Would to God, brethren, that you were inspired with self-respect!
Then would others be inspired with respect for you; — and then would the days
of American slavery be numbered. We entreat you to rise up and quit yourselves
like men, in all your political and ecclesiastical and social relations. You
admit your degradation; — but you seek to excuse it on the ground that it is
forced — that it is involuntary. An involuntary degradation! We are half
disposed to deny its possibility, and to treat the language as a solecism. At
any rate, we feel comparatively no concern for what of your degradation comes
from the hands of others. It is your self-degradation which fills us
with sorrow — sorrow for yourselves, and still more for the millions whose fate
turns so largely on your bearing. We know, and it grieves us to know, that
white men are your murderers. But, our far deeper grief is that you are
suicides.
SOURCES: Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Gerrit Smith:
A Biography, p. 230
