Syracuse University Library
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Gerrit Smith Broadside and Pamphlet Collection

"To thyself be true!"--Shakespeare / by Gerrit Smith.

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 586

"TO THYSELF BE TRUE!" - SHAKESPEARE.

[BY GERRIT SMITH]

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The Republican Party has fallen! It is not, however, because another party has outvoted it. It could not fall from any cause outside of itself. It could fall only from its own misdeeds and its own weaknesses. As it could succeed only by being true to itself, so it could fail of success only by being untrue to itself. I speak here of success, not in that low and vulgar sense, which counts success in such things as the winning of wealth or battles or office: but I speak of it in that sublime and precious sense, which makes it to consist in the doing of our duty. He succeeds, who, in the sight of heaven, does his duty, even though, in the sight of men, he has failed, utterly failed. On the other hand, he fails of success, who fails of his duty: and none the less does he fail of it, though, in the eye of the world, he has attained to the highest degree of success. Wisely does the poet say that more than to command success is to deserve it. The world admires the victories of Alexander, Caesar and Napoleon. Nevertheless, as they were the victories of guilty and merciless ambition, they are, when weighed in the scales of truth and righteousness, the worst of failures - defeats instead of victories, The Republican Party might have got, at the late Election, twice as many votes as it did get; and yet, without a sound heart and righteous purposes, its great vote, instead of being a great success, would have been a great failure - an ignoble failure. On the other hand, its vote, if conceived in an honest heart and cast with clean bands, though not half so great as it was, would have been success - great and glorious success.

It is not possible that any real success can await the Democratic Party - the Party, which Satan inspired to uphold slavery and to strengthen the enemy and cripple the country in our fearful civil war. The good men in that Party (and there are not a few such, who have the misfortune to be in it - born into it or misled into it) will, when they break out from it and abandon it, achieve in that brave and honest act a grand success - and this too, though they may be in the minority forever. But the Party itself has been superlatively wicked too long to be capable of repentance. A party, like an individual, can sin away its day of grace. The only thing for this thrice guilty Democratic Party to do is to break up. It cannot break up in penitence. Let it break up in despair; and so make room for another Party. Ludicrous advice must this seem to a Party flushed with recent and unparalleled victories, and so proud in its great numbers as to be contemptuous of the claims of truth and justice. Nevertheless, the only advice to be offered even to such a wild and besotted Party, is the advice of righteousness. In its pre-eminent deceitfulness, it is again shamming repentance. It shammed it in the National Convention at Baltimore in 1872, when, in the face of its ever infernal treatment of the negro, it presumed to make the following the very first Article in its platform :

"We recognize the equality of all men before the law, and hold that it is the duty of Government in its dealings with the people to mete out equal and exact justice to all, of whatever nativity, race, color or persuasion, religious or political."

And yet, when the Bill providing for the equality of all men before the law came up in Congress at the last session, it got not one Democratic vote. The excuse for this unanimous opposition to it was that it is for the States and not for the Nation to render this impartial and equal justice. How well disposed the former Slave States are to render it may be learned from the statutes they enacted immediately after the close of the civil war.

NORTH CAROLINA enacted that a colored person is not a competent witness in a case where a white person is a party ; that in apprenticing colored persons, their old masters are to be preferred for their new masters: that the marriage between a colored and a white person is void, and that the person who solemnizes it and the clerk who issues the license for it are each to be fined $500: and that for a certain offence, whilst the white offender is to be only imprisoned, the colored offender is to suffer death. (I would here remark that, as a general rule, if a person's blood be one-eighth African, the law classes him with negroes.)

MISSISSIPPI enacted, as North Carolina did, in regard to apprentices, and provided very severe punishment for escaping apprentices, and very severe punishment of persons who give food or raiment to such escaping apprentices, It provided for the imposition of heavy fines upon colored vagrants, and, of course, almost every colored person was liable to be arrested as a vagrant. It provided also that, in case of the non-payment of their fines, they should be hired (a soft word for sold) to such persons as would bid them off on the most favorable terms. It further enacted that no colored person should be allowed to rent or lease any land except in incorporated towns or cities - and not there without the consent of the corporate authorities ; and it further enacted that no colored person should be allowed to possess deadly weapons. Its enactments in regard to the incompetence of colored persons in the matters of testimony and marriage were similar to those in North Carolina.

GEORGIA made laws similar to those referred to in the Codes of North Carolina and Mississippi, providing however severer penalties.

ALABAMA had some mild features in her severe Code.

SOUTH CAROLINA. Although she allowed colored persons to acquire, own and dispose of property and enjoy the fruits of their labor, her Code was, in the main, very severe She made the colored offender liable to capital punishment for several offences for which the white offtnderwasnot. General Sickles, then in command in that State,

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supplanted the wicked Code with a manly and merciful Order in which he says: "All laws shall be applicable alike to all the inhabitants."

FLORIDA. Her Code was quite as bad as those of her benighted and bedeviled sisters. She rivalled, so far as blacks were concerned, even poor little Delaware in the use of the pillory and the whipping post.

VIRGINIA did not fall behind the other old slave States in the oppressiveness of her enactments. General Terry wisely and honorably forbade obedience to her exceedingly cruel "Vagrant Act." In his Order to that end he declares the condition of the Freedmen to be worse than had been that of the slaves.

TENNESSEE. Her enactments appear to great advantage by the side of many I have referred to, especially in their admitting colored persons to be competent witnesses. Nevertheless, she could not allow a colored person to bold office or be a juror.

TEXAS allowed the colored man to hold property - but in other respects her Code was as severe as those I have spoken of.

LOUISIANA. Her "Vagrant Act" was severe - but it had not all the cruel features in the "Vagrant Acts" of some of the other States.

Against none of these cruel and wicked enactments came there up one protest from the Democratic Party. Let me now ask what would have become of the Southern blacks; what of any of the Southern people; what, indeed, of the nation, had there not been a Republican Party to annihilate this infernal Democratic legislation ?

This misnamed Democratic Party is again feigning repentance - and, this time, in the former Slave States. Where it cannot gain black votes by intimidation, it seeks to gain them by professing a change of heart toward the black men and promising to be their fast friend in the future, instead of their atrocious enemy as in the past. The poor blacks, in that extreme ignorance forced upon them by their cruel oppressors, are but too easy a prey to this still atrocious enemy, who appeals now to their fears and now to their hopes. God forbid that they should ever forget that these States, inspired by the big devil of slavery and the not less big devil of Democracy, began, at once after the abolition of slavery, to set up, as seen in the enactments I have referred to, a far worse type of slavery. Far worse I say - since in the former slavery the slave had the benefit of the master's interest in him, and the protection of that humanity which was not extinguished in the breast of every master. [Just here, let me say that there were always kind masters in the South, and that, all over the South, there are, at this day, many, very many kind men. But, unhappily, they are in the minority, and the control of the South is in the hands of the wicked.]

But it is claimed that the Southern whites have, since their enactment of these excessive and murderous cruelties, improved in their bearing toward the negro ; and that now he can be safely eutrusted to their hands. here, however, is the proof of this improvement? Were they disposed to stop those Kuklux Klans who found their choicest amusement in whipping, mutilating, shooting and hanging innocent negroes? So far from it, they were themselves the very soul and body of these satanic associations. These Klans, had not the nation stretched out its mighty arm to atop them, and effected the conviction and punishment of hundreds of their members, would have gone on extending their bloody work until they had made the whole South a very hell upon earth. There would our nation have been to-day had our President been a man of the complexion of these Khans ? - in other words a Democrat? Our condition would have been worse than it was in the darkest days of slavery and its twin devil Democracy. Such "white leaguers," as overturned by bloodshed the Government of Louisiana, would have cast down other State Governments also, had not President Grant promptly stopped them. I do not forget the Democratic policy at the North of treating these Democratic slaughters at the South as fancies and fictions, myths and humbugs. Nor do I forget the astonishing fact, that many Northern Republicans are falling in with this infamous policy. Amongst them are many highly respectable editors, who sent gentlemen to the South to learn whether the reported wrongs and outrages are realities. As well might they have appointed a commission to inquire whether the Sun shines at noonday. How absurd to question whether the wholesale slaughter of blacks in Grant Parish and the repeated wholesale slaughter of white and black Republicans in New Orleans actually took place ! No rational man doubts it: and no rational man doubts that the same atrocious public sentiment, which called for these slaughters, calls for them on a larger or smaller scale elsewhere. The anitnus of these gentlemen is abundantly manifest in their reports. They went South not for the purpose of finding these wrongs and outrages, but for the purpose of not finding them. They reported that they found none or next to none. How surprising that these editors should have chosen Pro-Slavery Democrats to make these investigations ! For, surely, they must be such, who represent Georgia to be the negroes' paradise - that same Georgia, to be sold into which was ever the supreme dread of the negro or surely they must be Pro-Slavery Democrats who, in the face of the fact that in a few of the Slave States it was a capital offence and in the remainder a State Prison

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offence to teach the negro to react, can yet deliberately say: "Before the war masters, who had any consideration for their slaves, did what they could to render them bright and intelligent." Yes, most emphatically Pro-Slavery Democrats must these strange correspondents of these strangely Republican Newspapers be, seeing they advise, as a matter of expediency, that a part of the negroes go from the Republican to the Democratic Party. No, gentlemen, this is not a case, that calls for the counsels of expediency. It is never expedient to go from friends to enemies; from saviors to destroyers. It is never expedient to give up moral right for moral wrong: the service of God for the service of Satan. The black man who joins the Democratic Party is not only an ingrate to his self-sacrificing friends, but he is also either a knave or a fool.

But it is insisted, since it is extensively held that the Constitution gives the nation no-power to protect the blacks, that the best we can do in the premises is to leave them in the hands of their old masters and to hope for their favorable treatment. But if we have no Constitutional law for protecting them, then by the paramount law of Heaven are we to protect these trodden-down millions: and if we cannot protect them in the name of the nation, then must we protect them in the more commanding name of the human brotherhood.

Will the world never rise up out of its atheism into a recognition of the supremacy of divine law? Will the world never recognize the obligation resting on the whole human brotherhood to save any portion of it from being robbed of those great and essential rights with which its Maker has clothed it? Our colored brethren are emphatically the wards of the nation. It wronged them to the utmost for many generations; and yet, in their boundless magnanimity, they forgave it and shed their blood to save it. If then the nation cannot protect these brethren within the Constitution, it is to protect them without it. It is to cast itself upon the law of God, and to protect them at whatever expense to human law.

We, however, have Constitutional power to protect them. What was the Constitution amended for but to give this power and if it does not give it, what blunderers they were who amended it ! It does clothe Congress with all needed power in the case. We must remember that the Constitution is no longer to be interpreted in the darkness of slavery, but in the light of liberty; no longer in the inte rest of slavery but in behalf of the cause of liberty. Too long did the friends of God and man Buffer under the Pro-Slavery interpretation of the Constitution. They are now prepared to lift their hand to high Heaven and swear that they will suffer under it no longer. A multitude that no man can number - blacks and whites both - are prepared to take this great oath. If the Anti-Slavery battle must be fought over again, they desire it to be in their day.

Bad, however, as is the Democratic Party, there is one respect in which it ranks higher than the Republican Party. It is more consistent and more steadfast. In old friend of my youth was wont to may: "I had rather see a man determinedly wrong than whifflingly right." The unflinching determination of the Democratic Party, though it be a determination to serve the devil, commands a measure of our respect, whilst the "Good Lord. good devil" policy, into which the Republican Party occasionally slides, does not fail to awaken our contempt.

Soon after the war this great and good Party began to temporize and halt in regard to our currency. No reasonable person can claim that it was bound to raise this war-created and war-necessitated currency immediately to the level of gold - but it should net have delayed to give it that upward direction. The nation would have been content had the Republican Party used the whole of the remainder of the first hundred years of our national existence in completing the approximation of our currency to specie.

But I did not call the Republican Party a fallen Party because it fell behind another in the number of its votes. Nor do I call it a fallen Party because of its errors on financial questions - for there were errors far more of the head than of the heart. Nor do I call it a fallen Party because of its vacillation on the Civil Service Reform. The argument against this Reform is, in my judgment, quite as strong as the argument for it. The genius of our form of government and the characteristics of a Republican people call for the widening rather than a narrowing of the range from which to select office-holders. The learned few in a monarchy are more learned than the learned few in a republic. But the masses in a republic are more enlightened than the masses in a monarchy. It is wisdom rather than learning, that is called for in an office-holder: and, whilst many a learned man, and many a man who can answer all school-book questions, is nevertheless wanting in wisdom and in fitness for office, many an illiterate man is wise, and, in the main, eminently fit for the office he holds. Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson and Dean Richmond passed their youth in remarkable illiteracy : but no one will deny that they had intellectual power for the highest offices. I conclude under this head with the remark that it is far better to leave it to the appointing power to make such appointments, intellect and scholarship both considered, as, on the whole, it shall deem most proper.

Nor do I fall it a fallen Party because Republicans combined with Democrats to increase the salaries of our principal of-

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fice-holders. With the exception of the Judges, they were already amply paid: and these fat office-holders should have scorned to increase the burdens of the nation, whilst it is so deeply in debt.

No, it is for none of its misjudgments in regard to such matters that I call the Republican Party a fallen Party. I call it such because it has fallen in integrity and justice, and has, therefore, fallen in the sight of Heaven. This Party began its existence on a high moral lane. It immediately set out to stop slavery: and then slavery, with arms in its hands and with the help of the Democratic Party, set out to stop the Republican Party. This heaven-called and heaven employed Party then took another step upward, and resolved to conquer and expel slavery. Thanks to Lincoln and Grant and their fellow-laborers, it did this great work bravely and triumphantly! To its poor black brother, who helped fight its battles, it promised the protection of equal laws; and most emphatically and solemnly did it do this at the second nomination of President Grant. This protection it now shamefully, infamously, and most wickedly withholds. Only at the last Session of Congress, it failed to pass the Bill for making men of all complexions equal before the laws. It is true, as I have said, that the Bill got not one vote from the Democratic Party. It had no right to expect one vote from that bad Party. But the Republican Party, being in a vast majority, was responsible for its failure.

In saying then that the Republican Party is fallen, have not spoken extravagantly. God grant that its fall may not be final! God grant that, ere long, it may be able to exclaim in the words of the prophet: "When I fall, I shall arise!" If the Party shall, penitently, signalize the opening of the next Session of Congress by the enactment of a law, which shall make all men equal before the law, it will then be on its feet again, and more firmly than ever. Do I mean that it will then be able again to out-vote the Democratic Party? Oh no! such success may never await it. If, however, by means of its righteousness the Republican Party shall ever be in the minority, and if by means of its unrighteousness the Democratic Party shall ever be in the majority, then will that minority ever be a glorious success and that majority ever be a total failure.

What, however, shall prevent the Republican Party, if it shall again plant its standard by the side of truth, from gathering around itself a majority of the American people? Nothing but being untrue to itself - to its origin, history, aims and promises; nothing indeed but its own treachery to the truth. Between the truth and the human heart there is a mutual adaptation. Only because it is misrepresented does the truth fail to win the heart. The Scripture represents that what the world lacks to be converted to the truth is that its professed followers prove their faithfulness to the truth by their oneness in it. Had the Republican Party stood by the black man from first to last, its sublime fidelity to the truth would, ere this, have made an impression on the flinty heart of the Democracy: but, by their desertion of him, they have disgraced themselves, disqualified themselves to be teachers, cheapened the black man's rights, and made that heart more flinty than ever.

The most relied-on and oftenest-repeated objections to the Civil Rights Bill are that it calls for social equality, and compels the mingling of white and colored school children. It does not touch the question of social equality, and it does not compel the establishment of any school. It only requires that whatever the law provides or ordains shall be equally applicable to all classes and conditions of people. If the whites of Georgia wish to have God and His colored children shut out of their school, they can have it so without law to this end ; and the philanthropy of the North will, as it now does so cheerfully; help educate her colored children. All we ask is that if Georgia sets up a school by law, she shall not restrict its privileges to children of one complexion, but make them common to all. It is not her wrongs without law but her wrongs by law, that we deprecate. It is said in behalf of the old Slave States that they can and will have separate schools for the white and the colored children. They neither can nor will. The richest State in the Union is notable nor willing to pay for two sets of school-houses and two sets of teachers. And if this scheme were practicable, it would entirely fail to relieve the colored race of their deep and stinging sense of disgrace in being excluded from a school where white children are educated.

I close with saying, that if the Civil Rights Bill, or one essentially like it, shall fail to become a law at the next Session of Congress, the Republican Party will be responsible for making five millions of our countrymen the everlasting and unforgiving enemies of our country. Characteristically gentle and patient as they are, they may nevertheless be driven by the sense of their wrongs to fearful and widespread violence. Never, never again, will they, nor ought they, to take the side of their country in time of War. It will no longer be their country, but their enemy's country. They can, however, afford the loss - for the God of justice will still be their God.

(I trust that a generous public will be patient under my too frequent writings. I could not forbear to lay my testimony once more upon the Slavery and Democracy perverted conscience of my country.) [parentheses added in ink]

PETERBORO, Nov. 23, 1874.