Meeting in Seneca County.

Frederick Douglass:—The friends of Righteous Civil Government in Seneca county, in response to a call (published in your paper) convened at the Wesleyan chapel at Seneca Falls, Oct. 24. The convention was organized by calling Joshua Martin to the Chair, and appointing B. F. Bradford Secretary.

A committee was appointed to present Resolutions, and another on Nominations.—Their report on nominations you have received through Mr. Skidmore, I therefore shall omit it, and will forward you the resolutions.

D. Skidmore, J. Porter, and A. R. Lazerlere, were constituted a county executive committee.

Our gathering was not large. Several towns however were represented by high-minded men, firm and true.

Resolved, That the true office of Civil Government is not to create nor destroy human rights, but to ascertain and protect them; and is therefore, when properly administered, an indispensable agent to the elevation of the race.

Resolved, That a Righteous Civil Government is impartial towards all its subjects; redresses all wrongs within its reach; disowns the policy of removing one evil and neglecting another; of doing justice to one portion of its subjects and leaving another to groan under injustice; and more emphatically it frowns upon that policy which removes one evil by means which perpetuate and confirm others, and of benefiting one class of its subjects at the expense of sacrificing another.

Resolved, That Civil Government as it exits, is Civil Government but in name, for instead of protecting man's natural rights, it is a conspiracy against them; instead of sheltering its subjects, it leaves the mass of

them to be pressed upon by the few.

Resolved, That Civil Government proper, enacts no laws, obeys no laws, knows no laws for Slavery; and instead of protecting the Slave-holder, punishes him.

Resolved, That it is as impossible to legalize Slavery as any other form of ro[b]bery or murder; and therefore all Anti-slavery which admits that slavery can be legalized, which admits its obligation to uphold it, if so be the Constitution upholds it, is atheistical, hyprocritical, and contemptible, and far more Pro-Slavery than Anti-Slavery in its influence.

Resolved, That the Fugitive Slave Bill contains none of the attributes of law, and conveys no authority to those who act under it; and hence all who do act under it are, in the eye of God and all true law, naked Kidnappers, and are only less guilty than the political demons who enacted it, and the clerical demons who sanctify it.

Resolved, That the recent shooting of the Kidnapper in Pennsylvania kindles the hope that the day may yet dawn when the colored men, both North and South, will offer a proper and manly resistance to their mean and murderous oppressors; and while there may exist a difference of opinion among the friends of liberty in relation to the mode of resistance, yet all the most firmly believe that unflinching resistance, at whatever cost, is what is imperatively called for to confound and conquer these tyrants and win the

sympathy of the world.

Resolved, That if it were wrong for the men of Pennsylvania to shoot to save themselves from Slavery, it was infinitely more wrong for the men of the Revolution to shoot to save themselves, from taxation; and that, hence, they who are for punishing these men in Pennsylvania, do virtually take the ground that Bunker Hill and Washington Monuments perpetuate the memory of American criminals instead of American worthies.

Resolved, That if the first shedding of blood against oppressive British laws was glorious, then is the first shedding of blood against the infernal Fugitive Bill infinitely more glorious; and if Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill merit immortality, unspeakably more does Christiana merit it.

Resolved, That true Civil Government will no more permit a monopoly in the soil than of the light and air, the right to the soil being as absolute as to the light and air.

Resolved, That true Civil Government will suppress dram-shops, and for the sufficient reason that it cannot protect its subjects so long as dram-shops are permitted to multiply paupers and criminals.

Resolved, That true Civil Government recognizes the unity and identity of the human race—and hence recognizes the great natural right to buy and sell the world over; and is invested with that right no farther, than to protect all of its subjects in its unrestricted enjoyment.

Resolved, That Righteous Civil Government, being just in all its principles and relation, will be under no necessity of burdening its subjects with standing Armies with which to protect itself from a foreign foe

but may be expected to dwell as securely and harmon[i]ously among the national families as do the individual families with each other which compose each individual Government.

Resolved, That as all just Governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the Governed, therefore in the eye of such Governments the woman is the equal of man, and her rights, politically, religiously and socially, are identical with his.

Resolved, That we rejoice as one with them that the people of Syracuse have made a manly, successful, and christian resistance to the Southern Kidnapper, in his base attempts to plunge one of their citizens into the hell of Slavery; and farther, we regard it to be the solemn duty of all good citizens of every other city and village throughout the Empire State and the North, to emulate their noble example.

Resolved, That we are pleased with, and pledge ourselves to sustain the Nominations of the Liberty Party at the late Buffalo Convention, that we hail the day as auspicious when 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. and other noble men like him shall occupy the Chair of State and preside over the [destiny] of this Nation.

Resolved, That we approve of the name Democratic League as a substitute for Liberty Party.

Voted that an abstract of the proceeding of the meeting, together with resolutions, be signed by officers and published in Frederick Douglass' Paper.

Joshua MartinMartin, Joshua

, Chairman.

B. F. Bradford, Secretary.

N.B. These Resolutions [are] not all original. Some are borrowed because they expressed the sentiments of [the] Convention.