Smith, Gerrit (1797-1874) to William Goodell
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Gilder Lehrman Collection #: GLC04717.20 Author/Creator: Smith, Gerrit (1797-1874) Place Written: Peterboro, New York Type: Printed letter Date: 1 November 1854 Pagination: 3 p. ; 31 x 20.5 cm. Order a Copy
Expresses his opinion that the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 will benefit the Whig party.
Smith, a politician from New York, served as a U.S. Representative from 1853-1854. He was a noted philanthropist and social reformer active in anti-slavery campaigns and women's rights.
What a godsend to the Whigs was the Nebraska bill! All of them in the free States arrayed themselves against it. This was, it is true, a cheap way of making themselves abolitionists. But, that it made them really such was what they insisted on, in the ears of the credulous and silly abolitionists. I am sorry that I have to call them credulous and silly. But, alas, too many have proved themselves to be such. The Whigs now claimed with more plausibility and effect than ever, that no other antislavery organization than the Whig party is necessary; and that this party is clearly entitled to the votes of all who sympathize with the slave.... But in that mass there is a very radical little handful, who are slow to believe in the abolition character of Whig party, even after all, that the Nebraska occasion has done to improve such character. They are slow to attribute a genuine abolition to the party, that insulted and vilified them, because they would not vote for the slaveholder, Henry Clay; to the party, that elected the slaveholder, General Taylor; to the party, whose Millard Fillmore signed the diabolical fugitive slave bill....
I would say, in this connexion, that I think no better of the Democrats than I do of the Whigs. The Democrats are undisguised open, servants of the slave-power: and, hence, I need say nothing to guard abolitionists against seductive and misleading influences, in that quarter....
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