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Gerrit Smith Broadside and Pamphlet Collection

Letter from Gerrit Smith on temperance : to the thoughtful and candid 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 560

LETTER FROM GERRIT SMITH ON TEMPERANCE.

TO THE THOUGHTFUL AND CANDID OF THE COUNTY OF MADISON.

At the Town-Meeting yesterday the ticket of the Republicans in this town received, in general, very nearly twice as many votes, and that of the Democrats more than half as many, as did the Anti-dramshop ticket. The battle, as was to be expected, was on Supervisor. Our candidate had 156 votes; the Republican 62; and the Democratic 37. It is but proper, however, to add that our candidate would have received far less votes, had the Republicans been well united on their respectable and truly worthy candidate.

Most of our friends here are exultant - but I, whose old age recalls more of the past, am still despondent. For, in the light of the past, I still strongly incline to the conclusion that the dramshop is to be suffered to work the ruin of our beloved country. A few of its (now nearly all gone) began, forty-five years ago, the work of ridding our little town of dramshops. We succeeded - but not till after toiling for success fifteen years. Now, for about thirty years we have had no licensed dramselling : and, during these thirty years, much has been said and done to keep our people awake to the sin and suffering of intemperance. Nevertheless, as the vote of yesterday shows, even in this famous temperance town "there remaineth yet very much land to be possessed." We have still farmers (they are however few) who covet the profits (far more imaginary than real) of furnishing materials for intoxicating drinks; and nearly all our politicians with their duped followers still cling to the dramshop parties. If then, notwithstanding all the efforts in our town for the cause of temperance, no more has been accomplished, how can we hope for the success of that cause elsewhere ? Where else have there been such efforts?

The cause of temperance has many foes. One of the greatest is the Temperance Societies. Were they all blotted out, there would be reason to hope that we might succeed in voting the dramshop to death. These Societies with their songs and stories, and with their newspapers and tracts, that so cunningly dodge the duty of political action, are the accepted substitute for such voting. Let an audience weep and laugh for an hour under the marvellous dramatic power of a Gough, and it will be quite unfitted for a manly effort against rum. In all probability they can never again be toned and braced tip to vote against it. One temperance sermon or temperance speech from a Doctor of Divinity, who condemns, or so much as ignores, political action against dramselling, will suffice to make those who hear it self-satisfied for a whole year in their rum-party connexions. So, too, the new style of Temperance Societies which, with so great a flourish of trumpets, they are getting up in Boston, New York, Washington and elsewhere, will do much to perpetuate the dramshop. These Societies, which allow men to continue to vote for rum, if only they will continue to talk against it, cannot fail to increase the public contempt for temperance. By the way, these Societies would not deal so indulgently with such comparative peccadilloes as theft and forgery, as they do with the crime of dramselling - that great source of all crimes. They do not propose to make talk and prayer the only weapons of their war even upon them. Oh, shamelessly inconsistent ones, how much rather would you have the thief and forger rob your son of all his property than have him victimized, body and soul, by the dramseller !

And let me add, just here, that it will never do to make the dramseller's money-payment for the damage he does to this and that family his only punishment. No one thinks of

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letting off the forger or thief in this wise. No one thinks of having the laws, which absolutely forbid the crime of forgery or theft repealed : and no one should be content with anything short of such absolute forbidding of the far greater crime of dramselling. The people need to be educated into a sense of the criminality of dramselling. But how can they ever be, so long as the Temperance Societies, the politicians and the priests blind and confuse them by voting the tickets of dramselling parties ? It is from their lack of this sense of the criminal character of dramselling that the people favor the proposition to allow each town to decide whether it will or will not have dramsellers. To be consistent they should be in favor of leaving it to each town to decide whether it will harbor thieves and forgers.

Nothing, however, at the present time, stands so much in the way of the success of the cause of temperance as the fear cherished by tens of thousands of good men that quitting the Republican for the Anti-dramshop party would result in throwing the nation into the hands of the Democratic party. Thirty years ago, it was clear to some of us that Slavery must go out in blood unless the people would consent to vote it to death. For fifteen or twenty years this testimony was carried into many parts of the country. Even in Congress it was not withheld. But we "seemed as one that mocked"; and our testimony was both unheeded and derided. The anti-slavery men kept urging the Whig party to adopt the anti-slavery principle - but it, in turn, kept fearing that it would thereby bring the Democratic party into the ascendency. At last, however, when its constantly reduced numbers had become too small to save it from despair, it was ready to join the anti-slavery men in organizing a new party. This new party, the Republican, went on rapidly to victory. But it was organized too late to save the nation from being broken up by slavery and to save slavery from going out it. blood. We, of course, made no overtures to the Democratic party. Fifty years ago, the Democratic Party was the progressive or reform party. To it we were indebted for "universal suffrage" and many other good things. But, alas, our modern Democratic party, so utterly unlike, save in name, the former one, had become fatally entangled with slavery, and had sunk down into a hopeless pro-slavery, caste-spirit conservatism - hopeless then, as it is hopeless now. There were anti-slavery men in its ranks - but we bad not the least encouragement to believe that the party could be brought to oppose slavery. Its leaders then gave, as they have ever since continued to give, a downward lead to the party.

The Republican party is far from being in all respects what we would have it to be. It, also, is a dramshop party - though not to the extent that the Democratic party is. It is, however, a great improvement upon its predecessor, the Whig party. Nay, it is, "to this, Hyperion to a Satyr." And it is so because whilst the Whig party was cold, calculating and heartless, the Republican party warmed and humanized itself with the inspirations of the great moral and humanitarian ideas, which it did not shrink to espouse. It "was its adoption of these ideas, which gave it the power to conquer. When it undertook to abolish slavery, and afterwards to enfranchise the negro, it did not pause to inquire whether it might not thereby bring the nation under Democratic rule. It did not take counsel of its fears - but, trusting in truth and in the God of truth, it went fearlessly on to

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triumph. The freedmen owe much to the Republican party for their freedom. But the dramshops which Republicans equally with Democrats spread all over the South, are destroying the freedmen and threatening to make their freedom a greater curse than was even their slavery. Better for a man to be a sober slave than to yield to the temptation to become a drunken freeman. And who can measure the crime of those that present the temptation ?

As death came upon the Whig party because it would not adopt our anti-slavery principle, so death is now threatening the Republican party because it will not espouse our opposition to dramselling. In vain was it that the Whig party saw slavery destroying the nation. In vain is it that the Republican party sees dramselling debasing the people and fitting them for anarchy and despotism. In vain that it sees a million of drunkards in the land and also the innumerable hard drinkers, who are not yet called drunkards, and sees, every year, fifty thousand of our youth join themselves to the great army of drunkards. In vain is it that it sees our cities and large villages constantly becoming more and more clusters of dramshops, and, from the rapid increase in their population whilst that of the rural districts is stationary, carrying well-nigh all the elections. In vain is it that they see what a power to control the nation is the thousand millions in it invested in the rum traffic, and the liquor leagues extending all over the country, and binding its members not to vote for temperance men nor patronize their business. All this it sees - nevertheless all this does not suffice to wean it from its infatuated reliance on dramshop votes.

Surely, our free institutions which intelligent, sober, virtuous voters are alone capable of sustaining, cannot exist much longer, if this their great foe is suffered to exist much longer.

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Perhaps, this dramshop demoralization and debasement have already gone fatally far. Perhaps, if the Republican party were now to come forth against dramselling, it would be too late to save the nation. But what less can it do than try to save it? - May be that, ere long, it would have the help of woman's vote to save it.

The Republican party is now the rival of the Democratic party for the favor of the dramshop. Let it quit this mean rivalry, and give up the dramshop exclusively to the Democratic party. Thus brave and upright for the truth, it will have, at least, its rich deserving of success as a ground for expecting success. Continuing on the dramshop plane, where it now is along with the Democratic party, it cannot fail to be conquered. For on that low plane, where the Democratic party is more at home than its rival; it is necessarily more powerful than its rival. The Republican party can conquer only in its own sphere of high moral and philanthropic ideas. It falls from this sphere when it succumbs to the dramshop, and refuses to add opposition to dramselling - opposition to the manufacturing of drunkards, madmen and murderers - to its stock of great and inspiring ideas. The Republican party knows from its own instructive experience, that grand success awaits the party, which does not shrink from accepting the rich and sublime truths which Providence tenders to it. It should, also, know that if it shall ever deliberately and persistingly refuse to accept any of them, especially such a vital truth as that Government is bound to suppress dramselling, it will then give up its life, and lie down to die of the falsehoods, which it has basely and wickedly preferred to these truths.

GERRIT SMITH.

PETERBORO March 8 1871