Year: 1867

gerrit Smiths Letter to Thaddeus Stevens.


DEAR SIR: You are reported in the New
York Tribune as having recently said on the
floor of Congress:


1T is now held by one of the most liberal
and enlightened gentlemen in the country Il
mean Gerrit Smith) that we should even pay
portion of the damage inflicted on the rebels,
and pay portion of the rebel debt.


OF course, you do not mean that this is literal
ly so. My often repeated proposition is that
Government lend or give moneys to the South,
10 help her to an upward start from the depths
of her poverty and desolation. BY what logic
YOU were able to construct from the letter OF
th;s prop osition your figure II speech is tor
YOU, not me, to explain. | am truly sorry that
it is in your heart to hold up to ridcule my
reasonable proposition. You are too old, and
too intellectual TO be making such concessions
to passion and prejudice There are two rea-
sons why the North should be glad to help the
South


First, the South is poor---very poor; and
the North is rich-very rich. Second, the
North is largely responsible for the poverty OF
the South. Our fathers united with the
fathers of the South in making this land OF
slaves and in our own day the North has
gone with the South iD upholding and extend
ing slavery Until the breaking out of this
war, every Congress was for slavery. The
repeal OF the Missouri compromise was the
work of the North as we'll as the South. SO,
too, was the enactment: OF that internal fugitive
slave act, which even the good Abraham Lin
coin was compelled by the pro slavery senti-
ment of the North, as we'll as of the South, to
enforce so vigorously. With comparatively
few exceptions, our Northern colleges, theolog
ical seminaries, and political and religious
parties were on the side OF slavery. The COM
merce of the North was emphatically in the
interest of slavery.


In the light OF such facts, it surely cannot be
denied that the North made herself largely
responsible for American slavery. But the
war came Of slavery, and the poverty and desc
laton of the South came Of the war; and,
hence, to the same degree that the North was
responsible for slavery, is she responsible Tor
the war, and for its runous results to the
South


You call my sympathy with the South, and
Inv desire to have the North to help her,
'sickly humanity" l call it simple honesty.
If my neighbor and | join in getting each
other drunk, and he in his frenzy goes to tear
ing down my house, and l in selt-deience de-
molish his, [ am not to disown his claim
upon my sympathy. I am to feel that honesty
requires me to help him rebuild.


Would to God that Congress were SO Just
and wise as, at this very session, to lend fifty
millions of dollars to the Confederate States
to each of them 50 much of it as would be pro-
portionate to her population and to what she
has suffered from the ravages Of the war; the
share falling to each State to be distributed
throughout her territory in loans upon ade.
quate security This, by proving the love and
pity of the North for her, would win the heart
Of the South and would thus produce a true
and lasting peace between them. And then it
would be worth to the nation. it only IN a
financial point Of view, many times fifty mil
lions Of dollars Gold would no longer bear
among US premium Of 10 per cent. and our
Government would no longer have to pay 7
per cent nor much more than half7 per cent
interest on it's loans.


@.'' Very respectfully yours,


GERRIT SMITH. :