Speeches and Letters of Gerrit Smith ...: On the Rebellion ...

Front Cover
J. A. Gray & Green, printers, 1864 - United States

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 59 - Tell me not of rights — talk not of the property of the planter in his slaves. I deny the right — I acknowledge not the property. The principles, the feelings of our common nature, rise in rebellion against it. Be the appeal made to the understanding or to the heart, the sentence is the same that rejects it. In vain you tell me of laws that sanction such a claim ! There is a law above all the enactments of human codes— the same throughout the world, the same in all times — such...
Page 59 - ... at this day : it is the law written by the finger of God on the heart of man ; and by that law, unchangeable and eternal, while men despise fraud, and loathe rapine, and abhor blood, they shall reject with indignation the wild and guilty fantasy, that man can hold property in man ! In vain you appeal to treaties, to covenants between nations.
Page 57 - What right has the North assailed? What interest of the South has been invaded? What justice has been denied? And what claim founded in justice and right has been withheld? Can either of you, to-day, name one governmental act of wrong, deliberately and purposely done by the government of Washington, of which the South has a right to complain? I challenge the answer.
Page 16 - And, sure, he is an honourable man. I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke, But here I am to speak what I do know. You all did love him once, not without cause; What cause withholds you then to mourn for him ? O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason!
Page 33 - Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee ? I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies.
Page 15 - The abolition of the power usurped by the Supreme Court of the United States to pass upon the constitutionality of the legislation enacted by Congress.
Page 6 - Right here, at this great error, is it probable that our nation will perish, if perish it must. The breaking out of the Rebellion found the nation so debauched by slavery as to be incapable of meeting the Rebellion on the one square and simple itsue of putting it down.
Page 57 - ... justification ? What right has the North assailed ? What interest of the South has been invaded? What justice has been denied ? and what claim, founded in justice and right, has been withheld ? Can either of you, to-day, name one governmental act of wrong, deliberately and purposely done by the government, of which the South has a right to complain ? I challenge the answer...
Page 9 - You imply that had there been as much homogeneousness between these peoples as is found " in the portions traversed by the great East and West lines of commerce," there would have been no Rebellion. I agree with you. But I bid you remember that this is the homogeneousness of anti-slavery
Page 11 - Providence, which has brought you again into high political power. On the contrary, I submissively accept it as a part of the penalty of the American people for their oppressions of the poor.

Bibliographic information