To the voters of the Counties of Oswego and Madison.—You
nominated me for a seat in Congress, notwithstanding I besought you not to do
so. In vain was my resistance to your persevering and unrelenting purpose.
I had reached old age. I had never held office. Nothing was
more foreign to my expectations, and nothing was more foreign to my wishes,
than the holding of office. My multiplied and extensive affairs gave me full
employment. My habits, all formed in private life, all shrank from public life.
My plans of usefulness and happiness could be carried out only in the seclusion
in which my years had been spent.
My nomination, as I supposed it would, has resulted in my
election, — and that too, by a very large majority. And now, I wish that I
could resign the office which your partiality has accorded to me. But I must
not — I cannot. To resign it would be a most ungrateful and offensive requital
of the rare generosity, which broke through your strong attachments of party,
and bestowed your votes on one the peculiarities of whose political creed leave
him without a party. Very rare, indeed, is the generosity, which was not to be
repelled by a political creed, among the peculiarities of which are:
1. That it acknowledges no law and knows no law for
slavery; that not only is slavery not in the federal constitution, but that, by
no possibility could it be brought either into the federal or into a State
constitution.
2. That the right to the soil is as natural, absolute and
equal as the right to the light and air.
3. That political rights are not conventional but
natural, — inhering in all persons, the black as well as the white, the
female as well as the male.
4. That the doctrine of free trade is the necessary
outgrowth of the doctrine of the human brotherhood; and that to impose
restrictions on commerce is to build up unnatural and sinful barriers across
that brotherhood.
5. That national wars are as brutal, barbarous and
unnecessary as are the violence and bloodshed to which misguided and frenzied
individuals are prompted; and that our country should, by her own
Heaven-trusting and beautiful example, hasten the day when the nations of the
earth “shall beat their swords
into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up
sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
6. That the province of government is but to protect —
to protect persons and property; and that the building of railroads and
canals and the care of schools and churches fall entirely outside of its
limits, and exclusively within the range of “the voluntary principle.” Narrow however as are those
limits, every duty within them is to be promptly, faithfully, fully performed: —
as well, for instance, the duty on the part of the federal government to put
an end to the dram-shop manufacture of paupers and madmen in the city of
Washington, as the duty on the part of the State government to put an end to it
in the State.
7. That as far as practicable, every officer, from the
highest to the lowest, including especially the President and Postmaster,
should be elected directly by the people.
I need not extend any further the enumerations of the
features of my peculiar political creed; and I need not enlarge upon the reason
which I gave why I must not and cannot resign the office which you have
conferred upon me. I will only add that I accept it; that my whole heart is
moved to gratitude by your bestowment of it; and that, God helping me, I will
so discharge its duties as neither to dishonor myself nor you.
Gerrit Smith.
Peterboro, November 5, 1852.
SOURCES: Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Gerrit Smith:
A Biography, p. 215-6
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