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
