ABOLITION OF SLAVERY.

Ohio City, Sept. 22, 1848.

Messrs. Douglass & Delany:ーThere are those who steadily maintain that Congress has power over slavery wherever it exists, and who will preserve their principles uncontaminated by pro-slavery parties and pro-slavery influence; and there are those who also uniformly contend for the desired reforms in the State and Federal Governments, as well as the freedom of the public lands; and I am pleased to reckon Gerrit SmithSmith, Gerrit

Gerrit Smith (1797– 1874), a New York businessman and land speculator, became best known for his philanthropic work for such reform causes as temperance and abolition. Between 1828 and 1835, he donated large sums of money to the American Colonization Society, but abandoned that movement in 1835 when his sympathies shifted to the immediate abolitionists. In the 1840s, he gave approximately 140,000 acres of land in upstate New York to three thousand black settlers, thus qualifying them to vote. Smith was a founder and frequent candidate of the Liberty party, running for governor of New York on that ticket in 1840 and winning a seat in Congress in 1852. When the Free Soil merger with moderate antislavery Democrats and Whigs lured away many Liberty party supporters, Smith helped bankroll that organization until 1860. Smith befriended Douglass when the latter moved to Rochester, and Smith frequently helped finance Frederick Douglass’ Paper. Like Douglass, Smith supported John Brown, but psychological stress caused by the failure at Harpers Ferry brought on the first of a series of bipolar episodes that greatly reduced his subsequent reform activities. Ralph Volney Harlow, Gerrit Smith: Philanthropist and Reformer (1939; New York, 1972); Gerald Sorin, The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism (Westport, Conn., 1971), 269– 87; Lewis Perry, Radical Abolitionism: Anarchy and the Government of God in Antislavery Thought (Ithaca, N.Y., 1973), 170– 80; John R. McKivigan and Madeleine Leveille, “The ‘Black Dream’ of Gerrit Smith, New York Abolitionist,” Syracuse University Library Associates Courier, 20:61– 76 (Fall 1985); NCAB , 2:322– 23; DAB, 17:270– 71. as one of that number.

My views in regard to what measures should constitute a broad and permanent platform for a Republican party, having for its basis such engrossing objects, are briefly stated in my letter of the 6th inst. to Mr. Brown, and published this day in the "Spirit of Freedom," to the 18th, 19th and 20th articles of which I beg leave more especially to call you attention.

Section 2 of Article 4 of the Federal Constitution, reads:

"No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."

On this clause apologizers for all the physical, social, moral, religious and political evils of slavery, principally rest for the continuance and justification of slavery. It was, I believe, this clause only which Daniel Webster cited in the Mississippi case.

It is the one, if I mistake not, and the only one, by which seamen, apprentices, and the like, escaping from one State into another are recovered and brought back. Criminals are also recovered, I believe, in conformity with this clause. It must, then, be applicable to white persons as well as colored. Both are therefore placed on the same footing, so far as slavery is concerned; and therefore chattel slavery, or property in man, cannot be maintained by this provision. It is well to observe, also, that they are to be delivered up "to the party to whom such service or labor may be due," which implies indebtedness or obligation to the government, under the penalty of administrated law.

Applying it, for argument's sake, to the slave, it must be shown from some other clause in the Constitution that he has the rightto sell himselfーand, secondly, from some reliable evidence that he did sell himself to the party claiming him; or, thirdly, that black men and white men may be recovered from any State, brought back, and held accountable, under the Constitution, for civil debt.

It should also be observed, that whomsoever it may refer to, their personality is distincly recognized, hence, cannot be regarded under the law as chattels ー nothing more nor less than man or woman.

Another clause in the Constitution is the only remaining one on which pro-slavery men hang for the perpetuity of slavery, (Article 1, Sec. 1):

"Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other persons."

That this refers to slaves when it speaks of "three-fifths of all other persons," can only be supposed. We know slavery existed at that time. But there is no positive enactment for slavery in the language; and what there is that refers to man as a beast, or to property in a "person," can only be inferred or doubtfully implied; and the sentence itself is constructed in much obscurity; its tone evasive and guarded, lest there might be something in it that would really express so disgraceful a thing as property in man! It was not therefore intended that it should be expressed; hence, the concurrence of a majority with Madison, that slavery would soon be abolished, and that the IDEA of property in man should not be admitted into the Constitution. There was therefore no enactment for slavery; and the most favorable construction that can be put upon the clause for slavery, is the implication that, until Congress should abolish it, "three-fifths of all the PERSONS" should be added in making out the apportionment of representatives and direct taxes. Slavery, and the perpetuity of it, are not "nominated in the bond;" and in the clause cited, the framers did more against than for it! For while they were thus ambiguous in any expression of slavery, if reference was made to slaves at all, they have in this clause also openly avowed and recognized, on the other hand, perhaps intentionally, the colored man's personality. The provision directs the number of representatives, not their duties, and the manner of apportioning direct taxes, either with or without the existence of slavery.

There is still another view of the subject no less important: Grant for a moment that the Constitution doubtfully referred to slaves. There is no provision in the Constitution for perpetual slavery. Colored persons born after the Constitution went into effect, could not, therefore, come under any reference in the Constitution to them. If it could claim any as slaves, the claim could apply to those only who were then living.

Whatever, therefore, may have been the intention of some of the framers of the Constitution, if there cannot be some other provisions than those I have noticed that will support slavery, it is not beyond the Constitutional province of Congress to abolish it. Property in persons, I hardly need repeat, is not mentioned in that instrument; and unless it be clearly expressed, no implication for it is admissible.

In an action at law for the replevin of a black horse, if the plaintiff, in the writ, describes a white one, the action cannot be maintained, however clearly he may be able to prove he intended to describe a black one. So if some members, who assited in framing the Constitution, intended to describe a a piece of property, but carelessly allowed the word "persons" to be inserted in its place, posterity cannot complain at the oversight, however much it is on the side of humanity.ーBlackstone would say further, even on the trial of a cause, It is better for ninety-nine guilty persons to go free than punish one innocent man. And if any man should think the constitutional provisions at all doubtful in its description of property in man, the slave must have the benefit of that doubt.

Unless then, as it has been hinted, there shall be some other provision for that insanity which contradicts the universally endeared words of the immortal Jefferson, that all men have rights, such as "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," the subject must be referred to Congress, to decide whether the evil shall exist under its future action or not; and our Representatives and Senators must bear the responsibility.

Courts of justice may decide upon the constitutional rights, and another decision may reverse it, whatever may have been the precedents; and those "rights," in the constitution
of the slave, by the Great Law-Giver, are as "inalienable."

But let us urge on the movement that will note the time when our courts will be courts of justice, and their decisions, in conformity with the Constitution, which was never intended to know any impartialty, or to recognize interpretations that will admit of any inequality; it would be almost a wrong and a shame to view it differently.

The policy of stating a time as the furthest period for the existence of slavery, by the Government, in the District of Columbia, and in the States, may not be altogether unphilosophical; its bearings upon the country, its influence upon the slaves themselves, (for it will be pretty sure to get to them in some way or other,) may not be any detriment; and it can work no harm to the slaveholder to expect the abolition of slavery at the time stated. Would it not, therefore, be well enough for the lands acquired by conquest, not to be very much meddled with, before the consummation of an event so freighted with the deepest interest to the country, and one so devoutly to be wished?

No apology is necessary from me for asking your views on the subject at an early moment.

I am, dear sir,

Yours for Progression,

E. H. SANFORDSanford, E. H.

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