Quotes by Gerrit Smith

• True, permanent peace can never be restored, until slavery, the occasion of the war, has ceased.
• I need say no more, to prove that slavery is entirely unlike the servitude in the patriarchal families.
• I do not object to the construction of rail roads and canals.
• 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.
• We must continue to judge of slavery by what it is, and not by what you tell us it will, or may be.
• To no human charter am I indebted for my rights.
• I prefer, in a word, the republican system, because it comes up more nearly to God's system.
• I am a plain man, and I care and know comparatively little about rhetoric.
• 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.
• 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.
• But I love honesty, and, therefore; do I make great account of facts.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Truth and mercy require the exertion - never the suppression, of man's noble rights and powers.
• To say, that Capt. Ingraham violated the rights of Turkey, is nonsense.
• There is room in our ranks for the old and decrepit, as well as the young and vigorous.
• There is one class of men, whom it especially behoves to be tenacious of the right of free discussion. I mean the poor.
• 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.
• 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.
• I believe that government is for the use of the people, and not the people for the use of the government.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Let the poor man count as his enemy, and his worst enemy, every invader of the right of free discussion.
• 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.
• The poor North has much to do with slavery. It staggers under its load and smarts under its lash.
• Our concern, however, is with slavery as it is, and not with any theory of it.
• 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.
• 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.
• My rights all spring front an infinitely nobler source - from favor and grace of God.
• I welcomed the organization of the Anti-slavery Society.