappear, our national character may improve so rapidly, that, ere the present generation has passed away, Canada may wish to come to us. England has always governed Canada in a wise and liberal spirit, and will always let her do what is reasonable. But will we not go to war with England to punish her for her hostility to us during the Rebellion ? England has not been hostile to us: her people have not been. It is only her Government and aristocracy that have been and these are fast getting ashamed of it. Her Government would not again, in such circumstances, refuse to wait a day or two for our new minister (Mr. Adams) to arrive, and have the opportunity of giving his reasons why the proclamation of neutrality and the acknowledgment of the belligerent rights of the South should not immediately issue. Her Government would not again threaten us with War in such a case as that of the Trent: - certainly not until it had allowed time for our Government to be heard from: - and most certainly not, if it had already heard that our Government denied all authorization of the grievance! ! ! Nor will her Government ever let another Alabama leave one of her ports. I do not believe that it connived at the escape of this Alabama. I only believe that, had it been animated by a proper and vigilant regard for our rights, the Alabama would not have escaped.

And may we not get involved in a war with England by means of the grudge our Irish people bear her ? No! Let them continue to feed that grudge, if they can find no better employment. But let them not, in return for our nation's hospitality, seek to enlist her in a bloody gratification of that grudge. We love Ireland. But we love Scotland and England also: - and we have no heart to shed the blood of any of them.

But is not our nation to be embarked in a Mexican war? For what purpose? To carry out the "Monroe Doctrine", will be the answer. It is not entirely clear what this Doctrine means. If it means, that our nation is to set itself up as the protector, ay and the armed protector, of all the republican nations on the Western Continent, then I do not like it. I believe that a nation, like an individual, should mind its own business, and modestly leave others to mind theirs. If the Doctrine means that we are to resist all further European Colonization on this Continent (,and thus Mr. Monroe himself interpreted it,) then again I do not like it. I hold that Russia has an entirely clear right to grant a part of her European territory for an American Colony under a republican government: and that Peru has just as clear a right to consent to a Russian Imperial Colony within her limits. And if the Doctrine means that our Government is bound to take part with the Church or Anti-Church Party, or any other Party, in Mexico, then also do I dislike it. I have no doubt that Maximilian will see his mistake, and will wish himself safe in Austria. Many will go from different countries to Mexico for the purpose of warring against her Imperial Government. Tens of thousands will go from our own country. But they will go upon their own responsibility, and in no degree under the authority or protection of our Government.

I do not forget that, if one wishes to be popular be must not speak unfavorably of the "Monroe Doctrine." It is the admitted touchstone of American patriotism. Congress votes almost unanimously for it. For how could a member who votes against it, ever again face his constituents, all of whom are, of course, patriots ?

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Popular, however, as is this famous Doctrine, which claims for our nation the right to regulate the relations between the people of this hemisphere and the people of the other, and which, therefore, in effect, makes her the dictator of the whole earth - just the thing as it is to restore our self-complacency, should we chance to be left to a momentary doubt of our being the biggest and bravest of all nations nevertheless, I have too much faith in the good sense of my country men to believe that they will ever act upon it. A better than the "Monroe Doctrine" to bluster, brag and bully by there could not be; nor a worse one to act by.

I have said what wars our nation will not be drawn into. The Northern people are not a people for blood. Utterly absurd as is the proposition to divide our nation. by an East and West line, and tenacious as we are of every square foot in it, I nevertheless believe that we would, rather than shed their blood, have let the Southern people go, provided they had by a free and fair vote shown their desire to go, and had also requested us to let them go. But there was no such vote. There was no such request. And they went insulting us and robbing us, and shooting at us, as they went. Our duty to subdue them at whatever cost was obvious. Even those of us, who were opposed to our nation's ever engaging in war with another nation, were nevertheles convinced of the duty of quelling this revolt, and of maintaining the Government against the treason and blows of its own subjects. A portion of our nation might leave us with our consent, and we still remain a nation and a government - respected at home and abroad - by ourselves and by others. But this could not be, were we to submit to the outrage of being robbed by our own subjects of a portion of our nation, and were we also to submit to whatever insolence and violence on the part of the robbers our tame submission to them might provoke.

Having said what wars our nation will not engage in, I proceed to express the hope it will never again be involved in any war.

The religion of Jesus - the simple religion of doing as we would be done by - the only religion to which reason and nature respond - will doubtless henceforth spread faster over the earth. Hitherto its progress, has been retarded by slavery, rum-drinking, war, and the other abominations, which have, like these, succeeded in fastening themselves upon it. It is getting rid of such drags. Hitherto it has been mixed up, and loaded down, with ten thousand superstitions. Science has now, and only now, begun the swift scattering of these superstitions.

The hold of slavery on the religion of Jesus is already broken. In less than a dozen years Christendom will be cleared of it. The hold of war on that religion will also soon be broken. Indeed, in getting rid of slavery, we get rid of the first type of war. Technical war - that is, war between nations - will soon be only outside of Christendom. To say this of what has ever been the greatest scourge of mankind - to say this of the crime, which enlists the hottest passions and the mightiest interests - will to most persons seem very extravagant. And yet, it is, in no degree, extravagant. Modern civilization is continually shrinkirig more and more from war. A little while ago, and every nation was exclusive in her spirit, jealous of her sisters, and counting everything to her own disadvantage, which was to their advantage. But, now, a great change is taking place in this respect. Now, the nations are beginning to bind themselves together by trade and travel and a manifold community of interests, and to seek, each one her own prosperity and happiness in the prosperity and happiness of all. Manifestly every step in this direction is a step away from war. Christendom, in a word, is ten centuries wiser now than she was one century ago: - and it is wisdom, which nations, as well as individuals, need to help them outgrow their mistakes and cast away their crimps. One of the special reasons for believing that war is the next great wrong, which Christendom will throw aside, is that only one step more in the direction in which her nations have already taken several steps, will bring her to it. The Courts in these nations and in their political or geographical divisions - with us the Town, County, District, State and National Courts - what are they but so many substitutes for war, and so many steps toward universal Peace? One step more, and an international Court or Congress is constituted - and then war passes away from Christendom forever. Ere long this step will be taken. Ere long some one of the nations will enter upon this greatest of all the measures for human welfare. Another and another nation will soon follow; and, in the no distant future, conviction and interest will bring up the remainder.

It is my own nation, that will take the lead. I believe this, not from blind love for her, nor from great pride in her. I believe it because of her intelligence, her experience, and her humanity.

Her intelligence. Other and older nations have more ripe scholars than we have, and have made greater contributions to science and literature. Put the people of no other nation are so intelligent as our people. I mean, of course, our people who are not in the umbra, but in only the penumbra of slavery. It is from this superior intelligence that I argue they will be the first to discern the reasonableness and the necessity of an International Congress for disposing of differences between nations, and preventing war. I argue it the more confidently, because the growth of this intelligence is no longer to be hindered by slavery.

Her experience. Alas, how fresh and how sore is our country's experience of as terrific a War, as was ever known ! Surely, she needs no more acquaintance with the horrors of war to induce her to do what she can toward putting an end to all war.

Her humanity. I confess that I did not apprehend, until her proofs of it during this Rebellion, that the North, notwithstanding her debauchment by slavery, bad still, in so high a degree, many of the characteristics of the best type of civilization. Amongst these characteristics is her humanity. What abundant provisions she has made for the comfort, not of her own soldiers only, but of those also whom she captures! Too humane, too tender, too pitiful has she been to avail herself of the laws of war, and to requite starvation with starvation and murder with murder. And now, at the close of a war in which, counting in those of ruined health and mutilated persons, she has lost, probably a third of a million of her sons, she feels no revenge, and would not, as I believe, have any, even the slightest, punishment inflicted upon the person of any one of the rebels. It is a people of such hearts, who will be the foremost in relieving mankind of the curse of war. And let me add that very great would be her sin, if, with all this humanity, experience and intelligence, she should still be on the side of war.

Confident am I that, if the American President and American Congress should, even this very year, commend to Christendom an International Congress, they would not, in respect to so beneficent, grand and heaven, and-earth-called-for measure, be found in advance of the American people.

S.

PETERBORO April 14 1865.