Gerrit Smith

Maybe we shouldn't participate in this project that's just bankrupt to the core.

Or can we, through electing members of Congress that adopt different laws, change the meaning of the Constitution? And it's abolitionists like Gerrit Smith and then Frederick Douglass that embrace this more democratic constitutionalist vision and that we argue are really the foundation of this tradition of understanding that members of Congress, through federal statutes, can give binding meaning to the Constitution.

I'm glad you mentioned democratic constitutionalism.

I've read some academic works that pose the alternative to judicial supremacy as something they call departmentalism, the idea that each department or branch of government is sort of-

Other things that have happened in New York City, you were a key centre, a national centre for the abolitionism at the forefront of the underground railroad movement.

And Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman made their home there and worked with allies like Gerrit Smith and William Seward to end slavery in America.

And talking of ending slavery in America, I was just chatting with Brooklyn and I was like, how many years has it been since that was ended? And so it's 161, which for me, I'm like, surely it's a lot longer than that.

Like, and then I was like, yeah, because in 1865 is when the constitution was changed.

That's what he said, right? So the Garriso- well, first of all, the Garrisonians said that he did it for purely monetary reasons.

There's a very, very rich man named Gerrit Smith, one of the richest men in America, who helped him to, to fund his newspaper, and he was a political abolitionist.

He saw the Constitution as an anti-slavery document.

This guy Gerrit Smith did.

And so they said he was basically bribed by Gerrit Smith.

Uh, he, he took Gerrit Smith's money, and so he had to top- take Smith's position.

I think that's patently unfair.

Um, more fair-

Speech of Mr. Moore House of Delegates, Virginia, 1832 How horrible must be that system which demands as the necessary condition of its existence that knowledge should be shut out from the minds of those who live under it, that they should be reduced as nearly as possible to the level of brutes or living machines, that the powers of their souls should be crushed! Let each one of us ask, can such a system be aided or even tolerated without deep criminality?' addressed to the press of Kentucky by a committee of the Synod of Kentucky.

But even if slavery could be divested of all its horrible accompaniments, its ignorance, licentiousness, and other nameless abominations, we should still regard the circumstance of man holding his brother man as property as one of the blackest crimes which corrupt human nature ever invented.

mr moore in the speech from which we have already quoted is compelled to acknowledge the iniquity of this system it cannot be denied he says as a general principle that it is an act of tyranny injustice and oppression to hold any part of the human race in bondage against their consent the right to the enjoyment of liberty is one of those perfect inherent and inalienable rights which pertain to the whole human race and of which they can never be divested except by an act of gross injustice if we would rightly estimate the wretchedness in which the perpetuation of this act of gross injustice has involved one-sixth part of the population of republican america we must compare the condition of our slaves with that of the freemen of their own age and country things are estimated by comparison and the man who is deprived of every natural civil and social right while all around him are basking in the sunshine of freedom must feel the fangs of slavery much more poignantly than the one who though subjected to similar privations beholds his lot but little below that of those who surround him we must not therefore compare the situation of slaves in the united states with that of the slaves of heathen greece and rome where equal laws never existed and where the beams of liberty and christianity never shone but to form a correct judgment of the miseries endured by our slaves we must compare them with the laboring class of our population in the free states and we may then comprehend the debasing influence of a system which produces such dreadful results as are exhibited on almost every southern plantation where the lash is the principal if not the only stimulus you are dear friends in a peculiar manner fellow-sufferers with those who are in bondage because the whites having adduced their colored brethren to slavery with a cruelty proportioned to their unjust usurpation of power have labored to impress on the mind of the community the unfounded calumny that the people of color are unfit for freedom this assertion is designed on the part of slaveholders as a salve for their consciences and a plea for the continuation of slavery and is used by the adversary of all good for the diabolical purpose of shielding from merited infamy the system of american slavery nothing will contribute more to break the bondman's fetters than an example of high moral worth intellectual culture and religious attainments among the free people of color living epistles known and read of all men a standard of exalted piety of dedication to the works of righteousness of humble-mindedness of christian charity to which abolitionists may confidently point and ask those who are forging the manacles of hopeless servitude for our countrymen what they can answer to the judge of all the earth for thus robbing him of his immortal creatures and to demand of them in view of what their slaves might be to restore their victims to themselves to the human family and to god we know and we rejoice in the knowledge that the gift of intellect is coextensive with the human race and that our brethren and sisters who are writhing under the lash of worse than egyptian taskmasters whose minds are beclouded by ignorance and enfeebled by suffering need only to have the same advantages which Europeans and their descendants have enjoyed, triumphantly to refute the unfounded calumny that they are inferior in the powers of intellect and less susceptible of mental improvement.

We maintain that the people of color are not in any respect inferior to the white man, and that under favorable circumstances they would rise again to the rank they formerly held." the everlasting architecture of africa still exists the wonder of the world though in ruins her mighty kingdoms have yet their record in history she has poured forth her heroes on the field given bishops to the church and martyrs to the fires and for african physiognomy as though that should shut out the light of intellect go to your national museum contemplate the features of the colossal head of memnon and the statues of the divinities on which the ancient africans impressed their own forms and there see in close resemblance to their features the mould of those countenances which once beheld as the creatures of their own immortal genius the noblest and most stupendous monuments of human skill and taste and grandeur in the imperishable porphyry and granite is the unfounded and pitiful slander publicly and before all the world refuted there we see the african under cultivation if he now presents a different aspect cultivation is wanting that solves the whole case for even now where education has been expended upon the pure and undoubted descendants of africans it has never been bestowed in vain

so will i compass thine altar o lord in proportion as the demand for free labor products increases the supply will increase and the greater the quantity of such articles which is thrown into the market the more their price will lessen besides allowing the labor of a slave for six years to produce all the various slave-grown products which any one may use during the course of his life Would not he who was so occupied be in effect the slave of such a one during the time he was thus employed? This is a solemn and affecting consideration, and can be most correctly weighed when we are on our knees before God.

It is a matter between him and every individual soul, and he alone can settle it.

we believe it was the want of that principle which we have been endeavoring to inculcate thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself that gave birth to the scheme of expatriating our colored brethren to africa we do not design to attribute unhallowed motives to all who engaged in this crusade against the rights and happiness of free american citizens Many, we believe, like our beloved brother Gerrit Smith, embarked in this enterprise without examining the principles of the society, deluded by the false, though plausible, assertion that the colored man could not rise in his native land to an equality with his white compatriots, and desirous to do them all the good that circumstances admitted.

nevertheless we are constrained to believe what you have so often asserted and so keenly felt that the colonization society originated in hatred to the free people of color we rejoice that you early detected the fallacy and the iniquity of the scheme that you arose in the dignity of conscious rights in the majesty of moral power in the boldness of endured innocence and exposed the cruelty and unrighteousness of a project which had it been carried fully into execution would have robbed america of some of her best and most valuable citizens and exiled from our shores those whose hearts are bound to their country by no common bonds even by the holy bonds of sympathy for their countrymen in chains a project which would have poured upon the shores of pagan africa a broken-hearted population prepared by mental suffering to sink into a premature grave a band of exiles who had been exposed against their judgment and their will to all the nameless trials which belonged to the settlement of colonial establishments and all that anguish which must have been endured under the reflection that they had been banished from the land of their birth merely to gratify an unhollowed prejudice when their country needed their services when there was abundant room in the land though not in the hearts of their countrymen we admire your noble and uncompromising resistance to this scheme of oppression and your children will thank you to the latest generation we honor you for the undaunted and generous resolutions which you passed soon after the colonization society came into existence when the spontaneous language of your hearts was embodied in the following sentiments whereas our ancestors not of choice were the first successful cultivators of the wilds of america we their descendants feel ourselves entitled to participate in the blessings of her luxuriant soil which there blood and sweat manured and that any measure or system of measures having a tendency to banish us from her bosom would not only be cruel but would be in direct violation of those principles which have been the boast of this republic resolved that we view with deep abhorrence the unmerited stigma attempted to be cast upon the reputation of the free people of color by the promoters of this measure that they are a dangerous and useless part of the community when in the state of disfranchisement in which they live in the hour of danger they ceased to remember their wrongs and rallied round the standard of their country resolved that we will never separate ourselves from the slave population in this country they are our brethren by the ties of consanguinity of suffering and of wrong and we feel that there is more virtue in suffering privations with them than enjoying fancied advantages for a season resolved that having the strongest confidence in the justice of god and in the philanthropy of the free states we cheerfully submit our destinies to the guidance of him who suffers not a sparrow to fall to the ground without his special providence we praise the lord that while the white man slumbered over the wrongs of his enslaved countrymen or stretched out his hands to rivet the bondman's chains or to thrust his brother from his side your sympathy and your compassion like that of the beneficent redeemer was wakeful and active and called forth from the depths of your souls the following soul-stirring appeal where oh where were the hearts of americans that they responded not to your call we humbly respectfully and fervently entreat and beseech your disapprobation of the plan of colonization now offered by the american society for colonizing the free people of color of the united states here in the city of philadelphia where the voice of the suffering sons of africa was first heard where was first commenced the work of abolition on which heaven has smiled for it could have success only from the great master let not a purpose be assisted which will stay the cause of the entire abolition of the slavery in the united states and which may defeat it altogether which proffers to those who do not ask for them what it calls benefits but which they consider injuries and which must ensure to the multitude whose prayers can only reach you through us misery sufferings and perpetual slavery nor can we pass by unnoticed the noble conduct of our sister in ohio who when her father proposed to bring her to the north where she might pass for a white woman and settle upon her a comfortable independence replied that she would never forsake her people that she would rather suffer with them than enjoy all the advantages he promised we do homage to the virtue which preferred to endure affliction with the oppressed rather than bask in the sunshine of