Gerrit Smith Quotes

16 Sourced Quotes

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.

Gerrit Smith
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.

Gerrit Smith
Our concern, however, is with slavery as it is, and not with any theory of it.

Gerrit Smith
I am a plain man, and I care and know comparatively little about rhetoric.

Gerrit Smith
True liberty acknowledges and defends the equal rights of all men, and all nations.

Gerrit Smith
I need say no more, to prove that slavery is entirely unlike the servitude in the patriarchal families.

Gerrit Smith
To say, that Capt. Ingraham violated the rights of Turkey, is nonsense.

Gerrit Smith
I believe that government is for the use of the people, and not the people for the use of the government.

Gerrit Smith
We must continue to judge of slavery by what it is, and not by what you tell us it will, or may be.

Gerrit Smith
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.

Gerrit Smith
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.

Gerrit Smith
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.

Gerrit Smith
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.

Gerrit Smith
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.

Gerrit Smith
But I love honesty, and, therefore; do I make great account of facts.

Gerrit Smith
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.

Gerrit Smith