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1 Gerrit Smith, No Slavery in Nebraska: No Slavery in the Nation: Slavery an Outlaw: Speech of Gerrit Smith, on the Nebraska Bill, in Congress, April 6, 1854 1 (1854)

handle is hein.slavery/nsnbnsn0001 and id is 1 raw text is: NO SLAVERY IN NEBRASKA: 'NO SLAVERY IN THE NATION: SLAVERY AN OUTLAW. SPEECH or ({ERRIT SMITH, ON THE NEBRASKA BILL. IN CONGRESS, APRIL 6, 1854. So, Mr. CHAIRMAN, the slavery question is up again I- up again, even in Congress I I It will not keep down. At no bidding, however au- thoritative, will it keep down. The President of the United States commands it to keep down. Indeed, he has, hitherto, seemed to make the keeping down of this question the great end of his great office. Members of Congress have so far humbled themselves, as to pledge themselves on this floor to keep it down. National political conventions promise to discountenance, and even to resist, the agitation of slavery, both in and out of Congress. Commerce and politics are as afraid of this agitation, as Macbeth was of the ghost of Banquo ; and many titled divines, taking their cue from commerce and politics, and being no less servile than merchants and demagogues, do what they can to keep the slavery question out of sight. But all is of no avail. The saucy slavery question will not mind them. To repress it in one quarter, is only to have it burst forth more prominently in another quarter. If you hold it back here, it will break loose there, and rush forward with an accumulated force, that shall amply revenge for all its detention. And this is not strange, when we consider how great is the power of truth. It were madness for man to bid the grass not to grow, the waters not to run, the winds not to blow. It were madness for him to assume the mastery of the elements of the physical world. But more emphatically were it madness for him to attempt to hold in his puny fist the forces of the moral world. Can- ute's folly, in setting bounds to the sea, was wisdom itself, compared with the so much great- er folly of attempting to subjugate the moral forces. Now, the power which is, ever and anon, throwing up the slavery question into our unwilling and affrighted faces, is truth. The pas- sion-blinded and the infatuated may not discern this mighty agent. Nevertheless, Truth lives and reigns forever; and she will be, continually, toss- ing up unsettled questions. We must bear in mind, too, that every question, which has not been disposed of in conformity with her require- ments, and which has not been laid to repose on her own blessed bosom, is an unsettled question. Hence, slavery is an unsettled question; and must continue such, until it shall have fled for- ever from the presence of liberty. It must be an entirely unsettled question, because, not only is it not in harmony with truth, but there is not one particle of truth in it. Slavery is the baldest and biggest lie on earth. In reducing man to a chat- tel, it denies that man is man ; and, in denying, that man is man, it denies, that God is God-for, in His own image, made He man-the black man and the red man, as well as the white man. Dis- torted as are our minds by prejudice, and shriv- elled as are our souls by the spirit of caste, this essential equality of the varieties of the human family may not be apparent to us all. Were we delivered from this prejudice, and this spirit, much of the darkness, which now obscures our vision, would be scattered. In proportion as we obey the truth, are we able to discern the truth. And if all, that is wrong within us, were made right, not only would our darkness give place to a cloudless light, but, like the angel of the Apoca- lypse, we should stand in the sun. But to my argument. I am opposed to the bill for organizing the Territories of Nebraska and Kansas, which has come to us from the Senate, because, in the first place, it insults colored men, and the Maker of all men, by limiting suffrage to white men. I am opposed to it, because, in the second place, it limits suffrage to persons, who have acquired citizenship. The man, who comes to us from a foreign land, and declares his inten- tion to make his home among us, and acts in har- mony with such declaration, is well entitled to vote with us. He has given one great evidence of'possessing an American heart, which our na- tie could not give. For, whilst our native be- came an American by the accident of birth, the emigrant became one by choice. For, whilst our native may be an American, not from any pref- erence for America, the emigrant has proved, that he prefers our country to every other. I am opposed to the bill, in the third place, be- cause, it is so drawn, as to convey the deceptive idea, (I do not say intentionally deceptive,) that the bill recognizes the doctrine of non-interven- tion. I call it deceptive idea: for, in point of Reproduced with permission from the University of Illinois at Chicago

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