"True, permanent peace can never be restored, until slavery, the occasion of the war, has ceased"
About this Quote
“Permanent peace” is doing more work here than it first appears. Gerrit Smith isn’t simply condemning slavery as immoral; he’s dismantling the comfortable political fantasy that the nation can negotiate its way back to normal without touching the engine of the conflict. The sentence is built like a courtroom stipulation: True, X can’t happen until Y. It grants the listener a familiar desire (peace) and then attaches a price tag the country has been dodging (abolition). That’s not idealism. It’s a strategic reframing of wartime aims.
Smith’s specific intent is to make slavery non-negotiable by redefining peace itself. Not a ceasefire, not a patched-up Union, not a gentleman’s agreement between elites, but “restored” peace that lasts. The subtext is a warning against reconciliation on the South’s terms and against Northern leaders tempted by half-measures: if you leave the cause intact, you guarantee future wars, rebellions, and political crises. He’s also quietly accusing moderates of mistaking quiet for stability.
Context matters: Smith was a radical abolitionist politician operating in the volatile decades around the Civil War, when many Americans preferred to treat slavery as a regional “issue” rather than a national poison. By naming slavery as “the occasion of the war,” he refuses the era’s softer euphemisms about tariffs or abstract “states’ rights.” It’s a moral claim packaged as a practical one: emancipation isn’t just justice; it’s national security. The line works because it turns the most pragmatic goal in politics into an indictment of political cowardice.
Smith’s specific intent is to make slavery non-negotiable by redefining peace itself. Not a ceasefire, not a patched-up Union, not a gentleman’s agreement between elites, but “restored” peace that lasts. The subtext is a warning against reconciliation on the South’s terms and against Northern leaders tempted by half-measures: if you leave the cause intact, you guarantee future wars, rebellions, and political crises. He’s also quietly accusing moderates of mistaking quiet for stability.
Context matters: Smith was a radical abolitionist politician operating in the volatile decades around the Civil War, when many Americans preferred to treat slavery as a regional “issue” rather than a national poison. By naming slavery as “the occasion of the war,” he refuses the era’s softer euphemisms about tariffs or abstract “states’ rights.” It’s a moral claim packaged as a practical one: emancipation isn’t just justice; it’s national security. The line works because it turns the most pragmatic goal in politics into an indictment of political cowardice.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
|---|
More Quotes by Gerrit
Add to List
