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Gerrit Smith Broadside and Pamphlet Collection

Gerrit Smith to the Anti-dramshop party : a mutual disappointment!

Smith, Gerrit, 1797-1874.

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Call number: Smith 570

GERRIT SMITH TO THE ANTI-DRAMSHOP PARTY.

A MUTUAL DISAPPOINTMENT!

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To the Anti-dramshop Party,

You were disappointed when you saw me favoring, in the recent political canvass, the Republican party. You were disappointed when you saw this in one, who had ever been pitying as deluded, or censuring as heartless, the professed temperance men who go along with the anti-temperance political parties. On the other hand, I was disappointed when I saw some of you going with the Democratic party. I ought not however to have been surprised at seeing those who had come from that party, returning to it, nor at seeing another class drawn to it by the name of an eminent journalist, who had for many years, been their chief political educator. Then, too, I was disappointed in seeing not a few of you going to the Prohibition party. Less surprised, however, should I have been at this than at the other disappointment. For this party, like your own, is made up of sincere and earnest friends of temperance. Moreover, it had able and good men for its candidates for President and Vice-President. No just man, who knows them, can fail to hold in high esteem both James Black and John Russell.

On the other hand, you should not have been surprised at seeing me step aside from the Anti-dramshop party to work with the Republicans against the return of the Democratic party to power. Counting in the time in which my abolition heart was misled by the plausibilities of the Colonization scheme, I had toiled in the cause of the black man for far more than forty years. In all these years, the most dreaded opponent of this cause was, next to the Devil, the Democratic party. Indeed, the Devil himself could hardly have been more devilish toward the black man than was this Democratic party. On the other hand, the Republican party had proved itself to be the black man's great benefactor It had broken his chains; and, amongst the the other blessings it had given him, is the priceless ballot. When, then, I saw, in the late canvass, the new and alarming expedient of the Democratic party for getting itself again in power, what wonder that I should drop all else, even the Anti-dramhop work, and hasten to the rescue of the black man! Of course, I mean by this expedient the taking up of a highly intelligent and influential republican, seemingly for the new leader of the Democratic party, but simply to be nothing else than its figure-head. The party had not the least thought of being led by Mr. Greeley any farther than be should consent to be led by it. The use of his name was merely to draw off disappointed, restless and credulous republicans Not one doubt had I that the Democratic party was feigning repentance and righteou-ness, and that its success in the Election would result it, the restoration of "the white man's government." and the casting again of the black man under the feet of the white man. Not one doubt had I, whenever I heard it said that the Democratic party was dead, and had accepted its death meekly and sweetly, that the old rogue was but "playing possum" and pretending death ; and that, on the first occasion for it, it would wake up again to its old wicked life and old wicked work. And, surely, if I had had one doubt of all this, it would have been instantly dispelled by the minority report on Kukluxism presented to Congress, and welcomed by all the Democratic members. Bear in mind that it was presented it little after the Cincinnati Convention and a little before the Baltimore Convention. This report, overflowing with murderous hate of the black man, and looking complacently and, wishfully to his expulsion and even extermination, doubtless expressed the feeling toward him of well-nigh the whole Democratic party; and proved that it did not mean to reverse its infernal policy toward him by accepting Mr. Greeley and the deceptive platform; which accompained his nomination. Very significant facts to this end are that Mr. Blair, who, probably, did quite as much as any other member of the Cincinnati Convention to bring about the nomination of Mr Greeley, was the first of the eight signers of this accursed report, and that Mr. Bayard, who spoke so vigorously for Mr. Greeley in the Baltimore Convention, was the next of these signers.

The wide-spread and incessant complaint that it is uncharitable to doubt the genuineness of this warmly professed repentance of the Democratic party is unreasonable. Suppose we allow that it is possible, or even probable, that, on a certain day or night last July, repentance seized this wicked party, and turned it, in sorrow and disgust, from its hideous crimes of forty years against the black man - are we at all inconsistent if we require the proofs, which time, - yes, and a long time too - can alone afford of the reality of its repentance and the sincerity of its professions? If an old thief tells us that he has,

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at last, repented, it is surely enough on our part to hope that it is so. It would be charity-run-mad, were we to put our goods into his hands for safe-keeping, ere we had put him on probation and required him to "bring forth fruits meet for repentance." And shall we, on the strength of its bare professions, put into the hands of the Democratic party this great nation, which only so recently it bad come so near destroying? Above all, shall we take the black man out of the friendly and safe hands of the Republican party, and put him into hands still wet with his blood? God forbid!

Let me here say that, whilst I drought thus unfavorably of the Democratic party, I did not forget that many wise and honest men thought otherwise. Nevertheless, it was my duty to judge and act in my own light, and not in what I believed to be their darkness. How, if then, could I do less than go with the Republican party - at least so far, as to vote for its principal candidates? I did so during the Rebellion : and I did so then, as I do now, for the purpose of helping to save the black man and the country. To have tailed of doing so, either then or now, would have brought me under a load of self-condemnation too heavy to be borne.

To return from this digression - I flattered myself that, after this exciting and absorbing Election had gone by, the members of the Anti-dramshop party would resume their suspended work. But, alas, its only editor has proclaimed its death, and given up his Paper to be edited by a Prohibitionist! Hence, in addressing this letter to the Anti-dramshop party, I expose myself to the imputation of speaking to the dead rather than to the living.

It was my hope that this party would live and grow and continue to press the Republican party with increasing and ultimately successful force to put an end to dramselling. But, I now see, more clearly than before, that I had no right to hope for any but a very distant success of the Anti-dramshop party. Indeed, I now number amongst the many errors of my life my going to Chicago in 1869 with the hope of impressing upon the National Temperance Convention the peculiar, or at least not common, views of the office of Civil Government, which I had cherished and advocated for many years. It is true, that the Convention adopted my Address: but the platform it adopted (and of which, it is not true, that I wrote a part) was, in some essential respects, at war with the Address, as was also the name, which the Convention finally chose for the new party. I ought to have seen, that these peculiar views, which, to some extent, I embodied in the Address, and which, to the like extent, were subsequently adopted by the New York State Anti-dramslrop party, would, for probably a long time to come, be held by only a very small part of the people, They will yet prevail: but not until there shall have been a great revolution in the popular ideas of Government.

The office of Government is simply to protect person and property. Nor is it to protect even these from all conceivable perils, remote as well as near, constructive and possible - as well as literal and certain. In the lax sentiments of many a book, which Government must not presume to suppress, lie germs of danger to great essential rights. So, too, the drinking of intoxicating beverages is always fraught with more or less present or prospective peril to the public safety. Nevertheless, I would not have Government invade the rights of families and individuals so far as to forbid all such drinking. The true rule is to allow the individual and the family to do what they please short of palpably encroaching on the public safety and on the rights of the people. But the dramshop is such an encroachment : and since it supplies no need, provides no comfort, and is an unmixed evil, there is not the least reason, nor even a decent excuse, for its existence. Its attractions render it the superlative public danger. For, by force of these attractions, it becomes the great manufactory of paupers, incendiaries, madmen and murderers. Whilst, then, I cannot go with the Absolute Prohibitionists and invoke the power of Government against all traffic in intoxicating drinks and against even the housewife's making her keg of currant or raspberry wine, I deem myself in no wise inconsistent, and in no degree a trespasser on the individual or home rights reserved from the domain of Government, when I continue to vote for the suppression of dramselling. How entirely reasonable was the Anti-dramshop party ! It called on Government to do its past of the great temperance work by protecting person and property from the ravages of dramselling, and left it to moral suasion to do the remainder. This remainder would be comparatively small. For the ending of liquor-hotels, liquor-saloons and all other drink-dens,

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whilst it would relieve person and property from perils exceeding the sum total of all other perils, would be the very decapitation of the Monster Intemperance. By the way, are there not poisons left to revive the Anti-dramshop party, and to keep its truths and testimonies before the public mind until, by the help of more light, they shall gain a hospitable entrance? That little party is still as dear to me, as it was before it was taken away from me. I am as willing to give money toward reviving it, as I was to give money toward instituting it : - but the work to this end must be performed by younger persons. Much has the cause of temperance cost me during the nearly fifty years in which I have labored for it ; and I still love it too well to refuse it further aid, or to refuse further aid to that little prostrate party, which, though proposing to serve that precious cause only incidentally, was nevertheless adapted to serve it very effectively.

It is not a little painful to me to refuse to fall in with the Prohibition party - for in it are the friends of temperance ; and against it are the foes of temperance. Moreover, its being an independent party, and opposed to voting with the rum parties, commends it to my warm regards. For, yet a while, the friends of temperance, in order to work advantageously for their cause, must work in a party by themselves. In this wise, they will be able to do far more to reform a rum party than by working in it. Notwithstanding, however, all the credit due to the Prohibition party, I must continue to stand outside of it. For a year or more after its organization in 1869, I continued to hope that it would adopt the principles and policy of the Anti-dramshop party. But their theories were to wide apart too justify such hope.

I believe that the Prohibition party will fail - first, because its object - absolute prohibition by law - will be found to be unattainable, and, second, because it ought not to be attainable. I admit that such prohibition may, perhaps, be reached in a few of the States: but, I do not believe, that it will be permanent in any of them. My chief reason for holding that such prohibition should not be enacted is that it exceeds the legitimate powers of Government, and trenches on rights not conceded to Government but reserved by the people. Let Government have free play every where within its own bounds: but let its attempted invasion, at whatever point, of the exclusive and sacred province of individuality and home be sternly repelled. To protect that province - not to invade it - is the proper work of Government. Indeed, that is the best administered Government, which permits and secures the largest individual and home liberty; and that is the worst which goes farthest in dwarfing its subjects by usurping their reserved rights. Hence, there should be no toleration of sumptuary laws; nor should Government be allowed to take the work of moral reform out of the hands of the people. It does not surprise me to find that the Prohibition party has become so clamorous for Sabbath legislation, and so frantic in its appeals to the superstitions and bigoted for the protection of the popular Sabbath. The tyranny of such legislation is of a piece with the tyranny of law-ordained Absolute Prohibition. Both trample on human freedom; and each is a step on the road to the now widely-sought-for incorporation of a religious creed in the Federal Constitution. If we would stay our steps toward a despotism, and transmit to posterity the fulness of republican freedom, we should hasten to repeal our Sabbath laws and all other laws, which interfere with the freedom of conscience and opinion. What an outrage upon such freedom in the person of the Jew and the Seventh-day-baptist is the law, which makes Sunday the Sabbath! What an outrage upon such freedom in the person of him, who regards no day as more holy than any other day, is the law which forbids his own chosen and innocent use of every day! The plea that our nation is, by its Constitution, a christian nation, and that all its people are therefore bound to conform to christian usages, is one that only ignorance or dishonesty can offer. I would not utter a word in disparagement of the Sabbath. I fully believe that the Divine blessing rests upon it, as it does upon the observance of all the laws of our being. This blessing, however, is not upon a compelled or arbitrary Sabbath, but only upon a free and voluntary one. The Temperance reform is the last reform, which can afford to be prosecuted in the spirit of a superstitious and intolerant religion. Such a religion has not brought success to our efforts for temperance, nor will it ever bring success to them. The only religion, which can serve the cause of temperance, is one, that aims to keep pace with science and to be guided by reason.

It does not surprise me that reformers should, in behalf of their cherished reforms, demand more help from government than it can legitimately afford. Especially free from such surprise am I when the reformers are they who are intent on saving this land and the whole world from the matchless curse of intemperance. Not strange is it that, in their eagerness for success, they do not pause to consider more carefully how far they may go and no farther, without trespassing on rights and interests as vital and precious as those they are themselves serving. The work of Government is to hold its shield over all rights and all interests : and none of them are safe unless, the shield be held impartially over them all. If Government should be induced to favor the temperance reform at the expense of other valid claims upon its care and countenance, even that reform would, in the end, suffer loss

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from the partiality. Without a just Government, no public interest however great, can permanently prosper; and if Government is not kept unperverted and within its proper limits, no public right, however clear and commanding, is safe.

Of course, I expect no good at the hands of the Democratic party - the party, which, though in its earlier years the reform party and emphatically the people's party, has now grown into the wickedest and worst of parties. But with increasing hope do I look to the Republican party as a reform party and as a party with which the friends of temperance can, at no distant day, consistently identify themselves. Whilst the Democratic party was its formidable rival for votes and the power of votes, it naturally hesitated to venture upon new and unpopular issues. But, now, that the Democratic party has sunk, and probably sunk forever, under the weight of its iniquities and especially of its Kuklux and other crimes against the black man, we may reasonably expect that the Republican party will be emboldened to go much farther in the line of reform than it has hitherto gone. Already, there are indications of its favoring the participation of woman in the choice of rulers. And, surely, if rulers' are but the constituted guardians of person and property, woman should be allowed a voice in choosing them. For are not the rights of person and property as sacred in woman as in man ? Then, too, there are, of late, cheering signs in some sections of the Republican party that, ere long, it will make concerted and open fight against dramselling. The extreme measures of the Absolute Prohibitionists it will probably never espouse. The entirely reasonable and moderate (quite sufficient though so moderate) claims of the Anti-dramshop party it would, at no distant day, have yielded to. Very lamentable is it that the Anti-dramshop party should have been put to death before its work was done. That work was to war upon dramselling until a great political party (it could be no other than the Republican party) should take up the war, and carry it on to victory. The cause of temperance! May its friends be led to serve it unitedly and wisely! By all that is precious in that dear cause ; and by all that is sorrowful and heartrending in the days and nights of the drunkard's wife and in the lives of her infinitely worse than orphaned children; and by all that is appalling in the ruin, which intemperance is fast bringing upon our country, let every friend of temperance abstain from all intoxicating drinks, and from tolerating license laws, and from connecting himself with any political party, which shelters the dramshop. Let him watch even the Republican party. Even that party is still more the friend than the foe of the dramshop.

I witnessed the beginnings of the Temperance Reform. I witnessed its rapid progress in its first few years - very rapid, because it was then full of religion and of the power of God. Those six wondrous sermons of grand old Lyman Beecher sounded its key note and ushered in its heaven-born work. I witnessed the beginnings of the decline of the Reformation. It was at, or soon after, the time of the advent of the "Washingtonian movement," and when the temperance meeting ceased to take its tone and character from the words and manners of religious and praying men, and took it from the songs and jests of coarse men calling themselves, and in many instances truly, "reformed drunkards." Then it was that the Reformation fell from its high plane of solemnity and power to a low plane of frivolity and weakness. As well might solemnity be dispensed with at the funeral as in the temperance meeting. Drunkenness is far more to be dreaded than death; and the way to escape drunkenness needs to be pointed out and considered quite as solemnly as the way to prepare for death.

Thus was the temperance reformation prepared to take another and a wider descending step. It took it when it went into secret societies. The bible informs us that "ancient men," who had seen the magnificence of the first temple, "wept with a loud voice" over the inferiority of the second temple. Much more reason however have "ancient men," who had a part in the prosperous early years of the temperance cause, to "weep with a loud voice" over the disgrace, and degeneracy of that once holy cause by the trumpery, paraphernalia and puerilities of these secret temperance societies.

Of all the great crimes of earth, Kukluxism - the foster-child of the Democratic party - is the greatest. Nevertheless, there is one great good, which I had hoped might come from that great evil. This great good is the meaning of the conscientious and thoughtful from All secret societies - not only from those whose secrets are bound up in horrid and blasphemous oaths, but from those also whose secrets are protected by mild and unalarming oaths. For every secret society countenances every other secret society : - the least dangerous countenances the most dangerous. But, I fear, it is too late for any thing to avail against secret societies. They have been suffered to multiply in kinds and numbers, until, at length, the land is shingled and re-singled, all over, with tem. They rule in the public sentiment, and oftentimes in the churches : and they are capable, whenever tempted to do so, of ruling in the courts and in politics. Secret societies and their members are now so common as to inspire no alarm. When the masons, by means of the feature of secrecy in their association, had murdered Morgan and escaped punishment (for the association proved itself to be too strong for the laws) masonry withered and, for the time, disappeared under the storm of the whole country's indignation. But, now, when, by means of the like power of secrecy, Kukluxism murders thousands, and mercilessly scourges many more thousands, the whole country is, for the most part, fast asleep to its dangers from secret societies.

Let despots and those who war on despots shroud themselves in darkness and concealments. But every secret society is at war with the genius of republicanism. That genius calls for open and impartial dealings amongst all, and every where. So too, does christianity call for it. Jesus testified: "I spake openly to the world .... and in secret have I said nothing"

GERRIT SMITH.

PETERBORO November 6 1872.