Samuel N. Sweet to Frederick Douglass, September 6, 1858

GERRIT SMITH FOR GOVERNOR.

MR. EDITOR:—I cordially approve of Gerrit Smith's nomination for Governor. In common with all the true friends of Temperance and Freedom throughout the State, I shall most cheerfully vote for that great and good man.— I have known him "long and well," and I am very confident that he would do honor to himself and the office, returning to that high station more dignity than he will derive from it.

His thrilling eloquence has roused and encouraged the oppressed who are struggling to be free, and his election would be the purest triumph ever achieved since the days of the immortal Washington. It is beyond the power of the imagination to realize the blessings which would flow from his election to the holy cause of humanity. His unbounded philanthropy, his ardent patriotism, his love of temperance "in all things," his uncompromising hostility to tyranny, and his high estimate of integrity and honor both in public and private life, richly entitle him to the office of Chief Magistrate. I call upon all the friends of the people's rights to bury beneath the waves of oblivion all prejudices created by party spirit, and fill the air with united and harmonious voices, which will announce that to the noble standard of Temperance and Liberty are rallying hosts of freemen.

Then, we shall have a Governor who will "know no law for slavery," and who is in favor of prohibiting the unhallowed traffic in ardent spirits.

In my travels through the country, during the last quarter of a century, I have often been led to exclaim with my favorite write, Shakspeare, in view of the evils of intemperance, and the crimes of drunkards, particularly wife-killing, which is very common among them. "O, though invisible spirit of rum! if we had no other name for thee, we would call thee Devil!" The most atrocious crimes that stain the soul are committed by both sexes under the influence of intemperance. Lady Macbeth—if indeed such a monster of iniquity and demoniac vengeance can be called a lady—speaking of Duncan's groom says; "That which hath made them drunk, hath made me bold! What hath quenched them, hat made me bold!" The world "bold" means a murderer! In behalf of the ladies, I thank the great delineator of human nature for this passage, it implies that without a degree of intoxication, woman cannot be made completely and irreclaimably wicked. When Napoleon Bonaparte met with his defeat at Waterloo, the cry of every man in his army was, "Save himself who can." The only way to save ourselves and our children from the clustering sorrows, the degradation and the wretchedness of intemperance, is for the friends of human happiness to adopt the motto, at the approaching election, of sailors in a storm: "A strong pull, a long pull, and a pull altogether."

The merits of Gerrit Smith are so distinguished, that all will feel the justice of his election.

It will, moreover, oblige foreign countries to acknowledge that our great State is not ungrateful for the services of the world-wide, renowned philanthropist, orator and statesman. I assumed the position more than twenty years ago, in my occasional Temperance lectures, that the Legislature ought not to sanction the sale of that life-destroying stuff—ardent spirits—and I feel truly thankful, that in the good Providence of God, I have lived to have an opportunity of aiding my fellow-citizens in electing a Governor, under whose administration King Alcohol will fall backwards into "the tomb of the capulets," hopeless of a future resurrection.

Mr. Smith will also take the Moloch of Slavery by the horns, and the Empire State will stand erect and free. When Perdieus asked Alexander the Great, to whom he would bequeath the empires of the world, the Emperor's answer was, "to the most worthy." It was a saying among the ancient Greeks, that "Emulation hath an hundred worthy sons." True; but who is more worthy of our support than the uncorruptible Gerrit Smith? I can truly say in my deepest hear, "if there is any one man in this nation whose views, thoughts, feelings and desires are more strictly republican, more entirely free from the alloy of pride and aristocracy than any other, and who is more sincerely than any other attached to republican institutions in their simplicity and beauty, that man" I hold to be Gerrit Smith, our next Governor. Be that as it may, his admirers will make the amaranth into laurels for a wreath of fame to place upohn his brown, there to remain forever, for virtue and truth are immortal.

SAMUEL N. SWEET.

FLORENCE, Oneida Co., Sept. 6.