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

Letter from Gerrit Smith to his colored brethren.

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 556

LETTER FROM GERRIT SMITH TO HIS COLORED BRETHREN.

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PETERBORO Oct. 26 1870.

To the colored voters of the State of New York,

I trust you will admit that my labors and sacrifices for your race in my earlier years have earned for me the right to offer you advice in my old age.

I deeply desire the death of the Democratic Party. I know, however, but one way to kill it - and that is to kill the dramshop. Its lite is emphatically in the dramshop. Perhaps, you desire its death as deeply as I do. Nevertheless, it is but too true that you, or at least the most of you, are, in effect, at work to keep it alive, and to gain for it a no-distant triumph. For as all who vote with the Republican Party make themselves responsible for the upholding of the dramshop, so do they make themselves guilty of supplying the Democratic Party with its lite-blood. The dramshop is, indeed, a mightier weapon in the hands of the Democratic than in the hands of the Republican Party. Nevertheless, the one, no more than the other, dares to dispense with it dares to demand the suppression of dramselling. Just so long, then, as the Republican Party goes for maintaining and multiplying dramshops, just so long is it and all who vote with it, chargeable with keeping alive the Democratic Party and contributing to secure its ultimate ascendency.

Turn away then, my friends, from both the Republican and Democratic Parties, and join the New York State Anti-Dramshop Party, whose one undertaking is to shut up the dramshop. With your help we shall, a fortnight hence, roll up a vote so large, as to induce the Republican Party to adopt our anti-dramshop principles. Then shall we have a Republican Party worthy for us to return to - and tens of thousands of decent Democrats will accompany our return. Then shall we have a Republican Party without a rival - a Party that has put to death the Democratic Party by putting to death the dramshop. We shall not need to cast a large vote to win over the Republican Party to our ground. A mere handful of abolitionists were sufficient to push up the nation to the abolishing of slavery. And so a more handful of temperance men - real and not sham temperance men, acting and not prating temperance men-would suffice to arouse the nation to save herself from utter ruin by the dramshop.

The colored people are under especial obligation to work for the salvation of our country from this rum ruin, that is upon her. Four millions of their race have been recently emancipated. Now, what more suitable return for this great boon could the colored people possibly make than undertaking, "arm and soul," to free the million of yet unemancipated men in our land! And to stimulate them to make this return, let them bear in mind how much more horrid a type of slavery is this which the million suffer than that from

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which the four millions are delivered. The slavery of the body is as nothing compared with the drunkard's enslavement of both body and soul. Heavy as were the chains which the four millions wore, they were, nevertheless, light compared with the chains which bind this million. Every vote for either the Republican or Democratic Party, being a vote to uphold the dramshop, is necessarily, a vote for making fast these chains. On the other hand, every vote for the Anti-dramshop Party goes to loosen them. Do not, my colored brethren, so vote, as to incur the charge of ingratitude for the emancipation of the four millions and of recklessness of the rights end interests of this perishing million.

Another special claim for your help in this case grows out of the fact of the frightful progress of intemperance amongst the emancipated slaves. Information is coming continually from the South that rapidly increasing numbers of them are sinking themselves into a slavery immeasurably worse than that from which they had escaped. Their last state may be even worse than their first. In the light of the fact that the dramshop is so fast impoverishing and demoralizing the freedmen, how can you consent to vote with parties, which still cling to the dramshop ?

I do not ask you to forget that the Republican Party was for the freedom of your race and the Democratic Party against it. They were, then, as unlike at that point as they are, now, alike in their policy of upholding the dramshop. But I do ask you not to listen to the insulting as well as nonsensical declarations, that the freedmen will be disfranchised and even re-enslaved, if, at some Election, the Democratic Party should (as it is now certain it cannot at the next) become a majority. I call such declarations insulting to the freedmen. They have gained their freedom and the ballot: - and is it not to insult them, and that too most grossly, to represent them to be so feeble and pusillanimous, as to surrender these priceless possessions ? The French and Spanish learned in St. Domingo that the African, though so passive in slavery, is the most terrible of all men, when it is sought to wrest from him the blessings of freedom. The infamous "white man's party" will, if it shall ever attempt to rob of their rights our Africa-descended freemen, learn a lesson in fire and blood not at all less appalling than that, which was learned in St. Domingo.

You and I were agreed that it was for the life of the nation that slavery should be abolished. May we be also agreed, that it is for the life of the nation that the dramshop -that great manufactory of paupers, incendiaries, madmen and murderers-be shut up!

Your friend in the past

and your friend in the present,

GERRIT SMITH.