The end of American slavery is at hand. That it is to end in
blood does not surprise me. For fifteen years I have been constantly predicting
that it would be. . . . The first gun fired at Fort Sumter announced the
fact that the last fugitive slave had been returned. . . . And what if,
when Congress shall come together in this extra session, the slave States shall
all have ceased from their treason, and shall all ask that they may be suffered
to go from us. Shall Congress let them go? Certainly. But only on the condition
that those States shall first abolish slavery. Congress has clearly no
constitutional right to let them go on any conditions. But I believe that the
people would approve of the proceedings, and would be ready to confirm it in
the most formal and sufficient manner. A few weeks ago I would have consented
to let the slave States go without requiring the abolition of slavery, . . .
But now, since the southern tiger has smeared himself with our blood, we will
not, if we get him in our power, let him go until we have drawn his teeth and
his claws. . . .
A word in respect to the armed men who go south. They should
go more in sorrow than in anger. The sad necessity should be their only excuse
for going. They must still love the south. We must all still love her. Conquer
her, and most completely too, we must, both for her sake and our own. But does
it not ill become us to talk of punishing her? Slavery, which has infatuated
her, is the crime of the north as well as of the south. As her chiefs shall one
after another, fall into our hands, let us be restrained from dealing
revengefully, and moved to deal tenderly with them, by our remembrance of the
large share which the north has had in blinding them. The conspiracy of
northern merchants and manufacturers, northern publishers, priests and
politicians, against the slaveholders, carried on under the guise of
friendship, has been mighty to benumb their conscience, and darken their understanding
in regard to slavery.
SOURCES: Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Gerrit Smith:
A Biography, p. 257-8
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