Gerrit Smith Quotes

32 quotes in 411 categories

• Truth and mercy require the exertion - never the suppression, of man's noble rights and powers.
• 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,…
• It is not to be disguised, that a war has broken out between the North and the South. - Political and commercial men are industriously…
• I need say no more, to prove that slavery is entirely unlike the servitude in the patriarchal families.
• 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…
• 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.
• We must continue to judge of slavery by what it is, and not by what you tell us it will, or may be.
• True, permanent peace can never be restored, until slavery, the occasion of the war, has ceased.
• 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…
• I welcomed the organization of the Anti-slavery Society.
• Our concern, however, is with slavery as it is, and not with any theory of it.
• 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.
• 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…
• To no human charter am I indebted for my rights.
• 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.
• I believe that government is for the use of the people, and not the people for the use of the government.
• 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…
• 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…

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