June 27, 1856

Sourced from the Library of Congress here

If all men are Brothers, and are equally precious in the sight of God, the equal right of all men to a portion of the earth at once becomes manifest. God is not partial. His glorious impartiality is heard in all the thunder and in all the myriad voices of nature. The most despised of the children of men, man breathe the pure air of heaven, and our patient old earth responds as readily to the hand of black industry as to white. God is impartial, just, and loving to all, and if so, there can be no question that this earth of ours, created by God and out of which we were formed, and by which our lives are sustained, belongs alike and equally to all the children of men. Any human arrangement, therefore, which in any measure tends to deprive a part of mankind of their right to the soil, whether directly or indirectly, immediately or remotely, by slow and imperceptible methods, by monopoly, no matter how, the thing done, is opposed to natural right and no subtilty of human reasoning, can make it in harmony with the Government of God.

The agitation of this question gained much more attention a few years ago than now. That agitation has been, for the last three years, if not dead, in a state of suspended animation. Its Lecturers have gone home, its papers have gone down and the thing has stopped. This is all wrong. The reasons for the Land Reform movement are as strong, and stronger now than formerly, and must increase in strength while the rich grow richer, and the poor poorer. There is one reason for the declension of interest in this question, furnished in the fact, that many of those who advocated the cause most loudly, loved its principles with a selfish love. They hated Land monopoly, simply because they were not able to monopolize the land themselves. The Land Reformers have now accepted their pre-emption rights joyfully, while they have seen without protest their colored brother shamelessly denied of his.

We have heard but one protest against the Land Bill of ‘54 and that was Gerrit Smith’s, in refusing to vote for it because it trampled upon the rights, and insulted the poorest of all God’s children in America. This act of Mr. Smith’s condemned at the time by a time serving expediency, will shine among the brightest stars with which posterity will gratefully crown his memory. He refused Land for the white man - nay, he scorned to accept for himself what was insultingly and shamefully denied to his humbler brother. Had Land Reformers been like Gerrit Smith, Land Reform would have had a “local habitation” as well as a “name” but it withered away for the lack of the great principle of “IMPARTIALITY” which it was loudest in professing, and upon which it was professedly based.

White parties, white Land Reform, white Territories, white constitutions, white churches, and religion, and white everything, are essentially devilish. They would drive the black man to Hell! They would, at any rate, leave him no place in heaven or earth. It was our knowledge of the whited character of the Land Reform movement which has led us all along to distrust it , and when it died without a struggle, it died like itself - a thing which had no real hold upon life-giving principles.

We understand that the Land Reformers, those who have some thing like a true and consistent idea of the principles upon which the cause is based, are to hold a National Land Reform Convention on the 3rd and 4th of July, at Albany. We are informed that our friends Gerrit Smith, and William Goodell, will be there. We are glad of this, and would be glad to be with them, but cannot, on account of other duties.

The Land Reform question, viewed by itself, is of very high importance. Relatively, however, looked at in connection with the terrible and overshadowing question of Slavery, it parts with its aparent urgency and importance. It seems most manifest to our judgement, that the slave question is now the great and paramount question, transcending for the present all other questions, the one which God, by the stern logic of events, is now pressing upon the attention of this guilty nation for settlement - Whether men shall have their own bodies, their own wives and children, must ever be a more vital and pressing question, than whether men shall own or not own the insensible earth under our feet. Self-ownership is the great right from which all other rights are inferable. When that great right is trampled in the dust, annihilated in the persons of four millions of the American people, we care but little for Land Reform.

The Land Reformer

August 15, 1856

Source is Matt Karp who transcribed the article at Jacobin

The land reformers have started a weekly paper, bearing the above title, to which we wish abundant success. “The leading idea of the paper will be Land Reform; by applying the principle of limitation to the tenure, by which ownership of the soil is regulated, whether as referring to State legislation or the disposal of the Public Lands, by the general Government.” Radical reformers, everywhere, will hail its appearance with pleasure. The deep seated evil of poverty, with its attendant ignorance, vice, and squalid misery, which are always found to be in exact proportion to the splendor of the wealthier class, has always, and must always, attract the attention of the philanthropist, who seeks to remove the cause of the ills that afflict mankind, and not rest satisfied, as too many do, with abating the symptoms. Can poverty be prevented? If so, how? Must civilization be always like a whited sepulcher, outwardly fair, but within full of rottenness? Can no care be devised to relieve the poverty-stricken throng, from whose ranks our criminals, male and female, are so numerously recruited? Poor houses, soup societies, Ragged Schools, and Five Point Missions, are looked to by some to stem the tide of poverty. But what we want is not that poverty shall be promptly relieved, but that it shall be at once removed. Like the purchase of one or two individuals from Slavery, as is frequently done by benevolent minded individuals or communities, we are glad to see the manifestation of good feeling; but what we want is a preventative, not an ameliorator. We want the necessity for the purchase of men removed, and so with the necessity for relieving the poor. We want no poor. We conscientiously believe that the welfare of the world demands the abrogation of land monopolies. Earth, air, fire and water, are essential to human existence, and should be free to all men, in virtue of their heaven descended right. What justice is there in the General Government giving away, as it does, the millions upon millions of acres of public lands, to aid soulless railroad corporations to get rich? Or in the laws by which capitalists enter upon the possession of the national domain, and when the thrift and labor of the pioneer has raised the value of the lands, to compel the pioneer, not only to pay the Government price of lands, but also to pay the landlord for the increased value of the land, increased, though it was, by his own labor. We are aware that whenever these agrarian doctrines are broached there is a great outcry of vested rights, &c.; but the rights with which humanity is invested by the Almighty Creator, are far above, far more sacred, than any composed by human customs or laws. In our country there need be no violence committed on the rights of property. All we need is a land limitation law, and an act conferring upon the settlers of the public domain the possession of their land, and defending them against land sharks and speculators. Estates too large for the good of society will, in a few generations, be reduced to moderate dimensions, and none of the violent consequences predicted by the enemies of land limitation be experienced. We believe that with land limitation Slavery would be impossible. Your slaveholder is ever a land monopolist. — We believe the general education of the people would be promoted by land limitation; and the thousands of children who are now toiling in mills and workshops at a time when they should be at school, will be, by their independent parents, placed under instruction and good influences. We believe that the cause of temperance would be promoted by land limitation; the homeless wanderer seeks to drown sorrow in the joy-giving glass. The cause of virtue would be promoted; the want of homes drives thousands of women to prostitution, and other thous- [. . .] Let the means of the young men of the country [. . .] under present arrangements, toil through the best portions of their lives ere they can hope to possess a home; and before a single generation the beneficial effect can be felt. Multiply the free homes of the people; let each man have around him the blessed influences of family and home, and the rampant vice and rowdyism of our country will disappear.

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