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

Gerrit Smith to Horace Greeley.

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 569

GERRIT SMITH TO HORACE GREELEY.

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Peterboro October 1st 1872.

Hon. HORACE GREELEY,

My DEAR Sir,

It surely not for me to question the propriety of your being upon all electioneering tour. For, whenever the handful of old abolitionists stuck me up for Governor or President. I not only electioneered for myself, but voted for myself. I confess that I had no sense of modesty to restrain the from either.

I see that the reconcilement of the North to the South is the burden of all or nearly all speeches with which you enliven and grace your extended tour. It is rightly so. For it is no time, now, to be talking of tariffs a free-trade, nor of any of the common political and economic questions. I would have every other subject than that of the reconcilement of the North to the South excluded from the public mind in this Election. But, whilst I agree with you that this, and this only, is the theme for the hour, I, nevertheless, dissent entirely from your mode of treating it. You call on the Republican Party to be reconciled to the South. But, from the day when General Grant allowed General Lee to surrender on terms so generous, as to melt the rebel army to tears, the Republican Party has been reconciled to the South. Never was a conqueror so lenient as our nation to the conquered. It denies to no one, North or South, the right of suffrage: and to less than two hundred of the pre-eminently guilty amongst the conquered does it deny the right to hold office. Moreover, even these, including Davis, Stephens and Toombs, would have been relieved of this disability, if, at any time, their proud spirit had suffered them to ask for the relief.

I regret to find you joining in this clamor of the demagogues about the "carpet-baggers." How absurd to make the election in the Southern States of Northern immigrants an evidence of the lack of reconcilement on the part of the Republican Party to these States! They elect whom they will just as the Northern States elect whom they will.

In all your pleas for this reconcilement you persist in putting the saddle on the wrong horse. Do, my old friend, do correct this mistake. You know as well as any man that the only lack of this reconcilement is on the part of the Democratic Party toward the colored people. Why, then, should you not say so? I beseech you, by your love of truth and candor and by your life-long advocacy of fair play, to say so. Not even the Presidency could compensate you for suppressing this truth. You idolized Henry Clay. Would that you, too, might say as he said: "I had rather be right that President!" No one knows better that yourself that, for the last half century, the Democratic Party has planted itself immovably against our colored brethren; and that, for much longer than the last quarter of a century, its spirit against them has been little less than the last quarter of a century, its spirit against them has been little less than infernal. You do not forget its never-flagging and ever-biting opposition to the abolition of slavery, and how intensely hostile it was to the Freedmen's Bureau and to all other measures for enlightening and protecting the poor Freedmen. You do not forget how inflexibly it contended against granting the ballot and equal civil rights to the black man, both of the North and South: and its persistent cry for "a white man's government" cannot yet have ceased to ring in your ears. Your new friend Voorhees and other Copperheads who are going about with you, still continue to hiss at any other than "a white man's government."

I need not go farther back than the last Presidential Election for damning proofs of the murderous war, which the Democratic Party has carried on against the black man. The sympathies of its candidate for the Presidency with the negro-crushing rebels were too marked to be denied. It was he, who called the New York rioters whilst they were burning colored orphan asylums and hanging and burning colored men : "My friends!" It was he who promised these rioters his best efforts to get the draft stopped - and, this, too, at the most critical period of the war. But if the Democratic Party showed its negro-hating heart in the selection, at that time of its Presidential candidate, far more emphatically was it shown in the selection of its Vice Presidential candidate. Only five days before the Democratic Nominating Convention, General Blair wrote his famous letter to Colonel Brodhead, in which he recommended a resort to force and arms to break up the reconstruction of the South and restore to the white man his former exclusive political power. This letter so charmed the Convention and so happily expressed the warm desire of its heart, that its author was put, promptly and unanimously, in nomination for Vice President. Not at all strange is it, but entirely natural, that to this

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same General Blair, far more than to any other until, belongs the credit of originating this fusion movement of which you are made, so grotesquely and farcically, the figure-head. I say not this in disparagement of yourself - but simply to express my sense of the absurdity of putting a dyed-in-the-wool Republican at the head of the Democratic Party. Nineteen twentieths of these, who have none into this fusion movement, were Democrats and are Democrats still ; and should the calamity of your election befall the country, they will, of course, hold you bound to represent not the republican but the democratic clement in this disgraceful compound. They will even go so far as to claim that, by the conciliatory terms of your Letters of Acceptance, you are bound to reverse President Grant's policy toward Kukluxism : to have the monster dealt leniently with under State authority and be exempted from suppression by the power of the Federal Government.

Nor have I spoken of your ludicrous position at the head of the Democratic Party to disparage the, judgement of that Party. A more cunningly chosen device than its use of your name for deluding and drawing off credulous republicans there could hardly have been.

Since its virtual espousal of General Blair's bloody plan for getting rid of all negro share in the Government, the Democratic Party has kept on in its war upon the negro. Even in the very last session of Congress, its members voted solidly against extending equal civil rights to the colored race, and against protecting that race front the Kuklux Democratic devils, who spend their nights in prowling through the Southern country, dragging, men and women from their beds, scourging them mercilessly, and hanging, or shooting not it few of them. The sufferers are to be counted by hundreds and even thousands.

Pardon me for calling these Kuklux devils democratic also. With me, Kukluxism and Democracy are one. Kukluxism and Democracy are one. Kukluxism is the culmination of Democratic crimes. It is Democracy gone to seed. They are one, because the Democratic Party upholds Kukluxism, and because the single aim of Kukluxism is to terrify persons into voting with the Democratic Party. The moment that any man, black or white, consents to vote the Democratic ticket, his peace is made with the Kuklux devils.

But you will say that the Democratic Party has repented. Where is the proof of its repentance? I see no tears upon its checks, no contrition in its spirit. Do you cite me to the Baltimore platform? I answer that a political party platform is not to be taken as proof of the spirit and principles of the party - especially not until the party has adopted it at the ballot box. Until then certainly, it is to be taken, at least in many cases, as but the cunning contrivance of the leaders of the party for increasing the party. Until then certainly, it is to be taken as a mere profession, the sincerity of which is to be proved or disproved by subsequent practice. The last Republican platform, because essentially like its former ones, created no surprise and awakened no incredulity. But the last Democratic platform, as unlike its predecessors as day is unlike night, and as unlike the history of modern Democracy as justice is unlike injustice, and impartial and fraternal love is unlike the satanic spirit of caste - is not only to be distrusted, but to be scorned and scouted until the Democratic Party shall have given practical evidence of its adoption of the platform.

No, no, my old friend, the Democratic Party, with whose fortunes you have so unwisely linked your own, is not to be taken as having repented. It, surely, did not begin to repent until after its great wickedness in the last session of Congress. - and, pray, what has it done in the few subsequent months to prove its sorrow for its never-ceasing diabolism during the previous thirty or forty years? There needs to be a long repentance for so long a continuance in enormous sins.

No, no, my old friend, the Democratic Party is the Democratic Party still. It remains as unreconciled as ever to the negro. Should it again come into power, the oppression of the negro will he revived, and the work of the war be undone. But, thank Heaven, for the cheering signs that the days of the Democratic Party are numbered. With the reins in his hands four years longer, President Grant will make a finish of Kukluxism: and a finish of Kukluxism will be a finish of

Democracy. Kukluxism and Democracy, being one, will die one death, and go into one grave.

With great regard yours

GERRIT SMITH.