Syracuse University Library
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Gerrit Smith Broadside and Pamphlet Collection

Gerrit Smith to the President.

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 532

GERRIT SMITH TO THE PRESIDENT.

PETERBORO April 24 1865.

PRESIDENT JOHNSON,

HONORED AND DEAR SIR,

Only ten days ago, and the country felt sure of an immediate Peace. The only apprehension was that its terms would be easier than it was prudent to grant. To-day, there is a strong and wide-spread fear that Peace is afar off. Whence this great change ? It comes from the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and from your taking his place.

1st. For, whilst the incessant demand for a rigorous and bloody policy toward the conquered rebels met with no response in the remarkable kindness and compassion of Mr. Lincoln, it is apprehended that there may be qualities in yourself to which such a policy, unless condemned by your judgment, would be entirely welcome. Then, by your contact with the Rebellion - by your personal observation of its crimes, and especially by what you and your family and friends had suffered from those crimes - your temper, unless marvellously controlled, could not have failed to be excited, and to call for the severest punishment on the leaders of the Rebellion.

2d. Whilst Mr. Lincoln was yet alive, Government was incessantly called on by presses and public meetings, by sermons saturated with the vindictive and blood-thirsty spirit of the Jewish theology, and by voices innumerable, not to spare these leading rebels. No wonder then, that the manner of his death is made use of to increase the thirst for their blood. For, absurd as is the charge, that the assassin was their tool, it nevertheless gains extended credence. They all knew Mr. Lincoln's characteristic clemency, and that the terms of the Peace be was intent on were exceedingly mild. Hence, how insane is the supposition that any of them sought his death!

But why should not Government refuse to adopt, or, even for one moment, to listen to, this rigorous and bloody policy? Why should not Government deal with the conquered in this War, is it would deal with the conquered, were it successful in a war with Mexico ? The answer is - because it is a Civil War. But is it not such a Civil War, as the ablest pubtcists hold should be conducted by the rules of international war ? Says Vattel;

"But when a nation becomes divided into two parties absolutely independent, and no longer acknowledging a common superior, the state is dissolved, and the war between the two parties stands on the same ground, in every respect, as as a public war between two different nations.****They decide their quarrel by arms as two different nations would do. The obligation to observe the common laws of war toward each other is therefore absolute - indispensably binding on both parties, and the same which the law of nature imposes on all nations in transactions between state and state."

How emphatically this applies to our case! The Southern half of our nation, containing many millions of people, broke away from the Northern half, and became as manifestly a nation de facto as was the Northern half. We could not proceed against these many millions as against traitors and pirates, and try them by municipal law. The case went immeasurably beyond the scope of the Constitution, and took its place under the provisions of international law. Belligerent rights were accorded to our enemy by our own as well as by other nations. There were truces, that the dead might be buried, and for other purposes. Captives were not killed, but held as prisoners of war. There were negotiations for Peace: and that on one occasion the President and Secretary of State were our negotiators and went to meet theirs, showed, not only our respect for the enemy, but how entirely we recognized the Law of War in our contest with him. Both parties were vitally interested in subjecting the contest to this Law, and in not letting it sink into an internecine and piratical one. Both parties were equally concerned to save life and towns and property; and to have the War of so civilized a type, that their citizens would not shrink from becoming soldiers and sailors. God forbid that now, when the tide of war sets strongly in our favor, we should be guilty of thrusting the Constitution into the place of the code of war, and of holding and trying as traitors those whom we (,none the less really if indirectly,) agreed to regard but as enemies; and whom, by all the conclusive reasons of the case aside from such agreement, we are bound to regarding that light only. We mast not be guilty of this bad faith. We must not break this solemn bargain. The South would hate us for it! The world would despise us for it! And would not the North herself, if not despising us for it, be, at least, fearfully divided in regard to it ? Greatly should we all love our country. But there is one thing we should all love more; - and that is fair dealing. "Our country right !" - not " our country right or wrong!" - should be our motto.

But there was another and no less conclusive argument, for conducting the contest with our enemy on the most liberal and humane principles. It was that it is reasonable as well as charitable to conclude, not only that there must, in order to move such vast numbers, be their sincere belief in their cause, but that, considering how many wise and good men there are amongst them, their cause, however lacking it may be in soundness, must have a strong semblance of soundness. And such it, in fact, has. The Constitutional right of "Secession," which is their cause, has from the first been extensively believed in. Even Jefferson and Madison favored it, more or less directly. Nearly the whole South had come to believe it; and no small part of the North. It is true, that the American people have now put their final and effectual veto upon this doctrine of "Secession." They have done this, not only on the battle-field, but at the ballot-box also. Gen. McClellan's nomination was but a device to get votes. Mr. Pendleton, an open and unqualified advocate of the doctrine, represented the Democratic Party: and your vast majority over him goes along with our military victories to prove that the American people have no longer any patience with the doctrine. Even those, who have clung to it the most tenaciously, and even those who still see strong arguments for it, must give it up. The nation will mark with her strong disfavor every one who shall continue to uphold this doctrine, which has cost her so much. Nevertheless, not to let the extended conviction, at the North as well as at the South, present as well as past, of the truth of the doctrine, mitigate in some degree the crime of the mad-clinging of the Southern people to it, is to betray a great and guilty insensibility to the claims of reason, candor and charity. He is not a right-hearted man, who can read without sorrow for General Lee, and without some measure of excuse for him, the accounts of his hesitating between the claims of his country and of his Virginia to his paramount allegiance. Charge the General with guilt for choosing Calhoun instead of Webster for his expounder of the Constitution. But admit it to be his misfortune more than his guilt that, in respect to State sovereignty, he grew up under the teachings of Jefferson and Madison, instead of those of Washington and Hamilton and Jay. Candor will allow the like plea even for Jefferson Davis. Let him who "is without sin" - this sin of taking as a political authority not Calhoun merely, but even Jefferson or Madison - "let him first cast a stone at" Jefferson Davis. The simple truth is, that our nation had not learned that God did not create one race of his children to be trampled upon by another; nor that she is but a single nation instead of dozens of nations. These lessons she has now learned. The War has taught them: and the cost of learning them has been too great that she should ever forget there. From the lack of learning these lessons, the War had to come: and as neither the South nor the

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North had been willing to learn them, so neither call put the entire blame of the War upon the other. Hence neither is to punish the other: - but both are to forgive each other God says to the North, as well as to the South : "Go, and sin no more."

I called "Secession" the cause of the rebels. Perhaps, it will be said, that not "Secession" but Slavery was it. Nevertheless if slavery was the ultimate cause - if to perpetuate that abomination and extend its borders was the end they had in view, still it cannot be denied that "Secession" was their proximate cause.

But it will be said, that the South does not abide by the rules of international war, and that therefore the North is released from them. Sorry am I to have to own that she does not. She starves and murders prisoners of war - than which there is no more abhorrent crime. But what is the spirit, which prompts her to it? It is the pro-slavery spirit. The same spirit, which ignores the rights of black men, allows the rights of no men to stand in her way. And is the South alone responsible for this spirit ? The North is scarcely less so. Until the Rebellion, the commerce, politics, religious and social influences of the North were mainly in the service of slavery; and did much to give strength and rampancy to its internal spirit. Nothing like half the people of this North thought a man disqualified by his slaveholding to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ; and scarcely one it a hundred of them would have refused to vote for a slaveholder for President. Surely, in the light of their common responsibility for slavery, and, for the spirit it generates, the North as well as the South is to be charged with the Rebellion and, with all its horrid fruits, including even the starving and murdering of prisoners. The whole is the work of both : - and it is the foulest hypocrisy, as well as the deepest injustice, for the North to punish the South for any part of it. If a drunken father has brought up his sons to be drunkards, and if, in one of their family carousels, they fall upon him, he should not, if he shall afterward get them in his powers, punish them either for their drunkenness or for beating him. All it becomes him to do is to guard himself and them for the future : - and this he can most effectually do by clearing; his house, and forever keeping it clear, of intoxicating liquors. So too the duty of the North is not to punish the South, but simply to provide for the future safety of both North and South. I scarcely need say, that the main thing to this end is to rid the land of slavery and to restore to its victims the civil and political rights of which it has robbed them. To this I would add no death, no imprisonment, no banishment - nothing but the breaking up of the large landed estates of the South for the benefit of the needy, and the perpetual withdrawal of political power from tile disloyal leaders, and the temporary withdrawal of it from the disloyal masses. I admit that the probation in the one case would be liable to be shortened, and the absolute denial in the other to be repealed. Nevertheless, since safety should be our sole aim, I would say - let even this take place, whenever it shall be safe to have it take place.

Not to hold the disloyal, who trample upon all our laws, to be disqualified for all part, from the ballot-box upward, in making and administering our laws, is suicidal folly: whilst to withdraw from the black mantle musket with which he has saved us, and then refuse him the ballot with which to save himself, is base and cruel ingratitude.

Just here it may be objected, that the international code of war, which, I contend, should, to the end, continue to govern our contest with the South, does not authorize the conqueror to meddle with the systems and arrangements of the conquered. But it does, as the practice under it abundantly shows. "He may", says Vattel, "do himself justice respecting the object, which had given rise to the war. * * * * He may even, if prudence so require, render her (the conquered nation) incapable of doing mischief with the same ease in future." Certainly, this is broad enough to cover our claim to break up the slavery of the South and the great estates it has created, and to provide at her ballot-boxes for her safety and the safety of the whole nation.

I referred, at the beginning of my letter, to the apprehension that Peace, which, only a few days ago, seemed so very near, is now quite remote. I cannot doubt that it is, if the severe policy toward the conquered rebels, which so many are calling for, shall be adopted. In that event, hardly in my day, or even in yours, will Peace return to our afflicted country. For once let it be known that the leading rebels, who shall fall into our hands, will be doomed to punishment, be it death, imprisonment or exile - and immediately, amongst their followers, sympathy with them and rage against us will know no bounds. Tens of thousands will burn with vengeance, and will care for nothing but to gratify it. This will be true, as well of persons under parole, as of others. In that state of things a guerilla warfare world ensue, which, if not pacified by concessions, and such concessions too as would fatally invade national and human rights, might run through many years, harrassing and wasting our armies, and adding fearfully, if not fatally, to our already vast debt. It must not be forgotten that it cost our nation many years, many lives and thirty or forty millions of dollars to put an end to the guerilla war carried on in Florida by a handful of Indians and Negroes. Nor must it be forgotten that the hundred thousand Dominicans are just now enjoying a complete and final triumph over the many millions of Spain. Rome, like ourselves, was a mighty nation. But, though striving for it through many years, she was not able to achieve an entire conquest over the few Cantabrians. The lesson of such cases is, that a people, however great, should beware of driving to desperation a people however small. It may be hoped that the Negroes of the South would stand in the way of this apprehended guerilla warfare. A part might. But the remainder, identifying it with justice and mercy, might hasten to identify themselves with it. Moreover, if our Government shall be guilty of what seems to be bad faith or cruelty toward the conquered rebels, would there not be a disaffection at the North far more alarming than that hitherto manifested ? In a word, would not the Government thereby, make an enemy of the South, and an enemy of the North also ?

I have glanced at the painful consequences of a harsh and unfair treatment of our conquered enemy. But how blessed would be the consequences of a wise and kind treatment of that enemy! Then the South would be at Peace with the North; would soon learn to like her; and would soon welcome the tens of thousands of families, that would immediately begin to emigrate from the North to the South. Then the North and the South (,slavery having passed away,) would rapidly become one in interest, and one also in character. Moreover, the whole world would be blest by the termination of this most horrid war in a Peace so full of reason, justice and love. Christianity would be honored and advanced by a Peace made so strikingly in her own spirit. In that spirit we cannot shed one drop of the blood of our subdued foe. If possessed of it, we shall forgive and forget the wrongs done to the North; and shall feel that the South has suffered enough, and that she deserves to be soothed and comforted, and no more afflicted, by us.

Largely on your wisdom and magnanimity do I found my warm hope of seeing this War give place to a bloodless, kind, forgiving, and therefore immediate, Peace. But this is not all for which I look to you. Now, whilst we have this fresh sense of one of the worst wars - now, whilst we can contrast its ugliness with the beautiful Peace, which, unless we thrust it from us, is just at hand-now is the time for our nation to be the first of all nations to propose an end to national wars by means of an International Congress, whose decisions upon the disagreements and controversies between nations shall be final. Yours be the glory to favor a measure fraught with more honor to God and more happiness to man than any or even all other measures! Yours be the glory of identifying your Administration with the cause of International Peace!

With great regard,

your friend.

GERRIT SMITH.