Wyandot County Republican. [volume] (Upper Sandusky, Ohio) 1869-1903, 1872-08-22
William Lloyd GarrisOn's Letter to
Senator Sumner.


DEAR Mr.. SUMNER: Though 1 should be
strongly induced, by the friendship subsist-
ing between us, to avoid taking a position
antagonistical to your own, under ordinary
circumstances, even if deemed it errone-
Gus, yet all personal considerations must be
subordinated to the public welfare when Sc
riously imperiled. You do not believe in ST.
lence in crisis like the present, nor do 1.
In your recent letter to certain colored citi-
zens of Washington you have spoken plainly,
vehemently, and with rhetorical amplifica-
ton (not for the first time), in utter con-
demnation of the President of the United
States; and your advice to the whole body
of colored voters is, that they concentrate
their suffrages upon rival candidate in the
person of Horace Greeley.
In reviewing your letter propose to speak
with equal plainness, and as earnestly to
counsel my fellow-countrymen not to follow
your lead in this matter, but, as voters, to
move unitedly for the reelection of Presi-
dent Grant, for every consideration pertain
ing to their safety and happiness, to the
cause of equal rights, and to the furtherance
of national peace and unity.
In apologiziIg for your delay in answering
the letter of inquiry referred to, you state
you "wished to be aided by the information
which time might supply" The kind of in
formation you desired or expected to gain in
the brief space of seventeen days is left to
conjecture; but, in view of your long -avowed
estrangement from the present Chief Magis-
trate, it could not have been needed to in
tensify your hostility to his Administration.
Your reply is dated July 20, and IL appears
to have been as carefully timed to influence
the election in North Carolina on the 1st of
August, before anything could be done to
neutralize its effect, as was your Grant in
dictment speech in the Senate to determine
the action of the Philadelphia Convention.
tai, but you must not be surprised if, owing
to the well-known infammable state of your
mind, general belief obtains that you have
unfairly availed yourself of opportunities to
work a fatal division in the Republican
ranks.
1t affords you much qualification to be
singled out by your interrogators as "the
special advocate of their rights" But this
is an assumpsion which justice, as well as
becoming modesty, should have led you to
disclaim, even if it was meant only to de-
scribe your Congressional career. Similar
advocates have from time to time stood
bravely up, both in the Senate and House of
Representatives Wilson, Hale, Wade, Chase,
Giddings, Mann, Lovejoy, Julian, Palfrey,
Thaddeus Stevens, Gerrit Smith and others
speech as yourself, have been as unfinching,
and in their turn most bitterly denounced,
| to say nothing of the thousands of anti
slavery men and women whose lot it was to
| pass through the heat and burden of the
conflict, pleading, in season and out of sea-
|
voice was heard in support of their holy
cause. You have since rendered eminent
service to that cause; your advocacy of it has
been great and meritorious; but to claim it
as peculiar at this late day, as though you
stood alone and almost single handed, is a
personal appropriation very far removed
from self-abnegation, and quite unwarrant-
ed.
The Republican party, the product of
thirty years. moral and religious agitation
for the overthrow of slavery has crushed a
vast sectional rebellion for the erection of
an independent slave empire; has eman-
cipated four million of bondmen, and ele-
waited them to the plane of American citi
zenship; has reconstructed the rebellious
States on common constitutional basis
with universal liberty; has brought order
out of chaos, general tranquility out OF
widespread disaffection, uneXampled pros
perity out of frightful devastation; and has
advanced the banner of liberty and equality
far beyond the expectation or hope OF any
man living ten years ago. The day has gone
by, therefore, for any one to exhibit remark
able courage or conspicuity in the adj
vocacy of any measure in behalf OF the
rights and interests of our colored popula
tion, except, indeed, where the old slave
holding spirit still exercises mastery at the
South Nor is it pertinent to the occasion
to talk of their infinite wrongs" now thai