Wendell Phillips on the Puritan Principle,* December 18, 1859

I THANK GOD for John Calvin. To be sure, he burned Servetus; but the Puritans, or at least, their immediate descendants, hung the witches; George Washington held slaves; and wherever you go up and down history, you find men, not angels. Of course, you find imperfect men; but you find great men; men who have marked their own age, and moulded the succeeding; men to whose might, daring, and to whose disinterested suffering for those about them, the succeeding generations owe the larger share of their blessings; men whose lips and lives God has made the channel through which his choicest gifts come to their fellow-beings. John Calvin was one of these — perhaps the profoundest intellect of his day; certainly, one of the largest statesmen of his generation. His was the statesmanlike mind that organized Puritanism, that put ideas into the shape of institutions, and in that way organized victory, when, under Loyola, Catholicism, availing itself of the shrewdest and keenest machinery, made its reactive assault upon the new idea of the Protestant religion. If in that struggle Western Europe came out victorious, we owe it more to the statesmanship of Calvin than to the large German heart of Luther. We owe to Calvin — at least it is not unfair to claim, nor improbable in the sequence of events to suppose, that a large share of those most eminent and excellent characteristics of New England, which have made her what she is, and saved her for the future, came from the brain of John Calvin.

Luther's biography is to be read in books. The plodding patience of the German intellect has gathered up every trait and every trifle — the minutest — of his life, and you may read it spread out with loving admiration on a thousand pages of biography. Calvin's life is written, in Scotland and New England, in the triumphs of the people against priestcraft and power. To him, more than to any other man, the Puritans owed Republicanism — the Republicanism of the Church. The instinct of his own day recognized that clearly distinguishing this element of Calvinism. You see it in the wit of Charles the Second, when he said, "Calvinism is a religion unfit for a gentleman." It was unfit for a gentleman of that day; for it was a religion of the people. It recognized — first since the earliest centuries of Christianity — that the heart of God beats through every human heart, and that when you mass up the millions, with their instinctive, fair-play sense of right, and their devotional impulses, you get nearer God's heart than from the second-hand scholarship and conservative tendency of what are called the thoughtful and educated classes. We owe this element, good or bad, to Calvinism.

Then we owe to it a second element, marking the Puritans most largely, and that is — action. The Puritan was not a man of speculation. He originated nothing. His principles are to be found broadcast in the centuries behind him. His speculations were all old. You might find them in the lectures of Abelard; you meet with them in the radicalism of Wat Tyler; you find them all over the continent of Europe. The distinction between his case and that of others was, simply, that he practised what he believed. He believed God. He actually believed him, just as much as if he saw demonstrated before his eyes the truth of the principle. For it is a very easy thing to say; the difficulty is to do. If you tell a man the absolute truth, that if he will plunge into the ocean, and only keep his eyes fixed on heaven, he will never sink you can demonstrate it to him — you can prove it to him by weight and measure — each man of a thousand will believe you, as they say; and then they will plunge into the water, and nine hundred and ninety-nine will throw up their arms to clasp some straw or neighbor, and sink; the thousandth will keep his hands by his body, believing God, and float — and he is the Puritan. Every other man wants to get hold of something to stay himself; not on faith in God's eternal principle of natural or religious law, but on his neighbor; he wants to lean on somebody; he wants to catch hold of something. The Puritan puts his hands to his side and his eyes upon heaven, and floats down the centuries Faith personified.

These two elements of Puritanism are, it seems to me, those which have made New England what she is. You see them every where developing into institutions. For instance, if there is any thing that makes us, and that made Scotland, it is common schools. We got them from Geneva. Luther said, "A wicked tyrant is better than a wicked war." It was the essence of aristocracy: "Better submit to any evil from above than trust the masses." Calvin no sooner set his foot in Geneva than he organized the people into a constituent element of public affairs. He planted education at the root of the Republic. The Puritans borrowed it in Holland, and brought it to New England, and it is the sheet-anchor that has held us amid the storms and the temptations of two hundred years. We have a people that can think; a people that can read; and out of the millions of refuse lumber, God selects one in a generation, and he is enough to save a State. One man that thinks for himself is the salt of a generation poisoned with printing ink or cotton dust. The Puritans scattered broadcast the seeds of thought. They knew it was an error, in counting up the population, to speak of a million of souls because there were a million of bodies — as if every man carried a soul! — but they knew, trusting the mercy of God, that by educating all, the martyrs and the saints — that do not travel in battalions, nor ever come to us in regiments, but come alone, now and then one — would be reached and unfolded, and save their own times. Puritanism, therefore, is action; it is impersonating ideas; it is distrusting and being willing to shake off, at fitting times, what are called institutions. They were above words; they went out into the wilderness, outside of forms. The consequence was that, throughout their whole history, there is the most daring confidence in being substantially right. They asked not of safety; they never were frightened by appearances; they did the substantially right thing, and left the statesmen of a hundred years after, at a safe distance, to find out the reasons why they were right. The consequence is that, when conservatism comes together to-day, whether in the form of a "Union meeting" — dead men turning in their graves and pretending to be alive — whether it be in this form or any other, its occupation is to explain how, a hundred years ago, the course taken was right, and not to see the reflection of a hundred years ago staring them in the face to-day. Like the sitting figure on our coin, they are looking back-they have no eyes for the future. The souls that God touches have their brows gilded by the dawn of the future. A man present at the glorious martyrdom of the 2d of December, said of the hero-saint who marched out of the jail, "He seemed to come, his brow radiant with triumph." It was the dawn of a future day that gilded his brow. He was high enough, in the providence of God, to catch, earlier than the present generation, the dawn of the day that he was to inaugurate.

This is my idea of Puritan principles.

Nothing new in them. How are we to vindicate them? Eminent historians and patriots have told us that the pens of the Puritans are their best witnesses. It does not seem to me so. We are their witnesses. If they lived to any purpose, they produced a generation better than themselves. The true man always makes himself to be outdone by his child. The vindication of Puritanism is a New England bound to be better than Puritanism; bound to look back and see its faults and meet the exigencies of the present day, not with stupid imitation, but with that essential disinterestedness, that faith in right and God, with which they met the exigencies of their time. Take an illustration. When our fathers stood in London, under the corporation charter of Charles, the question was, "Have we a right to remove to Massachusetts?" The lawyers said, "No." The fathers said, "Yes; we will remove to Massachusetts, and let law find the reason fifty years hence." They knew that they had the substantial right. Their motto was not "Law and Order"; it was "God and Justice" — a much better motto. Unless you take "Law and Order" in the highest meaning of the words, it is a base motto — if it means only recognizing the majority. "Crime," says Victor Hugo, "comes to history gilded and crowned, and says, 'I am not crime; I am success." And history, written by a soul girded with parchments and stunned with half a dozen languages, says, "Yes, thou art success; we accept thee." But the faithful soul below cries out, "Thou art crime! Avaunt!" There is so much in words.

This is the lesson of Puritanism—how shall we meet it to-day? Every age stereotypes its ideas into forms. It is the natural tendency; and when it is done, every age grows old and dies. It is God's beneficent providence — death When ideas have shaped themselves and become fossil and still, God takes off the weight of the dead men from their age, and leaves room for the new bud. It is a blessed institution — death! But there are men running about who think that those forms, which the old and the experience of the past have left them, are necessarily right and indispensable. They are Conservatives. The men who hold their ears open for the message of the present hour, they are the Puritans.

I know these things seem very trite; they are very trite. All truth is trite. The difficulty is not in truth. Truth never stirs up any trouble mere speculative truth. Plato taught— nobody cared what he taught; Socrates applied truth in the streets, and they poisoned him. It is when a man throws himself against society that society is startled to persecute and to think. The Puritan did not stop to think. He recognized God in his soul, and acted. If he acted wrong, our generation would load down his grave with curses. He took the risk. He took the curses of the present, but the blessings of the future swept them away, and God's sunlight rests upon his grave. That is what every brave man does. It is an easy thing to say. The old fable is of Sysiphus rolling up a stone, and the moment he gets it up to the mountain top, it rolls back again. So each generation, with much trouble, and great energy and disinterestedness, vindicates for a few of its sons the right to think; and the moment they have vindicated the right, the stone rolls back again — nobody else must think! The battle must be fought every day, because the body rebels against the soul. It is the insurrection of the soul against the body-free thought. The gods piled Ætna upon the insurgent Titans. It is the emblem of the world piling mountains—banks, gold, cotton, parties, Everetts, Cushings, Couriers — every thing dull and heavy—to keep down thought. And ever again, in each generation, the living soul, like the bursting bud, throws up the incumbent soil, and finds its way to the sunshine and to God; and is the oak of the future, leafing out, spreading its branches, and sheltering the race and time that is to come.

I hold in my hand the likeness of a child of seventeen summers, taken from the body of a boy, her husband, who lies buried on the banks of the Shenandoah. He flung himself against a State for an idea; the child of a father who lived for an idea; who said, "I know that Slavery is wrong; thou shalt do unto another as thou wouldst have another do to thee" — and flung himself against the law and order of his time. Nobody can dispute his principles. There are men who dispute his acts. It is exactly what he meant they should do. It is the collision of admitted principles with conduct which is the teaching of ethics; it is the Normal school of a generation. Puritanism went up and down England and fulfilled its mission. It revealed despotism. Charles the First and James, in order to rule, were obliged to persecute. Under the guise of what seemed government, they had hidden tyranny. Patriotism tore off the mask, and said to the enlightened conscience and sleeping intellect of England, "Behold! that is despotism!" It was the first lesson; it was the text of the English Revolution. Men still slumbered in submission to law. They tore off the semblance of law; they revealed despotism. John Brown has done the same for us to-day. The Slave system has lost its fascination. It had a certain picturesque charm for some. It called itself "chivalry," and "a state." One assault has broken the charm—it is Despotism! Look how barbarous it is! Take a single instance. A young girl throws herself upon the bosom of a Northern boy, who himself had shown mercy, and endeavors to save him from the Christian rifles of Virginia. They tore her off, and the pitiless bullet found its way to the brave young heart. She stands upon the streets of that very town, and dare not avow the motive—glorious, humane instinct—that led her to throw herself on the bosom of the hapless boy! She bows to the despotism of a brutal State, and makes excuses for her humanity! That is the Christian Virginia of 1859. In 1608, an Indian girl flung herself before her father's tomahawk on the bosom of an English gentleman, and the Indian refrained from touching the traveller whom his daughter's affection protected. Pocahontas lives to-day, the ideal beauty of Virginia, and her proudest names strive to trace their lin eage to the brave Indian girl. That was Pagan Virginia, two centuries and a half ago.

What has dragged her down from Pocahontas in 1608 to John Brown in 1859, when humanity is disgraceful, and despotism treads it out under its iron heel? — who revealed it? One brave act of an old Puritan soul, that did not stop to ask what the majority thought, or what forms were, but acted. The revelation of despotism is the great lesson which the Puritan of our month has taught us. He has flung himself, under the instinct of a great idea, against the institutions beneath which we sit; and he says, practically, to the world, as the Puritan did, "If I am a felon, bury me with curses. I will trust to a future age to judge betwixt you and me. Posterity will summon the State to judgment, and will admit my principle. I can wait." Men say it is anarchy; that this right of the individual to sit in judgment cannot be trusted. It is the lesson of Puritanism. If the individual, criticising law, cannot be trusted, then Puritanism is a mistake; for the sanctity of individual judgment is the lesson of Massachusetts history in 1620 and '30. We accepted anarchy as the safest. The Puritan said, "Human nature is sinful"; so the earth is accursed since the Fall; but I cannot find any thing better than this old earth to build on; I must put up my corner-stone upon it, cursed as it is; I cannot lay hold of the battlements of heaven." So Puritanism said, "Human nature is sinful; but it is the best basis we have got. We will build upon it, and we will trust the influences of God, the inherent gravitation of the race towards right, that it will end right."

I affirm that this is the lesson of our history: that the world is fluid; that we are on the ocean; that we cannot get rid of the people, and we do not want to; that the millions are our basis; and that God has set us this task: "If you want good institutions, do not try to bulwark out the ocean of popular thought—educate it. If you want good laws, earn them." Conservatism says, "I can make my own hearthstone safe: I can build a bulwark of gold and bayonets about it high as heaven and deep as hell, and nobody can touch me, and that is enough." Puritanism says, "It is a delusion; it is a refuge of lies; it is not safe. The waters of popular instinct will carry it away. If you want your own cradle safe, make the cradle of every other man safe and pure. Educate the people up to the law you want." How? They cannot stop for books—show them manhood—show them a brave act. What has John Brown done for us? The world doubted over the horrid word "insurrection," whether the victim had a right to arrest the course of his master, and, even at any expense of blood, to vindicate his rights; and Brown said to his neighbors in the old school-house at North Elba, sitting among the snows—where nothing grows but men—wheat freezes—"I can go South, and show the world that he has a right to rise and can rise." He went, girded about by his household, carrying his sons with him. Proof of a life devoted to an idea! Not a single spasmodic act of greatness, coming out with no background, but the flowering of sixty years. The proof of it, that every thing around him grouped itself harmoniously, like the planets around the central sun. He went down to Virginia, took possession of a town, and held it. He says, "You thought this was strength; I demonstrate it is weakness. You thought this was civil society; I show you it is a den of pirates." Then he turned around in his sublimity, with his Puritan devotional heart, and said to the millions, "Learn!" And God lifted a million hearts to his gibbet, as the Roman cross lifted a million of hearts to it, in that divine sacrifice of two thousand years ago. To-day, more than a statesman could have taught in seventy years, one act of a week has taught these eighteen millions of people.

What shall it teach us? "Go thou and do likewise." Do it, by a resolute life. Do it, by a fearless rebuke. Do it, by preaching the sermon of which this act is the text. Do it, by standing by the great example which God has given us. Do it, by tearing asunder the veil of respectability which covers brutality, calling itself law. We had a "Union meeting" in this city a while ago. For the first time for a quarter of a century, political brutality dared to enter the sacredness of the sick chamber, and visit with ridicule the broken intellect, sheltered from criticism under the cover of sickness. Never, since I knew Boston, has any lip, however embittered, dared to open the door which God's hand had closed, making the inmate sacred, as he rested in broken health. The four thousand men who sat beneath the speaker are said to have received it in silence. If so, it can only be that they were not surprised at the brutality from such lips. And those who sat at his side—they judge us by our associates—they criticise us, in general, for the loud word of any comrade—shall we take the scholar of New England, and drag him down to the level of the brutal Swiss of politics, and judge him indecent because his associates were indecent? Gladly do I seize the opportunity of protesting, in the name of Boston decency, against the brutal language of a man,—thank God, not born on our peninsula,—against the noble and benighted intellect of Gerrit Smith, whom God bless with new health.

On that occasion, too, a noble island was calumniated. The New England scholar, bereft of every thing else on which to arraign the great movement in Virginia, takes up a lie about St. Domingo, and hurls it in the face of an ignorant audience—ignorant, because no man ever thought it worth while to do justice to the negro. Edward Everett would be the last to allow us to take an English version of Bunker Hill, to take an Englishman's account of Hamilton and Washington, when they ordered the scaffold of Andre, and read it to an American audience as a faithful description of the scene. But when he wants to malign a race, he digs up from the prejudice of an enemy they had conquered a forgotten lie—showing how weak was the cause he espoused, when the opposite must be assailed with falsehood, for it could not be assailed with any thing else. I said that they had gone to sleep, and only turned in their graves — those men in Faneuil Hall. It was not wholly true. The chairman came down from the heart of the Commonwealth, and spoke to Boston safe words in Faneuil Hall, for which he would have been lynched at Richmond, had he uttered them there that evening. I rejoice that a hunker cannot live in Massachusetts, without being wider awake than he imagines. He must imbibe fanaticism. Insurrection is epidemic in the State; treason is our inheritance. The Puritans planted it in the very structure of the State; and when their children try to curse a martyr, like the prophet of old, half the curse, at least, turns into a blessing. I thank God for that Massachusetts! Let us not blame our neighbors too much. There is something in the very atmosphere that stands above the ashes of the Puritans, that prevents the very most servile of hearts from holding a meeting which the despots of Virginia can relish. It is a hard task to be servile within forty miles of Plymouth. They have not learned the part; with all their wish, they play it awkwardly. It is the old, stiff Puritan trying to bend, and they do it with a marvellous lack of grace. I read encouragement in the very signs—the awkward attempts made to resist this very effort of the glorious martyr of the Northern hills of New York. Virginia herself looks into his face and melts; she has nothing but praises. She tries to scan his traits; they are too manly, and she bows. Her press can only speak of his manhood. One must get outside the influence of his personal presence before the slaves of Virginia can dig up a forgotten Kansas lie, and hurl it against the picture which Virginian admiration has painted. That does not come from Virginia. Northern men volunteer to do the work which Virginia, lifted for a moment by the sight of martyrdom, is unable to accomplish. A Newburyport man comes to Boston, and says that he knows John Brown was at the massacre of Pottawattomie. He was only twenty-five miles off! The Newburyport orator gets within thirty miles of the truth, and that is very near — for him! But Virginia was unable—mark you!—Virginia was unable to criticise. She could only bow. It is the most striking evidence of the majesty of the action.

There is one picture which stands out in bright relief in this event. On that mountain-side of the Adirondack, up among the snows, there is a plain cottage — "plain living, and high thinking," as Wordsworth says. Grouped there are a family of girls and boys, hardly over twenty; sitting supreme, the majestic spirit of a man just entering age—life one purpose. Other men breed their sons for ambition, avarice, trade; he breeds his for martyrdom, and they accept serenely their places. Hardly a book under its roof but the Bible. No sound so familiar as prayer. He takes them in his right hand and in his left, and goes down to the land of bondage. Like the old Puritans of two hundred years ago, the muskets are on one side and the pikes upon the other; but the morning prayer goes up from the domestic altar, as it did from the lips of Brewster and Carver, and no morsel is ever tasted without that same grace which was made at Plymouth and Salem; and at last he flings himself against the gigantic system, which trembles under his single arm. You measure the strength of a blow by the force of the rebound. Men thought Virginia a Commonwealth; he reveals it a worse than Austrian despotism. Neighbors dare not speak to each other; Courts cannot wait for the slow step of Saxon forms and safeguards; startled Judges have no time to take notes of testimony; no man can travel on the highway without a passport; the telegraph wires are sealed, except with a permit; the State shakes beneath the tramp of cannon and armed men. What does she fear? Conscience. The apostle has come to torment her, and he finds the weakest spot herself. She dares not trust the usual forms of justice. Arraigned in what she calls her court, is a wounded man, on a pallet, unable to stand. The civilized world stands aghast. She says, "It is necessary." Why? "I stand on a volcano. The Titans are heaving beneath the mountains. Thought—the earthquake of conscience—is below me." It is the acknowledgment of defeat. The Roman thought, when he looked upon the Cross, that it was the symbol of infamy — only the vilest felon hung there. One sacred sacrifice, and the cross nestles in our hearts, the emblem of every thing holy. Virginia erects her gibbet, repulsive in name and form. One man goes up from it to God, with two hundred thousand broken fetters in his hands, and henceforth it is sacred forever.

I said, that to vindicate Puritanism, the children must be better than the fathers. Lo, this event! Brewster, and Carver, and Bradford, and Winthrop faced a New England winter and defied law for themselves. For us, their children, they planted and sowed. They said, "Lo! our rights are trodden under foot; our cradles are not safe; our prayers may not ascend to God." They formed a State, and achieved that liberty. John Brown goes a stride beyond them. Under his own roof, he might pray at liberty; his own children wore no fetters. In the catalogue of Saxon heroes and martyrs, the Ridleys and the Latimers, he only saw men dying for themselves; in the brave souls of our own day, he saw men good as their fathers; but he leaped beyond them, and died for a race whose blood he did not share. This child of seventeen years gives her husband for a race into whose eyes she never looked. Braver than Carver or Winthrop, more disinterested than Bradford, broader than Hancock or Washington, pure as the brightest names on our catalogue — nearer God's heart, for, with a divine magnanimity he comprehended all races - Ridley and Latimer minister before him. He sits in that heaven of which he showed us the open door, with the great men of Saxon blood ministering below his feet. And yet they have a right to say, "We created him."

Lord Bacon, as he takes his march down the centuries, may put one hand on the telegraph and the other on the steam engine, and say, "These are mine, for I taught you to invent." So the Puritans may bless John Brown, and say, "You are ours, though you have gone beyond us, for we taught you to believe in God. We taught you to say, God is God, and trample wicked laws under your feet." And now, from that Virginia gibbet, he says to us, "The maxim I taught you, practise it! The principle I have shown you, apply it! If the crisis becomes sterner, meet it! If the battle is closer, be true to my memory! Men say my act was a failure. I showed what I promised, that the slave ought to resist, and could. Sixteen men I placed under the shelter of English law, and then I taught the millions. Prove that my enterprise was not a failure, by showing a North ready to stand behind it, I am willing, in God's service, to plunge with ready martyrdom into the chasm that opens in the forum, only show yourselves worthy to stand upon my grave!"

It seems to me that this is the lesson of Puritanism, as it is read to us to-day. "Law" and "order" are only names for the halting ignorance of the last generation. John Brown is the impersonation of God's order and God's law, moulding a better future, and setting for it an example.

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* A Discourse delivered before the Twenty-eighth Congregational Society, (Rev. Theodore Parker's,) in the Music Hall, Boston, on Sunday, December 18, 1859.

SOURCE: James Redpath, Editor, Echoes of Harper’s Ferry, pp. 105-18

Horace Greeley, Henry Ward Beecher et al to Gerrit Smith, June 1865

June, 1865.

Gerrit Smith, Esq., New York:

Dear Sir, — The events which, with increasing emphasis are inscribing our national history, attract and impress the public mind. We think that information is needed and counsel required. We know that the interest which you have felt in the conflict which is passed, continues to the stages of its pacification and close.

Understanding your willingness to communicate with your fellow citizens on national topics, we would be pleased could you address a public meeting in this city, at the Cooper Institute, on the evening of next Thursday, the 8th instant, on the present attitude of the country.

Horace Greeley,

C. Godfrey Gunther,

E. H. Chapin,

Henry Ward Beecher,

Rich'd O'gorman,

David Dudley Field,

Sam'l L. M. Barlow,

Henry W. Bellows,

Hiram Ketchum.

SOURCES: Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Gerrit Smith: A Biography, p. 293

Gerrit Smith

As a general thing, they who in the late war fought for the salvation of our country, were poor. Included in this salvation were the estates of our rich men. It would be an expression of justice and gratitude toward the poor, and at the same time not at all oppressive to the rich, were our large estates made to pay, for a few years to come, a greater proportion than they now pay of the annual payment on our war debt. Moreover both the benevolence and patriotism of our rich men should make it a pleasure to them to pay ten per cent on incomes exceeding ten thousand dollars, and twenty per cent on incomes exceeding twenty thousand dollars.

SOURCES: Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Gerrit Smith: A Biography, p. 271-2

Gerrit Smith: Destroy Not Man's Faith In Man!, June 12, 1862

DESTROY NOT MAN'S FAITH IN MAN!

ACCEPT THE RIGHT MAN, WHICHEVER PARTY NOMINATES HIM!

A people are demoralized by being trained to the ready entertainment of charges of corruption against those, whom they select to be their rulers, teachers and exemplars. For, when they can easily suspect such ones of baseness and crime, their faith in man is destroyed. It scarcely need be added that, when they have no longer faith in man, they will be quick to acquiesce in the application of a very low standard of morality to their leaders, and a still lower one to themselves. I say a still lower one, inasmuch as they will, naturally, expect a less degree of moral worth in the masses than in the individual, who is, here and there, selected from the masses on account of his superior wisdom and virtue. How much better it would be to persuade the people that it is their duty to hold sacred the reputation of those, whom they elevate to posts of honor! For how much more like would they, then, be to elevate those only, whose reputation is worthy to be held sacred! Moreover, what could be more elevating to themselves than such carefulness in selecting their guides and representatives!

I have been led to make these remarks by seeing the recent calumnious and contemptuous treatment of the Chief Justice and such Senators as Mr. Fessenden and Mr. Trumbull. The flood-gates of defamation were opened upon Mr. Fessenden and Mr. Trumbull, because they voted for the acquittal of the President. I wish they had voted for his conviction. For, although I had not, previously, taken much interest in the proposition to impeach him, nevertheless, after reading those parts of his last Annual Message in which he traduces the colored citizens of our country, I was quite willing to have him removed from office. Were Victoria to take such an outrageous liberty with the Irish or Scotch or Welsh, she would quickly be relieved of her crown. I do not forget that insulting the negro is an American usage. But not with impunity should the President of the whole American people insult, in his official capacity, any of the races, which make up that people — least of all the race, which is, already, the most deeply wronged of them all. This gross violation of the perfect impartiality, which should ever mark the administration of the President's high Office — this ineffable meanness of assailing the persecuted and weak, whom he might rather have consoled and cheered, should not have been overlooked, but should have been promptly and sternly rebuked. How petty the President's affair with Mr. Stanton, compared with his unrelenting wicked war upon these black millions, to whose magnanimous forgiveness of our measureless wrongs against them, and to whose brave help of our Cause we were so largely indebted for its success!

I said that I wish Mr. Fessenden and Mr. Trumbull had voted for the conviction of the President. Nevertheless, in the light of their life-long uprightness, I have not the least reason to doubt that they voted honestly. Nay, in the light of their eminent wisdom, I am bound to pause and inquire of my candid judgment whether they did not vote wisely as well as honestly.

This clamor against the Chief Justice was not, as is pretended, occasioned by his conduct in the Impeachment Trial. That this conduct was wise and impartial, scarcely one intelligent man can doubt. This clamor proceeded from the purpose of preventing his nomination to the Presidency. It is said that he desires to be President. But a desire for this high Office is not, necessarily, culpable. Instead of being prompted in all instances by selfishness, it may in some instances be born of a high patriotism and a disinterested philanthropy. For one, I should rejoice to see the Chief Justice in the Presidency; — and I say this, after a-many-years intimate acquaintance with him — after much personal observation of the workings of his head and heart. I, however, expect to vote for Grant and Colfax. I like them both; and, in the main, I like the platform on which they stand. Nevertheless, if contrary to my expectations, the Democrats shall have the wisdom to nominate the Chief Justice, and along with him a gentleman of similar views and spirit — a gentleman honest both toward the Nation's creditors and toward the negro — I shall prefer to vote for the Democratic Candidates. And why, in the case of such nomination by the Democrats, should not every Republican be willing, nay glad, to sustain the nomination? If the Democrats, at last sick and ashamed, as I have no doubt tens of thousands of them are, of ministering to the mean spirit of caste — prating for “a white man's government,” and defying the sentiment of the civilized world — shall give up their nonsense and wickedness, and nominate for office such men as Republicans have been eager to honor — how wanting in magnanimity and in devotion to truth, and how enslaved to Party, would Republicans show themselves to be, were they not to welcome this overture, and generously respond to these concessions!

By all means should the Republicans let, ay and help, the Democratic Party succeed at the coming Election, provided only that its candidates be the representatives of a real and righteous, instead of a cutaneous and spurious, Democracy. That success would bring to an end this too-long-continued War between Republicans and Democrats. That success would turn us all into Republicans and all into Democrats. The old and absorbing issues about Slavery and its incidents would, then, have passed away. The “everlasting negro,” having gained his rights, would then have sunk out of sight. Doubtless, new Parties would, ere long, be formed. But they would be formed with reference to new questions or, more generally, to old ones, which, by reason of the engrossing interest in the Slavery Battle, have been compelled to wait very long, and with very great detriment to the public weal, for their due share of the public attention.

And, then too, when the quarrel between the Republican and Democratic Parties had ended, Peace between the North and the South would speedily come. Hitherto, the Republican Party has been so anxious to keep a bad Party out of power, that it has not been in a mood to use or study all the means for producing Peace between the North and South. It should, immediately on the surrender of the South, have inculcated on the North the duty of penitently confessing her share of the responsibility for the War—a share as great as the South's, since the responsibility of the North for Slavery, out of which the War grew, was as great as the South's. Quickly would the South have followed this example of penitent confession. And, then, the two would have rivalled each other in expressions of mutual forgiveness and mutual love. Amongst these expressions would have been the avowal of the North to charge no one with Treason, and to open wide the door for the return of every exile, who had not, by some mean or murderous violation of the laws of war, shut himself out of the pale of humanity. And amongst these expressions would have been the joyful consent of the North to let fifty or a hundred millions go from the National Treasury toward helping her War-impoverished sister rise up out of her desolations. The heart of the South would, now, have been won; and she would have manifested the fact by tendering to the North a carte blanche — feeling no fear that there would be any designed injustice in the terms of “Reconstruction,” which her forgiving and generous foe should write upon it. Yes, there would, then, have been Peace between the North and the South — a true and loving and enduring Peace. Ashamed of their past, they would unitedly and cordially have entered upon the work of making a future for our country as innocent and as happy as that past had been guilty and sorrowful. It is not, now, too late to have, by such means, such a Peace. We should, surely, have it, were there to be, at the coming Election, that oneness between Republicans and Democrats, which good sense and good feeling call for.

Is it said that the money, which in loans or (preferably) gifts to the South, I ask to have used in effecting this Peace would make the Peace cost too much? I answer that it would be returned tenfold. The improvement in our National credit, resulting from such a Peace, would, very soon, enable our Government to borrow at an interest of four per cent. Comparatively small, then, would be our taxes, and, by the way, comparatively small, then, would be the temptation to cheat the Nation's creditors.

Peterboro JUNE 12 1868.

G. S.

Bottom of Form

SOURCES: Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Gerrit Smith: A Biography, p. 266-7; Smith, Gerrit. Destroy not man's faith in man! Accept the right man, whichever party nominates him! ... G. S. Peterboro. Peterboro, 1868. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/rbpe.12703100/. 

Gerrit Smith

As long as Andersonville shall live in the world's memory, (and can its sins and sorrows ever be forgotten?) so long shall it warn men not to trample upon nor forget the rights of their fellow-men. By the way, the guilt of Andersonville rests not alone on the South. The North has countenanced and justified the Southern contempt and denial of the rights of the black man. Nor was this by Democrats only. The Republican Party, though not so extensively, was also involved in the guilt. The doctrine that the black man has no rights, is still virtually subscribed to, not only by the mass of the Democrats, but by multitudes of Republicans also. Many a Northern church is still defiled by it. The religion and politics, the commerce and social usages of the North are all to be held as having a part in fashioning the policy which rules at Andersonville; the policy of ignoring the rights of prisoners of war, and of starving and murdering them. Moreover, many a prisoner there, if his sufferings have sufficiently clarified his vision for it, is able to see that he is himself chargeable with a responsible part in the production of those sufferings; — ay, that he is “hoist with his own petard.” In his political or ecclesiastical party, and elsewhere also, he has contributed to uphold the southern policy of excluding the black man from all rights; and consequently, as events have proved, of excluding himself too from them.

SOURCES: Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Gerrit Smith: A Biography, p. 264-5

Gerrit Smith: The News From England, January 3, 1862

Alas! that this news should find us still embarrassed, and still diddling with the negro question!  Alas! That we should still have one war upon our hands, while we are threatened with another?  Had we, as we should have done, disposed of this question at the beginning of the war, then would its beginning have also been its ending.  If slavery was not, as it certainly was, the sole cause of the war, it nevertheless, was that vulnerable spot in the foe at which we should have struck without a moment’s delay.  Instead of repelling the negroes, bond and free, by insults and cruel treatment we could have brought them all to our side by simply inviting them to it.  As it is, the war has grown into a very formidable one; and the threatened one whereas, had we not acted insanely on the negro question, we could have dreaded neither.  More than this, had we, as it was so easy to do, struck instant death into the first war, we should have escaped the threat of this second one.

For what is it that the English press threatens us with war? It is for compelling the English ship to give up the rebel commissioners, so it says. This is the ostensible reason. But would not England — she who is so famous for clinging to an almost entirely unqualified and unlimited right of search — have done the same thing in like circumstances? If she would not, then she would not have been herself. Had a part of her home counties revolted and sent a couple of their rebels to America for help, would she not have caught them if she could? And in whatever circumstances they might have been found? If she says she would not, there is not on all the earth one “Jew Apella” so credulous as to believe her. If she confesses she would, then is she self-convicted, not only of trampling in her boundless dishonesty on the great and never-to-be-violated principle of doing as we would be done by, but of insulting us by claiming that we ought to be tame and base enough to forbear to do that which her self-respect and high spirit would prompt her to do.

But perhaps England would not have done as we did.  Her naval captains have taken thousands of seamen from our ships — these captains constituting themselves the sole accusers, witnesses and judges in the cases. It was chiefly for such outrages that we declared war against her in 1812. The instance of the San Jacinto and Trent is not like these. In this instance there was no question, because no doubt, of personal identity. But I repeat, perhaps England would not have done as we did.  In a case so aggravated, she would, perhaps, may, probably, have taken ship and all.  By the way, it may be that we did act illegally in not seizing the ship as well as the rebels, and subjecting her to a formal trial; but if in this we fell into a mistake, could England be so mean as to make war upon us for it? — for a mistake which was prompted by a kind and generous regard for the comfort and interests of Englishmen? Surely, if England is not noble enough to refuse to punish for any mere mistake, She is, nevertheless, not monstrous enough to punish for the mistake, which grew solely out of the desire to serve her.

But wherein have we harmed England in this matter?  We have insulted her, is the answer. We have not, however, intended to insult her: and an unintended insult is really no insult.  If, in my eagerness to overtake the man who has deeply injured me, I run rudely through my neighbor’s house he will not only not accuse me of insulting him, but he will pardon so much to my very excusable eagerness as to leave but little ground of any kind of complaint against me.  Surely, if England were but to ask her own heart how she would feel toward men in her own bosom, who, without the slightest provocation, were busy in breaking up her nation, and in plundering and slaughtering her people, she would be more disposed to shed tears of pity for us that to make war upon us.

It is not possible that England will make war on us for what we did to the Trent, and for doing which she has herself furnished us innumerable precedents.  It is not possible that she will so ignore, nay, so deny and dishonor her own history. I will not believe that England, whom I have ever loved and honored almost as if she were my own country, and who, whatever prejudiced and passionate American writers have written to the contrary, has hitherto, during our great and sore trial done nothing through her government, nor through the great body of her people, to justify the attempt by a portion (happily a very small and very unworthy portion) of our press to stir up our national feeling against her — I say I will not believe that this loved and honored England will make war upon us for a deed in which we intended her no wrong; in which, so far as her own example is authority, there is no wrong; and in which, in the light of reason, and, as it will prove in the judgment of mankind, there is no wrong. She could not make such a causeless war upon us without deeply and broadly blotting her own character and he character of modern civilization. But, after, all, what better is our modern civilization than a mere blot and blotch if the nation which is preeminently its exponent, can be guilty, and without the least real cause of provocation, and upon pretests as frivolous as they are false, of seeing to destroy a sister nation? — a sister nation, too, whose present embarrassments and distresses appeal so strongly to every good heart? Moreover, how little will it argue for the cause of human rights, and popular institutions, if the nation, which claims to be the chief champion of that cause, can wage so wicked a war upon a nation claiming no humbler relation to that precious cause?

What, then, do I hold that England should do in this case?

1st. Reprimand or more severely punish the captain of the Trent for his very gross and very guilty violation of our rights in furnishing exceedingly important facilities to our enemy. This our government should have promptly insisted on, and not have suffered England to get the start of us with her absurd counter claim.  This is a case in which not we, but England, should have been made defendant.  It is her Captain who is the real offender.  Ours is, at the most, but a nominal one.  In the conduct of her Captain were in spirit and purpose, as well as the doing, of wrong.  The conduct of ours, on the contrary, was prompted by the spirit and purpose of doing right; and if, in any respect, it was erroneous, it was simply in regard to the forms of doing right.  Moreover, the guilt of her Captain can be diminished by nothing that was seemingly or really guilty in ours. The criminality of taking the rebels into the Trent was none the less, because of any mistakes which attended the getting of them out.  Nevertheless, England takes no action against him.  Her policy is to have her guilty Captain lost sight of in her bluster about our innocent one.  To screen the thief, she cries, “Stop thief!”  Her policy is to prevent us from getting the true issue before the public mind, by occupying it with her false one.

How preposterous is the claim of England to her right to make war, because we took our rebellious subjects from her ship!  The taking of them into her ship is the only thing in the case which can possibly furnish cause of war. That, unless amply apologized for, does, in the light of international law, furnish abundant cause of war.

Did every hypocrisy and impudence go farther than in England’s putting America on trial! Was there ever a more emphatic “putting the saddle on the wrong horse”? I overtake the thief who has stolen my watch, and jerk it from his pocket.  He turns to the people, not to confess his theft, but to protest against my rudeness, and to have me, instead of himself, regarded as the criminal!

An old fable tells us that a council of animals, with the lion at their head, put an ass on trial for having “broused the bigness of his tongue.” The lion (England) was constrained to confess that he had himself eaten sheep, and shepherds too.  Nevertheless, it was the offence of the ass (America) that caused the council to shudder with horror. “What! Eat another’s grass? O shame!” and so the virtuous rascals condemned him to die, and rejoiced anew in their conscious innocence.

Moreover, England, instead of turning to her own conscience with the true case, has the brazen effrontery to appeal to our conscience with her trumped-up case.  Which of the parties in this instance needs conscience-quickening, in no less certain than in the instance of the footpad and the traveler, when he had robbed of his bags of gold.  The poor traveler meekly asked for a few coins to defray his expenses homeward. “Take them from one of the bags,” said the footpad, with an air of chivalrous magnanimity; but on seeing the traveler take half a dozen instead of two or three, he exclaimed, “Why, man, have you no conscience?”  England, through her subject and servant, entered into a conspiracy against America.  America, through her subject and servant, forbore to punish the wickedness, and simply stopped it.  And yet England bids us to our conscience!

Why Should England protect her captain?  Her Queen, in her last May’s Proclamation, warned him that, for doing what he has done, he should, “in no wise obtain any protection.” He had full knowledge of the official character of the rebles, and at least inferential knowledge of their bearing dispatches with them.  But, besides that the whole spirit of it is against what he has done, her Proclamation specifies “officers” and “dispatches” in the list of what her subjects are prohibited to carry “for the use or service of either of the contending parties.

England did not protect the Captain of her mail-steamer, Teviot, who, during our war with Mexico was guilty of carrying the Mexican General Paredez.  He was suspended.  Why does she spare the Captain of the Trent?  Is it because she has more sympathy with the Southern Confederacy than she had with Mexico? — and is, therefore, more tender toward him who serves the former, than she was toward him who served the latter?  But it will, perhaps be said, that we have not demanded satisfaction in this case as we did in that.  England, nevertheless, knows that we are entitled to it; and that she is bound to satisfy us for the wrongs she did us, before she complains of the way we took to save ourselves from the deep injury with which that great and guilty wrong threatened us.  In this connexion, I add that if, upon her own principles and precedents, the Captain of the Trent deserves punishment for what he did, she is stopped from magnifying into a grave offence our undoing what we did.

2. The next thing that England should do is to give instructions, or rather repeat those in the Queen's Proclamation, that no more rebel commissioners be received into her vessels.

3. And then she should inform us whether, in the case of a vessel that shall hereafter offend in this wise, she would have us take the vessel itself, or take but the commissioners. It is true that whatever her preference, we would probably insist on taking the vessel in every case: — for it is not probable that we shall again expose ourselves in such a case to the charge of taking too little. It is, however, also true, that, should she prefer our taking the vessel, we will certainly never take less.

But such instructions and information, although they would provide for future cases, would leave the present case unprovided for; and England might still say that she could not acquiesce in our having, in this case, taken the Commissioners instead of the vessel.  What then?  She ought to be content with the expression of our regret that we did not take the mode of her choice, and the more so as that mode could not have been followed by any different result in respect to our getting possession of the Commissioners.  But this might not satisfy her: — and what then?  She should generously wait until that unnatural and horrid war is off our hands; and if the parties could not then agree, they should submit the case to an Umpire.  If, however, she should call for an Umpire now, then, although the civilized world would think badly of her for it, and our own nation be very slow to forgive her for it, I would nevertheless, in my abhorrence of all war, have our government consent to an Umpire now. Nay, in the spirit of this abhorrence, and for the sake of peace, I would go much farther.  If no other concession we could make would satisfy England, I would have our Government propose to surrender the rebels, Mason and Slidell, in case the English Government would say, distinctly and solemnly, that it would not itself disturb neutral vessels having on board rebels who had gone out from England in quest of foreign aid to overturn the English Government.  An ineffably base Government would it prove itself to be should it refuse to say this, and yet declare war on the ground of our capture of the rebels who were on their way for foreign help to overturn our government.

I spoke of my abhorrence of all war.  Our lifelong opponents of war find themselves unexpectedly in sympathy with mighty armies.  They have to confess that they never anticipated a rebellion so fast; still less did they ever anticipate that England would be guilty of coming to the help of such a satanic rebellion.

I have said that England will not go to war with us in the case of the Trent. Nevertheless I am not without fear that her government will be driven to declare war against us. The Government of no other nation (and this is honorable to England) is more influenced by the people.  By such an affair as the capture of Mason and Slidell, the patriotism of the least-informed and superficial and excitable part of her people is easily and extensively wrought upon. With this part of her people the inviolability of the British flag is more than all earth besides.  But it is not by that capture, nor by those classes to whom it appeals with such peculiar power that the Government will be moved. If an irresistible pressure comes upon the government, it will come from those portions of the people who long for the cotton and free trade of the South, and who have allowed themselves to get angry with the North by foolishly misconstruing our high tariff (which is simply a war measure) into a hostile commercial measure. The capture of Mason and Slidell will be only the pretext, not the provocation; only the occasion, not the cause of war.

If England wishes to go to war with us for any wrongs we have done her, she shall not have the chance—for we will promptly repair the wrongs, at whatever sacrifices of property or pride. But if, as I still honor and love her too much to believe, she wishes to go to war with us at any rate, and chooses this our time of trouble as her time to make us an easy prey, then will she be gratified.  It will be but fair, however, to advertise her that she must not take our fighting in the war with the rebels as a sample of what will be our fighting in the war with herself.  The former is fooling.  The latter will be fighting.  On all subjects connected with slavery, and therefore in a war about slavery, we Americans are fools.  We cannot help it.  We have worshipped the idol so long and so devoutly, that when in its all-influential presence, we cannot be men. The powers of our moral nature are, however, not destroyed; they are but perverted.  And such an outrage as the English press threatens us with will restore their legitimate use.  Our manhood is not dead; it but sleeps.  And as it was when the Philistines fell upon the bound Samson, that the Spirit of the Lord came to his help, so, when the English shall fall upon the worse-bound Americans, this sleeping manhood will awake.  And it will awake to assert itself, not merely against the English, but against the rebels also.  And It will do this mightily, because it will, and the same time, be asserting itself against its own life-long degradations, and the hateful cause of them.  Let us but know that England, to whom we have done no wrong, has resolved to come to the help of the Pro-Slavery Rebellion, and our deep indignations against her, combining with our deeper indignation against ourselves, will arm us with the spirit of the power to snap the “cords,” and “green withs,” and “new ropes,” with which slavery has bound us to dash to dust the foul idol whose worship has so demented and debased us.  Yes, let us hear this month that England has declared war against us, and this month will witness our Proclamation of Liberty to every slave in the land.  No thanks will be due her for the happy effect upon us of her Declaration of war.  No thanks will be due her that the Declaration will have the effect to save us — to save us by making us anti-slavery.  No more half-way measures, and no more nonsense on the Subject of slavery, shall we then propose.  There will be no more talk then of freeing one sort of slaves, and continuing the other in slavery; but we shall then invite every negro in the land, bond and free, to identify himself, “arm and soul,” with our cause.  And then there will be no more talk of swapping off taxes for negroes, and no more talk of colonizing and apprenticing them.  Then we shall be eager to lift up the negroes into the enjoyment of all the rights of manhood, that so we may have in them men to stand by our side, and help us make short work with the present war, and with that with which we are threatened.

Owing to the bewitching and debauching influence of slavery upon our whole nation, there are, even in the Free States, divisions among us in regard to the present war.  But should England so causelessly, cruelly and meanly force a war upon us, there will be no divisions among us in regard to that war: — nor, indeed, will there then be in regard to the other. And so deep and abiding will be our sense of her boundless injustice, that there will never be any boundless injustice, that there will never be any among us to welcome propositions of peace with England, until her war with us shall have reached the result of our subjugation, or of her expulsion from every part of the Continent of North America.  Moreover, we shall rejoice to hear of the crushing of her power every where — for we shall feel that the nation which can be guilty of such a war is fit to govern no where — in the Eastern no more than in the Western hemisphere.

SOURCES: “News from England by Geritt Smith,” The Liberator, Boston, Massachusetts, Friday, January 3, 1862, p. 4; An abstract of thes article appears in Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Gerrit Smith: A Biography, p. 262-3

Gerrit Smith, 1864

The President of the United States is both a great and a good man. But neither greatness nor goodness would be manifest in consenting to a peace, which, however admirable in other respects, failed nevertheless to secure the ballot to the black man, and left him therefore, at the mercy of his enemy and ours — of his and our demonized enemy. Happily, among the highest proofs that the President is both great and good, is his willingness to grow and change. Such willingness is not found in little and mean men.

SOURCES: Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Gerrit Smith: A Biography, p. 260

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

Gerrit Smith’s Speech on the Fort Pillow and Plymouth Massacres: Peterboro, Massachusetts, April 26, 1864.

The whole civilized world will be startled and horrified by this slaughter of probably not less than five or six hundred persons. The excuse in the case of a part of the slaughtered is, that they were traitorous citizens of the Confederacy: in the case of another part, that they were whites fighting by the side of blacks: in the case of the remainder, including women and even children, that they were blacks. That these were blacks, was cause enough why, though numbering three or four hundred, they should be murdered — murdered in utter contempt of all the sacred rights of prisoners of war. It is of the crime against these, I would now speak.

Who are to be held amenable for this crime? The rebels. Yes, but not the rebels only. The authorship of this crime, so matchless in its worst features, is very comprehensive. The responsibility for it is wider than our nation. England shares in the authorship and responsibility, because it was she who planted slavery in America, and because it is slavery out of which this crime has come. Our own nation, however, is the far guiltier one. The guilt of this crime is upon all her people who have contributed to that public sentiment, which releases white men from respecting the rights of black men. Our highest Court says that this satanic sentiment prevailed in the early existence of our nation. Certain it is, that it has prevailed in all the later periods of that existence. Who are they who have contributed to generate it? All who have held that blacks are unfit to sit by the side of whites in the church, the school, the car and at the table. All who have been in favor of making his complexion shut out a black man from the ballot-box. All who have been for making a man's title to any of the rights of manhood turn on the color of the skin in which his Maker has chosen to wrap him. All, in short, who have hated or despised the black man.

Even President Lincoln, whom God now blesses and will yet more bless for the much he has done for his black brethren, is not entirely innnocent of the Fort Pillow and Plymouth massacres. Had his plan of “Reconstruction” recognized the right of the black men to vote, it would thereby have contributed to lift them up above outrage, instead of contributing, as it now does, to invite outrage upon them. By the way, it is a pity that he undertook “Reconstruction.” It was entirely beyond his civil capacity to do so: and it was entirely beyond his military capacity to have a part in setting up any other than a military or provisional government. Moreover, this is the only kind of government which it is proper to set up in the midst of war. The leisure and advantages of peace are necessary in the great and difficult work of establishing a permanent government. In this connection let me advert for a moment to the doctrine, “Once a State always a State” — a doctrine so frequently wielded against “Reconstruction” on any terms. Where is the authority for this doctrine? In the Constitution, it is said. But nowhere does the Constitution say that a State may plunge into war, secure at all hazards from some of the penalties of war. But amongst the penalties of war is whatever change the conqueror may choose to impose upon the conquered territory. I admit that it is very desirable to have all the revolting States reestablished — reinstated. But that there is any law by which this becomes inevitable is absurd. Nowhere does the Constitution say that a State is to be exempt from the operation of the law of war. Nowhere does it undertake to override the law of war. How clear is it, then, that by this paramount law these revolted States will, when conquered, lie at the will of the conqueror! And how clear is it, that it will then turn not at all upon the Constitution, but upon this will of the conqueror, backed by this paramount law of war, whether the old statehood of these States shall be revived, or whether they shall be remanded to a territorial condition, and put upon their good behavior!

There is another instance in which the President has contributed to that cruel public sentiment, which leaves the black race unprotected. I refer to his so strangely long delay in promising protection to the black soldier, and to the even longer and not yet ended delay in affording it. The President is a humane as well as an honest man; and the only explanation I can find for his delay to protect the black soldier and to put an end, so far as in him lies, to the various, innumerable, incessant outrages upon the freedmen is in the continuance of his childish and cowardly desire to conciliate his native Kentucky and the Democratic party.

I argued that even President Lincoln is responsible in some degree for that public sentiment, which invites outrage upon the black man and leaves him a prey to the wicked. Those Members of Congress, who are opposing the reasonable measure of letting the black man vote in the Territories, are also guilty of favoring that public sentiment which broke out in the crime at Fort Pillow and Plymouth. Similarly guilty are those members who would make the pay of a black soldier less than that of a white one. And so are those members who consent to leave a fugitive slave statute in existence. In a word, all should tax their consciences with the sin of this public sentiment and with the resulting crime at Fort Pillow and Plymouth, whose influence, by either word or deed, has been to keep up in this heathen land the caste-spirit—that preeminent characteristic of heathenism. I call this a heathen land. To the Christ-Religion — that simple religion of equal rights and of doing as you would be done by — there can be no greater insult than to call a nation in which, as in this, the most cruel and murderous caste-spirit prevails, a Christian nation.

Both on the right hand and on the left, I hear that our nation is to be saved. But my fears that it will not, often become very strong. That the Rebellion is to be crushed, I deeply believe. Often in the course of Providence a wicked people, which is itself to be afterward destroyed, is previously to be used in destroying another and generally more wicked people. There are striking illustrations of this in the Bible. The duty of abolitionists and anti-abolitionists, Democrats and Republicans, to work unitedly, incessantly, and unconditionally for the overthrow of the Rebellion I have not only never doubted, but ever urged. I hold it to be unpatriotic and even traitorous for the Abolitionists to make any conditions in behalf of their specialty, and to propose, as some of them do, to go against the Rebellion only so far as going against it will be going against slavery. So too are those Democrats unpatriotic and even traitorous who can favor the War, only under the stipulation that it be so conducted as to harm neither the Democratic party nor the Constitution. To put down the Rebellion is an object immeasurably higher than to save a party or to save the Constitution, or even to save the country. No man is right-minded, who would not have it put down, even though it be at the expense of the last man and the last dollar.

If anything makes me doubt that the Rebellion will be crushed it is the omission of Congress to abolish slavery, now when it is so clearly seen that the abolition of slavery is an indispensable means to the abolition of the Rebellion. The proposed Amendment to the Constitution I take no interest in. One reason why I do not, is, that it is not a proposition to abolish slavery now. Another is, that war is not the time to be tinkering at constitutions. I see it denied that Congress has the power, even as a war measure, to abolish slavery. Amazing delusion! There is in every nation an absolute power for carrying on war. The nation that disclaims it may as well give up being a nation. In our own, this power is vested in Congress. Congress is to declare war: and Congress is “to make all laws necessary and proper (itself of course the sole judge of the necessity and propriety) for carrying into execution” the declaration. Is it the institution of apprenticeship, which it finds to be in the way of the successful prosecution of the war — then is it to sweep it out of the way. Is it the abomination of slavery? — then is it to strike at that.

There is, however, one thing more which sometimes, though not often, raises a doubt in me whether the Rebellion will be crushed. It is the premature agitation of the Presidential question. When the Rebellion broke out, I assumed that it would be put down in a few months — for I assumed that this greatest crime against nationality and humanity would arouse and unite the whole North. How greatly was I mistaken Very soon the Democratic party was seen to prefer itself to the country. The Republican party stood by the country. But at the present time there is no little danger that the country may be sacrificed in a strife between the members of the Republican party. For, taking advantage of this strife, the Democratic party may succeed in getting the reins of Government into the hands of one of its pro-slavery peacemakers. But I may be asked — will not the rebels be conquered and the country saved before the next Election? I still hope so — and until the last few months I believed so. But is there not some reason to fear that the North will be wrought up to a greater interest in this year's Presidential than in this year's military campaign In other words, is there not some reason to fear that, for the coming six months, politics instead of patriotism will be in the ascendant?

I still say, as through the past winter I have frequently said, written, and printed — that the Presidential question should not have been talked of, no, nor so much as thought of, until midsummer. The first of September is quite early enough to make the nomination; and in the mean time, undistracted by this so distracting subject, we should be working as one man for the one object of ending the Rebellion — and of ending it before reaching the perils of a presidential election. And such working would best educate us to make the best choice of a candidate. Moreover, it is the condition the country will be in three or four months hence, rather than the condition it is now in, that should be allowed to indicate the choice. Great and rapidly successive are the changes in the circumstances of a country in time of war. To nominate a President in time of peace, six months earlier than is necessary, all would admit to be great folly. But greater folly would it be to nominate him in time of war even a single month earlier than is necessary. The Baltimore Convention is understood to be a movement for renominating President Lincoln, and the Cleveland Convention one for nominating General Fremont. Would that both Conventions were dropped Would indeed that the whole subject were dropped until July or August! — and would too that it were dropped with the understanding, that it should then be taken up, not by the politicians, but by the people!

The people would present a loyal and an able candidate: and whether it were Lincoln or Fremont, Chase or Butler, Dickinson or Dix, the country would be safe.

I recall at this moment the large and respectable meeting for consultation held in Albany last January. What a pity that the meeting took fright at the temperate and timely resolutions reported to it! What a pity that the meeting saw in them danger to the country, or perhaps, more properly speaking, to a party! One of these resolutions and its advocates urged the importance of postponing until the latest possible day the whole subject of a Presidential nomination: and, had it been adopted and published, it would not unlikely have exerted sufficient influence to bring about such postponement. Time has proved the wisdom of the other resolutions also. I wish I could, without seeming egotism, say that slavery, and slavery alone, having brought this war upon us, they, who have given but little thought to slavery, should be too modest to toss aside indignantly and sneeringly the suggestions of those who have made it their life-long study. Were these resolutions now published, almost every man who opposed them, would wonder that he had so little foresight as to oppose them.

And there is still another thing which should perhaps be allowed to suggest a doubt whether the rebellion will be crushed. It is, that we are so reluctant to pay the cost of crushing it. Our brave soldiers and sailors give their lives to this end. But we who stay at home shrink from the money tax which is, and which should be far more largely put upon us. Our nation is imperiled by the incessant outflow of a big stream of gold. Wise and patriotic as he is, our Secretary of the Treasury will nevertheless labor in vain to diminish this stream unless importations shall be taxed far more heavily. Deeply disgraceful are these importations when it is by all that is precious in the very life of our nation that they are forbidden. Surely it is no time now to be indulging in foreign luxuries: and as to necessaries, our own country can furnish them all. Luxuries, whether foreign or domestic, should all come now with great cost to the consumer. And only a small return for protecting their estates from the rebels would it be for the rich to pay over to Government one fourth, and the very rich one half of their incomes. Let me add in this connection that the State Banks should be so patriotic, as to rejoice in the national advantage of an exclusively National currency.

I expressed my belief that the rebellion will be crushed — but my doubt whether the nation will be saved. A guilty nation, like a guilty individual, can be saved through repentance only. But where are the proofs that this nation has so much as begun to repent of the great sin, which has brought the great calamity upon her? She has, it is true, dome much to prove that she regards slavery as a political and economical evil, and a source of great peril to the nation: but she has done exceedingly little toward proving that she has a penitent sense of her sin in fastening the yoke of slavery on ten to twenty millions of this and former generations. It is only here and there — at wide intervals both of time and space — that has been heard the penitent exclamation, “We are verily guilty concerning our brother;” — only at these wide intervals that has been seen any relaxation of the national hatred and scorn for the black man. “Abolitionist,” which, when the nation shall be saved, will be the most popular name in it, is still the most odious and contemptible name in it. That the fugitive slave statute is still suffered to exist, is ample proof that this nation has still a devil's heart toward the black man. How sad that even now, when because of the sin of slaveholding, God is making blood flow like water in this land, there should be found members of Congress, who claim this infernal statute to be one of the rights of slaveholding! As if slaveholding had rights! As if any thing else than punishment were due to it! — punishment adequate to its unmingled, unutterable, and blasphemous wrongs!

I shall, however, be told that slavery will soon be abolished by an Amendment of the Constitution. And what will such an Amendment say? Why, nothing more than that slavery ought not to be — must not be — when it shall no longer be constitutional. What, however, the American people need to say, is, that be it constitutional or unconstitutional, slavery shall not be. So they are always prepared to say regarding murder. But slavery is worse than murder. Every right-minded man had far rather his child were murdered than enslaved. Why, then, do they not affirm that, in no event, will they tolerate slavery any more than murder? The one answer is — because it is the black man, and the black man only, on whom slavery falls. Were white Americans to be enslaved in a Barbary State, or anywhere else, our nation would respect no pleadings of statutes or even of constitutions for their enslavement. In defiance of whatever pleas or whatever restraints, she would release them if she could. The most stupendous hypocrisy of which America has been guilty, is first professing that there is law for slavery — law for that which all law proclaims an outlaw — law for that in which there is not one element of law, but every element of which is an outrage upon law; and second, in professing it, not because she has a particle of belief in it — but simply because blacks instead of whites are the victims of her slavery. America declared that John Brown was “rightly hung.” How hypocritical was the declaration, may be inferred from the fact that had they been white instead of black slaves whom he flung away his life to rescue, she would have honored him as perhaps man has never been honored. And she would have made his honors none the less, but heaped them up all the more, if, in prosecuting his heroic and merciful work, he had tossed aside statutes and broken through sacred constitutions. Oh! if this nation shall ever be truly saved, it will no longer regard John Brown as worthy of the fate of a felon; but it will build the whitest monuments to his memory, and cherish it as the memory. of the sublimest and most Christ-like man the nation has ever produced! Some of the judgments of John Brown — especially such as led him to Harper's Ferry — were unsound and visionary. Nevertheless, even when committing his mistakes, he stood, by force of the disinterestedness and greatness of his soul, above all his countrymen.

Would Congress contribute most effectively to put down the rebellion, and to save the nation by the great salvations of penitence and justice — the only real salvations? Would it do this? — then let it pass, solemnly and unanimously, a resolution that there never was and never can be, either inside or outside of statutes or constitutions, law for slavery; and then another resolution that whoever shall attempt to put the yoke of slavery on however humble a neck, black or white, deserves to be put to death.

A word further in regard to the proposed Amendment. Were the impudent and monstrous claim of its being law set up for murder, no one would propose an amendment of the Constitution forbidding murder. The only step in that case would be to make the penalty for the crime more sure and if possible more severe. Such an amendment would be strenuously objected to, in that it would stain the Constitution with the implication that murder had been constitutional. And now, if we shall have a Constitutional Amendment, which, in terms, forbids slavery, (it is already forbidden by the spirit, principles, and even provisions of the Constitution,) shall we not be virtually admitting to the world and to posterity that this nation had been guilty of tolerating, if not indeed of positively authorizing, in its Constitution the highest crime of earth o God save us from an admission, which shall serve both to stamp us with infamy and to perpetuate the infamy!

PETERBoro, April 26, 1864.

SOURCES: Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Gerrit Smith: A Biography, p. 260; Gerrit Smith, Speeches and Letters of Gerrit Smith (from January 1863, to January 1864), on the Rebellion,  Volume 2, p. 7-13