Catherine Crier
American judge
American abolitionist and politician
Gerrit Smith (March 6, 1797 – December 28, 1874), also spelled Gerritt Smith, was an American social reformer, abolitionist, businessman, public intellectual, and philanthropist. Married to Ann Carroll Fitzhugh, Smith was a candidate for President of the United States in 1848, 1856, and 1860.
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Gerrit Smiththat there is a book about them. Peterboro was, because of Smith, the capital of the abolition movement. The only assembly of escaped slavesever to meet in the United States–the Fugitive Slave Convention of 1850–took place in neighboring Cazenovia because Peterboro was too small for the meeting.
Smith was also, and less successfully, a temperance activist, and a women’s rights suffrage advocate. He was a significant financial contributor to the Liberty Party and the Republican Party throughout his life. Besides making substantial donations of both land and money to create Timbuctoo, an African-American community in North Elba, New York, he was involved in the temperance movement and the colonization movement, before abandoning colonization in favor of abolitionism, the immediate freeing of all the slaves. He was a member of the Secret Six who financially supported John Brown’s raid at Harpers Ferry, in 1859.: 13-14 Brown’s farm, in North Elba, was on land he bought from Smith.
It is not to be disguised, that a war has broken out between the North and the South. – Political and commercial men are industriously striving to restore peace: but the peace, which they would effect, is superficial, false, and temporary.
American abolitionist and politician
The Southern slave would obey God in respect to marriage, and also to the reading and studying of His word. But this, as we have seen, is forbidden him.
American abolitionist and politician
As this is the first time I have had the floor, it may be well for me now to confess, that I am in the habit of freely imputing errors to my fellow-men.
American abolitionist and politician
I am a plain man, and I care and know comparatively little about rhetoric.
American abolitionist and politician
We must continue to judge of slavery by what it is, and not by what you tell us it will, or may be.
American abolitionist and politician
The poor North has much to do with slavery. It staggers under its load and smarts under its lash.
American abolitionist and politician
I welcomed the organization of the Anti-slavery Society.
American abolitionist and politician
The only ground on which a neutral State can claim respect at the hands of belligerents is, that, so far as she is concerned, their rights are protected.
American abolitionist and politician
To no human charter am I indebted for my rights.
American abolitionist and politician
But I love honesty, and, therefore; do I make great account of facts.
American abolitionist and politician
True, permanent peace can never be restored, until slavery, the occasion of the war, has ceased.
American abolitionist and politician
There is room in our ranks for the old and decrepit, as well as the young and vigorous.
American abolitionist and politician
I prefer, in a word, the republican system, because it comes up more nearly to God’s system.
American abolitionist and politician
God cannot approve of a system of servitude, in which the master is guilty of assuming absolute power – of assuming God’s place and relation towards his fellow-men.
American abolitionist and politician
I do not object to the construction of rail roads and canals.
American abolitionist and politician
Truth and mercy require the exertion – never the suppression, of man’s noble rights and powers.
American abolitionist and politician
I trust, that your readers will not construe my words to mean, that I would not have gone to a 3 o’clock in the morning session, for the sake of defeating the Nebraska bill.
American abolitionist and politician
It is manifestly vital to the success of the anti-slavery cause, that the authority and influence of proslavery, especially of slaveholding, ministers should be destroyed.
American abolitionist and politician
I need say no more, to prove that slavery is entirely unlike the servitude in the patriarchal families.
American abolitionist and politician
It, sometimes, suits the slaveholders to claim, that their slavery is an exclusively State concern; and that the North has, therefore, nothing to do with it.
American abolitionist and politician
I believe that government is for the use of the people, and not the people for the use of the government.
American abolitionist and politician
Our concern, however, is with slavery as it is, and not with any theory of it.
American abolitionist and politician
I do not subscribe to the doctrine that the people are the slaves and property of their government. I believe that government is for the use of the people, and not the people for the use of the government.
American abolitionist and politician
But, although America cannot be justly charged with violating the rights of Turkey, Turkey nevertheless can be justly charged with violating the rights of America.
American abolitionist and politician
But as well may you, when urging a man up-hill with a heavy load upon his back, and with your lash also upon his back, tell him, that be has nothing to do either with the load or the lash.
American abolitionist and politician
There is one class of men, whom it especially behoves to be tenacious of the right of free discussion. I mean the poor.
American abolitionist and politician
When a good man lends himself to the advocacy of slavery, he must, at least for a time, feel himself to be any where but at home, amongst his new thoughts, doctrines, and modes of reasoning.
American abolitionist and politician
Let us tell our legislators in advance, that this is a right, restraints on which, we will not, cannot bear; and that every attempt to restrain it is a palpable wrong on God and man.
American abolitionist and politician
To say, that Capt. Ingraham violated the rights of Turkey, is nonsense.
American abolitionist and politician
Our political and constitutional rights, so called, are but the natural and inherent rights of man, asserted, carried out, and secured by modes of human contrivance.
American abolitionist and politician
My rights all spring front an infinitely nobler source – from favor and grace of God.
American abolitionist and politician
Let the poor man count as his enemy, and his worst enemy, every invader of the right of free discussion.
American abolitionist and politician