Gerrit Smith to Frederick Douglass, June 12, 1854
GERRIT SMITH TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS
Washington, [D.C.] 12 June 1854.
FREDK DOUGLASS—
MY FRIEND,
I this [day receive] the accompanying list—. There is certainly some merit in the lines1Smith received a poem entitled “Nebraska” from an admirer, Daniel Haynes. Douglass published the poem in his newspaper several weeks later. , 30 June 1854.—You will judge whether enough to justify you in giving them a place in your Paper—If you print them, [do send Mr. Haynes]2The published poem identifies its author, Daniel Haynes (1783-1870), as a resident of East Nassau, a small village in Rensselaer County, New York. The son of Daniel Haynes and his second wife, Mary Horton, Haynes was born in Brimfield, Massachusetts. A physician, Haynes set up practice initially in Bethlehem, Albany County, New York, where he married Magdalena Burnett in 1804. They had three children, including Dr. John H. Haynes and Daniel A. Haynes, a member of the Ohio State Legislature, judge of the Montgomery Superior Court, president of both the Dayton Bank and the Dayton Insurance Company, and director of the Dayton & Western Railroad. By 1815, Haynes had moved his family to Chatham in Columbia County, where his first wife died in 1842. The following year, he married a widow, Angeline Debol, and joined his son’s practice in Rensselaer County, New York. He was widowed a second time in 1853, and by 1860 he was living with his son’s family, having become deaf. 1850 U.S. Census, New York, Rensselaer County, 740; 1860 U.S Census, New York, Rensselaer County, 126-27; Frank Conover, ed., (Logansport, Ind., 1897), 177-78; Frances
Haynes, ed., (Haverhill, Mass., 1929), 70, 77-76, 91-92. a [couple] of copies of the Paper [containing them]—
I see you are [mentioned] for Congress.3Several newspapers hinted at the possibility of the National Liberty party running Frederick Douglass for Congress in 1854. There is no evidence, however, to prove that the party leadership ever intended to implement such a plan or that Douglass harbored this political ambition. About the time of Smith’s letter to Douglass, the Rochester correspondent of the Syracuse reported on rumors in the city that some Whig factions had discussed nominating Douglass for Congress. In Douglass’s absence from Rochester, his assistant editor, William J. Watkins, published a brief, humorous account of the incident. , 23 June 1854; John Stauffer, (Cambridge, Mass., 2001), 24; Charles H. Weley, “The Participation of Negroes in Anti-Slavery Political Parties," , 29:68-69 (January 1944). My heart would leap for joy at your election. It would be the greatest blow yet struck for the redemption of the slave. Oh how I should love [to] [work] for your election!
Truly yours
GERRIT SMITH
ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 34, frame 3, FD Papers, DLC.
JAMES RAWSON JOHNSON TO DOUGLASS, 4 JULY 1854 81
2.
3.
JAMES RAWSON JOHNSON1 TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS
Wading River, L[.] I., [N.Y.] 4 July [18]54.
MY DEAR DOUGLASS:—
I never felt so solemn—never so heavy at heart any 4th of July, in my life.
While I am writing, I hear the sound of cannon from Greenport, on Long
Island; and the water of the L. I. Sound,2 is such a faithful conductor of
sound, that I plainly hear the booming cannon from old Connecticut, the
State where I drew my infant breath, and where the bodies of my dear
parents rest in their graves. But to these noisy expressions of joy, there 1s
no response from my bosom.
That fugitive from American oppression, Anthony Burns,3 has a
stronger hold on my mind at this hour, than the “heroes of the Revolu-
tion.” He attempted to apply the doctrines which they asserted, and lo! the
arm of the United States of America is raised to crush him! Is it so? or am
I in the midst of a vexatious, troubled dream?—Yes, it is so; the terrible
reality 1s upon us.
I am sad to-day, because my hopes for the peaceful abolition of
American slavery greatly decline. My expectation of its speedy abolition
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