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1 Gerrit Smith, Gerrit Smith to His Constituents 1 (1854)

handle is hein.slavery/gshcst0001 and id is 1 raw text is: GERRIT SMITH TO HIS CONSTITUENTS. Washington, August 7, 1854. To My CONSTITUENTS: To the end, that you might have ample time to look around you for my successor, I apprised you, some weeks ago, of my intention to resign my seat in Congress, at the close of the present session. I now inform you, that I have fulfilled this inten- tion. The session ended, to-day; and, to-day, I have sent to the Secretary of State, at Albany, the necessary evidence of my actual resignation. I take this occasion for saying, that I am happy to learn of your favorable re- gard for my general course in Congress; and that I am sorry, though not surprised,, to learn, that there are some things in it, with which a few-perhaps, more than a few-of you are dissatisfied. And, now, since I have adverted to this dissatisfaction, it seems proper to say more. How much more ? Shall I but add the simple declaration, that, concern- in o the things with which you are dissat- isfied, I did what I thought to be right? To stop there would not be sufficiently respectful to you. You are entitled to my reasons-to, at least, the principal of them-for thi part of my official conduct: and, I add, that I am not to be impatient with you, if they shall fail to satisfy you. Nay, I am not to be so vain, as to sup- pose, that it is possible to render sound and satisfying reasons for all the nuner- ous things, which 1 have said and done, in Congress. That a life, always so full of eriors, before my coming to Congress, was to be entirely empty of them, whilst in Congress, was not to be expected, either by my constituents, or by myself. I have, always, suffered, very greatly and very unjustly, in the world's esteem, because the world has, always, persisted in judging me, by the light of its own, in- stead of my own, creeds and practices. To try a man's consistency, he must be tried by himself: and to try his integrity even, he must, to no small extent, be tried by himself-by his own beliefs and deeds- by his own life, both speculative and prac- tical. I noticed strictures upon almost the very first sentence of my very first speech in Congress, which taught me, that my official, no more than my private, life, was to be exempt from the injustice to which I have, here, alluded. It so happened, that I began that speech with expressions of civility toward those around me, and with kind and charitable interpretations of the differences between them and my- self. No sooner was the speech ih print than many abolitionists complained of my courtesy to slaveholders; and in- sisted, that I had been guilty of making light of the radical differences between slavery and abolition-between slavehold- ers and abolitionists. Assuming, as they did, that I was but a one-idea abolition- ist, they farther, and very naturally, as- sumed, that I stood up to make that speech, Reproduced with permission from the University of Illinois at Chicago

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