Samuel Gridley Howe to Charles Sumner, March 1847

March, 1847.

My Dear Sumner: — I will not write a notice of Rev. G. Putnam's sermon¹ to-day, because I have just read it, and it has given me so much grief, shame and pain that I could not write calmly. The sermon seems to me (now) to be an atrocious one.

I impute no bad motives. I believe the writer to be as honest a man as I am, and a much better one, but unwittingly he has broached doctrines which seem to me treasonable to God and to humanity.

“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s!” ay! had I been a Jew I would have done so, and rendered him defiance, opposition and war, — war to the knife, while a Roman eagle floated over my country. “Government must be regarded as a divine institution!” ay! and so must right and justice be regarded as divine institutions; older, more sacred, more imperative; and when they clash, let the first be as the potsherd against the granite.

But enough; I am excited, and will go and get a cool breakfast.

S. G. H.

_______________

¹ Practically defending American slavery.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 254-5