Gerrit Smith Quotes
Our concern, however, is with slavery as it is, and not with any theory of it.
Smith, Gerrit. Letter of Gerrit Smith, to Rev. James Smylie, of the State of Mississippi. R. G. Williams, 1837.
What was particularly interesting about this quotation is that Pinkney was a political leader of Maryland, a slave state. He saw the injustice and immorality of slavery but like many others of our founding fathers assumed that ending slavery would infringe on the property rights of the slave holders. Others argued that there can be no right to deny others their basic rights—property and wealth are subordinate to natural rights. See {632258} and {632259} for more on this point.
In early New England the General Court served as both a legislature and a judiciary before separation of powers was introduced. 5 years later the Court banned importing African slaves at all. While slavery was not common in Rhode Island, the laws was not seriously enforced on those who would defy them. It does represent a public anti-slavery sentiment that existed in Early America. It would take 200 years for Rhode Island to finally eliminate all forms of slavery.
Southern secession and the Civil War This is one of the major quotations with which historians rebut the revisionist view that the Civil War was about States’ Rights or other economic factors.
The slaves to which he is referring were the serfs of Slovakia who for hundreds of years had literally been the property of the Hungarian nobility. The problem however has been observed about any long-term slavery.
A few years later he had a clearer idea of what was to be done. However, the additional factor of the Civil War played a big part in driving his Emancipation Proclamation. See {609360}
As an entertainer she had toured much of the world and seen American slavery and that of some other nations. She became a staunch abolitionist and like entertainers in the 20th and 21st centuries she used her celebrity to give anti-slavery lectures and perform for audiences where she donated the proceeds of the event to the abolition cause. She is a particularly interesting political figure in that she seems to be one of the first entertainers to perform for a social cause and become an activist.
Gerrit Smith, also spelled Gerritt, was a leading American social reformer, abolitionist, politician, and philanthropist. Spouse to Ann Carroll Fitzhugh, Smith was a candidate for President of the United States in 1848, 1856, and 1860, but only served 18 months in the federal government—in Congress as a Free Soil Party Representative, in 1853–4.
