Speech of Gerrit Smith - The Democratic Party Is My Dread. The Republican Party Is My Hope
JOHN BROWN DEFENDER. SECRET SIX MEMBER GERRIT SMITH SPEECH SUPPORTING GRANT FOR PRESIDENT; FREDERICK DOUGLASS WAS NOT OFFENDED.
“THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IS MY DREAD. THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IS MY HOPE.”
Gerrit Smith (1797-1874), a leading abolitionist, politician, philanthropist, generous contributor to the Liberty Party and the Republican Party plus an enthusiastic donor to the creation of Timbuctoo, an African American community which was in North Elba, New York. Smith a wealthy abolitionist and land owner had given away 120,000 acres of land to 3,000 black New Yorkers in 40 acre lots creating the community of Timbuctoo. In 1848 John Brown moved his family to North Elba to support the development of Timbuctoo. Even more interesting was that Smith subsidized John Brown’s raid at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia in 1859 with guns along with the financial help of the Secret Committee of Six composed of Gerrit Smith, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Samuel Gridley Howe, Theodore Parker, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn and Gorge Luther Steams
The three page printed speech titled SPEECH OF GERRIT SMITH, (TO HIS NEIGHBORS,) IN PETERBORO, N.Y., JUNE 22D, 1872 relates much of Gerrit Smith’s feelings for the events of post civil war. Garrit was a supporter of Ulysses S. Grant’s re-election as necessary for the country and the Black race and he decrys the Democratic Part for its racist views. He calls the Democratic party his “dread”, saying it was once the party for human rights and equality. “But for the well-known pro-slavery spirit of that party, the rebellion would not have been… This infamous party continued in more or less active sympathy with the slave power – ever hostile to the emancipation of the slaves; and ever hating and despising the colored race...To this day it persists in refusing him his full measure of civil rights and his equality before the law.” Smith continues stating that the Ku Klux Klan is “the worst element in the population of our country...By all that is precious in justice and mercy, the Republican party must be kept in poser...The Democratic party has sinned too long and too deeply to be capable of repentance… This generation of impenitent negro-hating, negro-whipping, negro-hanging Democrats be forever shut out of power….” Smith’s views on Ulysses S. Grant, who was running for President, were “He means to be, if elected, an honest as well as a wise ruler….” Concerning Charles Sumner’s antagonistic speech against Grant he writes “Mr. Sumner speaks of President Grant’s insult to Frederick Douglass, and through him to the colored race. The insult exists but in Mr. Sumner’s imagination...Mr. Douglass is insensible of it for he is still the uncomplaining and warm friend of the President. Mr. Sumner says that the President, in inviting the San Domingo Commissioners to dine with him, forgot Mr. Douglass. But Mr. Douglass, though Mr. Sumner speaks of him as one of the Commissioners, was not one of them….He served the commission in the capacity of Assistant Secretary.”
In conclusion Gerrit Smith states “Is there a black man..who is inclined to vote the Democratic Ticket? He had better die and do it. He had better die than so wrong his race and so wrong us, whose lives have been lives of suffering and sacrifices for the redemption and welfare of his race. Will not William Lloyd Garrison and his fellow laborers have lived in vain, if now, at the last, the black man for whom they have lived, shall turn against them and go over to their and the black man’s enemy?”
Small archival tape repair, overall in vg condition.