Syracuse University Library
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Gerrit Smith Broadside and Pamphlet Collection

Civil rights bill and West Point Academy / letter from Gerrit Smith to Frederick Douglass.

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 583

CIVIL RIGHTS BILL AND WEST POINT ACADEMY.

Letter from Gerrit Smith to Frederick Douglass.

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PETERBORO June 27th 1874.

Hon. FREDERICK DOUGLASS, Washington, D. C.

MY OLD AND MUCH ESTEEMED FRIEND,

So Congress has again adjourned without passing the Bill on which our hearts had so long been set!

Much prejudice was wrought up against the Bill by persistently declaring it to be a Bill for social rights. None of its friends regarded it in this light. All they sought in it was the equality of civil rights. Social rights they left to take care of themselves - wisely judging that these do not fall within the scope of legislation.

This prejudice, however, was not the only nor the worst form of opposition to the Bill. As is usual in cases where the protection of fundamental human rights is the object, this Bill had to encounter the constitution-scarecrow. On the surface of the constitution simple birth in this nation makes a citizen of the nation. But, in the New Orleans Slaughter case, the Supreme Court dug down below the surface and taxed its ingenuity to discover two kinds of citizens - a State kind as well as a national kind. This mischievous discovery, though made by but five of the nine judges, has, in the present instance, furnished the enemies of equal rights with their most effective weapon. But this dual citizenship is fanciful - fanciful, if only because impracticable. I would argue its impracticableness somewhat as I argued it in my Letter to Mr. Downing.

Of all the instances in which the Court asserts the paramount right of national citizenship there is not one where this right could not be defeated in a State which is guilty of discriminating between its people. One of these instances is the coming to the seat of Government to transact business with it. But how could cultured and self-respecting colored gentlemen and refined colored ladies cross such a State as Georgia on their way to transact business in Washington? Denied its vehicles, save on terms too degrading for them to submit to, instead of riding they must walk : and denied its hotels, save on similarly degrading terms that must depend upon the bread and cheese in their pockets, and find what sleep they can by the roadside. Is it said that they must be supplied with proofs that they are, at such times, in the rapacity of national citizens? But the expense of giving effect to such proofs they might not be able to bear. Moreover, however conclusive the proofs and however humiliating to exhibit them, there would, probably, be but few persons to give an open eye or a listening ear to them. In spite of these proofs they would find themselves helpless in an enemy's country. Alas, how many a colored brother and colored sister have felt their hearts die within them, whilst travelling, or attempting to travel, through this still caste-cursed and still satan-swayed land!

My soul is sick of this running to constitutions for authority to outrage man. That one is a man proves that he is entitled to all the rights of a man, whatever constitutions or aught else may say to the contrary. Our courts and congress have not yet risen up out of the world's atheism. They still war against God by still refusing to accept and protect man as He presents him. Their highest crime was in tolerating the turning of God's man into man's slave: and, now, they follow up this crime by still tolerating his partial enslavement. We are to welcome every man because every man comes from God, and, whatever his race or complexion, is the child of his and our Father. Human laws are needed to regulate many of the external relations and interests of men; - but the men themselves we are to accept as they are given to us, and to hold their high being with all its essential rights to be sacred and unassailable. Come quickly the day when throughout our country and throughout the world the citing of a law to justify the invasion of fundamental human rights shall be instantly arrested and sternly rebuked as treason against man and contempt of the law of his being and the law of his God!

There are two concessions to our insulted colored countrymen which admit of no delay. One of these is the passage of the Civil Rights Bill, and the other is the breaking up of the Academy at West Point. The great

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Father in heaven - in equal Father of his white and colored children - cannot be at peace with our guilty nation, until the abominations against which this Bill is aimed and the kindred abominations, which exist at that Academy, are blotted out. To this end the school itself must be blotted out. It cannot be reformed. The proslavery spirit, which, in subservience to the wishes and interests of the slave-power, has, for more than fifty years, been fostered and rampant there, will die only with the death of the school. Government is, always, more or less, complained of for its money matters. But these, in their worst respect, sink out of sight in comparison with its wrongs against man. Money in comparison with man is of no account. Nothing meaner nor more wicked has Government ever been guilty of than suffering the numerous white cadets to league themselves for insulting, at every turn and corner and in every possible way, the handful of colored cadets. It is because the Government stands back of this league, and suffers it, if indeed it does not positively encourage it, that not one member has had the manliness to break out from it and deal justly with his colored brothers. Surely, a school, pervaded so thoroughly by this mean and cruel spirit, is not the place for training up patriots and christians. This school, which the whole American people are compelled to support, wars frightfully upon all true sense of justice and fair dealing. It is an insult to the nation - an insult to the grand old hills, which surround it and frown upon it. These sublime highlands, which rank so high amongst the glories of nature, can have no affinity for a thing so violative of nature and so steeped in meanness as the Academy at West Point.

My complaint of the state of things at West Point may, to some minds, appear inconsistent with what I have hitherto and repeatedly said against legislating for social rights. But the insults and abuses at West Point are much more, much worse, than the mere denial of social rights. Moreover, there are no rights either civil or social, that Government should be allowed to trample under foot. A Government school must be open to all - for it represents all, and is supported by all. If Irishmen or German, are, as such, systematically insulted and outraged in it, then it cannot be said to be open to them. Nor can it be said to be open to persons of African blood unless they can be in it on self-respecting terms.

This refusal to pass the Civil Rights Bill and this reigning of the diabolical caste-spirit at West Point are but a poor atonement for our ages of crime against the poor black man, and but a poor recompense for his magnanimous services to our country in the late war.

The Republican Party has disappointed us. It has failed to redeem some of its solemnly-made pledges. What can we do? - we who are black men and we white men, who are their friends? wish we could quit this Party for a time, and thus punish and improve it. But we cannot quit it for even a single year, with safety to the country. or the Democratic Party is still eager to be restored to power, and is as lynx-eyed in watching for opportunities as it was in 1872, when it swallowed up the Greeley party, and made formidable advances toward swallowing up the Republican Party. There are excellent men in the Democratic Party - but the Party remains bad, very bad, hopelessly bad. ad it come into power any time within the last fourteen Nears our country would have been lost. It would now be lost were that negro-hating and rum-recruiting Party to come now into power. The old Federal Party went down to death under the suspicion of having sympathized with the enemy in the War of 1812-15. And should we ever forget that the Democratic Party sympathized with the rebels in our late War, and sympathized with - them too because it was one with them in the malignant purpose of perpetuating slavery?

Let us be patient with the Republican Party, a year longer. It came so near passing the Civil Rights bill a few days ago, and, this too, in the face of the solid Democratic vote, that I can hardly doubt it will pass it early in the next session of Congress.

With great regard, cordially yours,

GERRIT SMITH.