Monday, June 10, 2019

Gerrit Smith to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, June 6, 1864

PETERBORO, June 6, 1864.
MRs. E. CADY STANTON, New-York:

MY DEAR Cousin: I have your letter. It would be too great labor to answer all, who seek to know my choice amongst the presidential candidates. But I must answer you.

I have no choice. The first of September will be time enough for me and for every other person to have one. Intermediate events and changes will be indispensable lessons in our learning who should be the preferred candidate. To commit ourselves in time of war to a candidate one month before it is necessary, is worse than would be a whole year of such prematureness in time of peace. Then there is the absorbing, not to say frenzying, interest, which attends our important elections. That it is frenzying is manifest from the scornful reproach and wild invective, which the press is already heaping up on Lincoln and Fremont — both of them honest and able men, and both of them intent on saving the country. How unwise, nay how insane, to let this absorbing and frenzying interest come needlessly early into rivalry with our interest in the one great work of crushing the rebellion! For more than half a year have I frequently and faithfully, both with lips and pen, deprecated the premature agitation of the question who should be the chosen candidate. If, therefore, the Cleveland and Baltimore Conventions shall have the effect to divide the loyal voters so far as to let a pro-slavery and sham Democrat slip into the Presidency through their divisions, I, at least, shall not be responsible for the ruin that may come of it.

My concern whether it shall be Lincoln or Fremont or Chase or Butler or Grant who shall reach the presidential chair is comparatively very slight. But my concern to keep out of it a man, who would make any other terms with the rebels than their absolute submission is overwhelming. For any other terms would not only destroy our nation, but lessen the sacredness of nationality everywhere, and sadly damage the most precious interests of all mankind.

Since the Rebellion broke out, I have been nothing but an anti-rebellion man. So unconditionally have I gone for putting it down unconditionally, as to make no stipulations in behalf of m most cherished objects and dearest interests. And so shall I continue to go. I love the anti-slavery cause. Nevertheless, I would have the rebellion put down at whatever necessary expense to that cause. I love the Constitution; and deprecate the making of any even the slightest change in it. Nevertheless, I make infinitely less account of saving it than of destroying the rebellion. I love my country. But sooner than see her compromise with the rebels, I would see her exhaust herself and perish in her endeavors to defeat their crime — that greatest crime of all the ages and all the world. I do not forget that many of my old fellow abolitionists accuse me of having been unfaithful to the anti-slavery cause during the rebellion. My first answer to them is — that to help suppress the rebellion is the duty which stands nearest to me: and my second answer — that in no way so well as in suppressing it can the anti-slavery cause or any other good cause be promoted. There is not a good cause on the earth that has not an enemy in the unmixed and mighty wickedness of this rebellion.

You will rightly infer from what I have said, that my vote will be cast just where I shall judge it will be like to go farthest in keeping a disloyal man out of the Presidency. My definition of a disloyal man includes every one who would consent to obtain peace by concessions to the rebels – concessions however slight. Should the rebellion be disposed of before the election, I might possibly refuse to vote for any of the present candidates. When voting in time of war, and especially such a fearful war as the present, for a Governor or President, I vote for a leader in the war rather than for a civil ruler. Where circumstances leave me free to vote for a man with reference mainly to his qualifications as a civil ruler, I am, as my voting for thirty years proves, very particular how I vote. In 1856, Fremont was in nomination for the Chief Magistracy. I honored him — but I did not vote for him. In 1860, Lincoln was nominated for it. I had read his Debate with Senator Douglas, and I thought well of him. But neither for him did I vote. To-day, however, I could cheerfully vote for either to be the constitutional head of the army and navy. I go further, and say, that to save the Presidential office from going into the hands of one who would compromise with the rebels I, would vote for a candidate far more unsound on slavery than the severest abolition critic might judge either Lincoln or Fremont to be. But were there no such danger, I would sternly refuse to vote for any man who recognizes, either in or out of the Constitution, a law for slavery, or who would graduate any human rights, natural or political, by the color of the skin.

This disposition to meddle with things before their time is one that has manifested itself, and worked badly, all the way through the war. The wretched attempts at “Reconstruction” are an instance of it. “Reconstruction” should not so much as have been spoken of before the rebellion was subdued. I hope that by that time all loyal men, the various doctrines and crotchets to the contrary notwithstanding, will be able to see that the seceded States did, practically as well as theoretically, get themselves out of the Union and Nation — as effectually out as if they had never been in. Our war with Mexico ended in a treaty of peace with her. Doubtless our war with the South will end in like manner. If we are the conqueror, the treaty will, I assume, be based on the unconditional surrender of the South. And then the South, having again become a portion of our nation, Congress will be left as free to ordain the political divisions of her territory, as it was to ordain those of the territory we conquered from Mexico. Next in order, Congress will very soon, as I have little doubt, see it to be safe and wise to revive our old State lines. Nevertheless, I trust, that such revival would never be allowed until Congress should see it to be clearly safe and wise. We hear much of the remaining constitutional rights of the loyal men in the seceded States. But they, no more than their rebellious neighbors, have such rights. It is true that the rebellion is their misfortune instead of their crime. Nevertheless, it severed every political cord as well between the nation and themselves as between the nation and those rebellious neighbors. The seceded States embarked in a revolution, which swept away all the political relations of all their people, loyal as well as disloyal. Such is the hazard, which no man, however good, can escape from. If the major part or supreme power of his State carries it to destruction, he is carried along with it. A vigilant, informed, active, influential member of his body politic does it therefore behoove every good man to be. In his haste for “Reconstruction,” the President went forward in it — whereas he is entitled to not the least part in it, until Congress has first acted in it. In the setting up of military or provisional governments, as we proceed in our conquests, his is the controlling voice — for he is the military head of the nation. But in regard to the setting up of civil governments in the wake of those conquests, he is entitled to no voice at all until after Congress has spoken. Another instance of meddling with things before their time is this slapping of the face of France with the “Monroe Doctrine.” I was about to say that doing so serves but to provoke the enmity of France. There is, however, one thing more which it provokes and that is the ridicule of the world. For us, whilst the rebels are still at the throat of our nation, and may even be at her funeral, to be resolving that we will protect the whole Western Continent from the designs of the whole Eastern Continent, is as ludicrous a piece of impotent bravado as ever the world laughed at. And still another instance of our foolish prematureness is the big words in which we threaten to punish the leaders of the rebellion. It would be time enough for these big words when we had subdued the rebellion and captured the leaders. In the mean time there should be only big blows. Moreover, if we shall succeed in getting these leaders into our hands, it will be a question for the gravest consideration whether we should not beg their pardon instead of punishing them. What was it that stirred up the rebellion? The spirit of slavery. That alone is the spirit by means of which Southern treason can build up a fire in the Southern heart whose flames shall burst out in rebellion. Slavery gone from the South, and there will never more be rebellions there to disturb the peace and prosperity in which North and South will ever after dwell together. Who was the guiltier party in feeding and inflaming that spirit? The pro-slavery and preponderant North. The guiltier North it was, that had the more responsible part in moulding the leaders of the rebellion. Does it then become this guiltier North to be vengeful toward these her own creations—her own children ?—and, what is more, vengeful toward them for the bad spirit which she herself had so large a share in breathing into them? — for the Satanic character which she herself did so much to produce in them? But I shall be told that the North has repented of her in upholding slavery, and thereby furnishing the cause of the rebellion; and that the South should have followed her example. But if her repentance did not come until after the rebellion broke out, then surely it came too late to save her from responsibility for the rebellion. Has it, however, come even yet? I see no proof of it. I can see none so long as the American people continue to trample upon the black man. God can see none. Nor will he stay his desolating judgments so long as the American Congress, instead of wiping out penitently and indignantly all fugitive slave statutes, is infatuated enough to be still talking of “the rights of slaveholders,” and of this being “a nation for white men.” Assured let us be, that God will never cease from his controversy with this guilty nation until it shall have ceased from its base and blasphemous policy of proscribing, degrading, and outraging portions of his one family. The insult to him in the persons of his red and black children, of which Congress was guilty in its ordinance for the Territory of Montana, will yet be punished in blood, if it be not previously washed out in the tears of penitence. And this insult, too, whilst the nation is under God’s blows for like insults! What a silly as well as wicked Congress! And then that such a Congress should continue the policy of providing chaplains for the army! Perhaps, however, it might be regarded as particularly fit for such a Congress to do this. Chaplains to pray for our country's success whilst our country continues to perpetrate the most flagrant and diabolical forms of injustice! As if the doing of justice were not the indispensable way of praying to the God of justice! It is idle to imagine that God is on the side of this nation. He can not be with us. For whilst he is everywhere with justice, he is nowhere with injustice. I admit that he is not on the side of the rebellion. From nothing in all his universe can his soul be further removed than from this most abominable of all abominations. If we succeed in putting it down, our success, so far as God is concerned, will be only because he hates the rebellion even more than he hates our wickedness. To expect help from him in any other point of view than this, is absurd. Aside from this, our sole reliance must be, as was the elder Napoleon's, on having “the strongest battalions.” I believe we shall succeed — but that it will be only for the reasons I have mentioned — only because we are the stronger party and that God is even more against the rebels than he is against us. How needful, however, that we guard ourselves from confounding success against the rebellion with the salvation of the nation! Whether the nation shall be saved is another question than whether the rebellion shall be suppressed. In the providence of God, even a very wicked nation may be allowed to become a conqueror — may be used to punish another wicked nation before the coming of its own turn to be conquered and punished. But a nation, like an individual, can be saved only by penitence and justice.

SOURCES: Gerrit Smith, Speeches and Letters of Gerrit Smith (from January 1863, to January 1864), on the Rebellion, Volume 2, p. 14-8

No comments: