Speeches of Gerrit Smith in Congress [1853-1854]

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1855 Excerpt: ... SPEECH OX THE NEBRASKA BILL. APEIL 6, 1854. The motto which Mr Smith prefixed to this Speech, and under which it first appeared, was: No Slavery in Nebraska: No Slavery in the Nation: Slavery an Outlaw. So, Mr. Chairman, the slavery question is up again!--up again, even in Congress I! It will not keep down. At no bidding, however authoritative, will it keep down. The President of the United States commands it to keep down. Indeed, he has, hitherto, seemed to make the keeping down of this question the great end of his great office. Members of Congress have so far humbled themselves, as to pledge themselves on this floor to keep it down. National political conventions promise to discountenance, and even to resist, the agitation of slavery, both in and out of Congress. Commerce and politics are as afraid of this agitation, as Macbeth was of the ghost of Banquo; and many titled divines, taking their cue from commerce and politics, and being no less servile than merchants and demagogues, do what they can to keep the slavery question out of sight. But all is of no avail. The saucy slavery question will not mind them. To repress it in one quarter, is only to have it burst forth more prominently in another quarter. If you hold it back here, it will break loose there, and rush forward with an accumulated force, that shall amply revenge for all its detention. And this is not strange, when we consider how great is the power of truth. It were madness for man to bid the grass not to grow, the waters not to run, the winds not to blow. It were madness for him to assume the mastery of the elements of the physical world. But more emphatically were it madness for him to attempt to hold in his puny fist the forces of the moral world. Canute's folly, in setting bounds to the...