Peterboro, [N.Y.] 19 Sept[ember] 1859.

MR. FREDERICK DOUGLASS:

MY DEAR FRIEND:—

I have just read the last number of your paper. Your able and interesting article on American Civilization is entitled to a wide circulation.¹DM, 2:150-51 (October 1859). I see that neither you nor our friend J. R. Johnson²James Rawson Johnson. think me right in declining to attend the approaching Anniversary of the ‘Jerry Rescue.’

And so even you are still ignorant of what I mean by the phrase: ‘No law for slavery!’³This phrase appeared in Gerrit Smith’s 27 August 1859 letter to John L. Thomas, declining the invitation to preside over and address the celebration marking the eighth anniversary of the Jerry Rescue in Syracuse, New York. Frothingham, , 121-22. You think that all I mean by it is ‘that there can be no righteous law for slavery.’ If this is all, then I admit that you are right in placing the ‘Jerry Rescuers’ and the Republican party on the same level with myself. But this is very far from being all my meaning.

Why does the Republican Legislature of our State refuse from Session to Session to enact that fugitives from the great Southern Prison House shall be protected on our soil? Because in their judgment a law—valid and obligatory notwithstanding its immorality—forbids such an enactment. But what they see to be law I see to be no law. That which restrains them imposes no restraint on me.—Neither the Fugitive Slave Law Act, nor any thing in the Constitution, could in the least degree hinder my legislating for the protection of the fugitive slave. Do I not then at this point, where you fancy I am one with the Republican party, differ very widely from it—the Legislature being admitted to represent it? And do I not also at this same point differ as widely from those ‘Jerry Rescuers’ whose votes help make a Republican Legislature?

Again, were a fugitive slave seized in Albany, and about to be hurried to the South without a trial, Governor Morgan⁴Edwin Dennison Morgan. would doubtless be ready to wield the whole military power of the city, if need be, to secure to him what he the Governor would call a ‘fair trial.’ So would Judge Parker,⁵Amasa Junius Parker (1807-90) was a lawyer and educator. From 1823 to 1827, Parker was principal of the Hudson Academy, and though he never attended college, he earned a bachelor of arts degree by examination from Union College. He studied law under his uncle, Amasa Parker, and was admitted to the bar in 1828. Parker practiced law in Delhi, New York, and became an active member of the Democratic party. He served as regent of the State University of New York (1835-44), was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives (1837-39), and served as a judge for the third district of the New York Supreme Court (1847-55). He assisted in the foundation of the Albany Law School in 1851. Parker unsuccessfully ran for governor of New York in 1856 and again in 1858. , 4:649-50; , 14:214-15; (online). were he the Governor: and so would Mr. Burrows,⁶Lorenzo Burrows (1805-85) was the unsuccessful candidate of the nativist American party for governor of New York in 1858. Born in Connecticut, he settled in Albion, New York, and became a successful merchant. He was elected as a Whig to the U.S. House of Representatives (1849-53). (online). were he the Governor. But were I the Governor, I should be ready to wield it not only to save the slave from being hurried away, but also from the degradation and oppression of this ‘fair trial.’ I would no more permit, could I prevent it, the trial in his case of the question whether a man is a man or a chattel—a sublime and sacred immortal or a vulgar commodity—than I would permit it in the case of any one of these three distinguished gentlemen. In a word, I would regard the self-styled Court that should attempt to carry on this trial as a mob, and as much entitled as any other mob to be dispersed. Do I not differ then as essentially from the Republican type as I do from the Democratic or Native American? Moreover, these gentlemen, tho’ perhaps admitting the Statute to be unrighteous, would nevertheless all enforce the Fugitive Slave Statute. But I would resist its enforcement. And does not this also prove that my views of law differ from theirs?—I beg you, my dear friend, not to try any further to make it appear that I am after all like the politicians, and am no fanatic. Let my real views of law remain undisguised, even though the world shall continue to call them fanatical. I appreciate your kindness in trying to save my reputation at this point.—But you cannot save it.

And so too after all I have written these many years to make plain what I mean by helping the South bear the loss of the abolition of slavery, even you do not understand me! Some people will have it that what I mean by it is to recognize the moral—others the legal right of slaveholding. You place yourself among the latter. I confess that I am well nigh discouraged from all further attempts at making myself understood at this point. Nevertheless I will in a few words undertake it once more.

First, Suppose I see one man trying to murder another. I offer the murderer a hundred dollars to desist. He accepts it: and goes away declaring that I admit the right to murder. Would he represent me fairly?

Second, Suppose I tell the slaveholders that I will give them all my property, ay and my life too, if they will let my oppressed brethren go free. Is this recognizing the right to hold them in slavery? Surely, no more right is recognized in this case than in the other. I have given many thousand dollars to slaveholders to induce them to liberate their slaves. Is it not absurd to say that my gifts involved the admission of their right to be slaveholders?

Third, But am I to be held as recognizing either the moral or legal right of slaveholding because when telling the slaveholders what I would have the nation offer them to induce them to emancipate their slaves, I at the same time admit the connexion of the North with the South in establishing, encouraging, upholding, and continuing slavery; and infer from such connexion that the North is a responsible sharer with the South in the crime of slavery, and is therefore bound to share in the loss of abolishing it?

You ask me ‘upon what principle of ethics’ I can associate with slaveholders ‘as gentlemen.’ I confess that it is perhaps not upon principle that I do so. Perhaps it is only through the force of habit—my father having been a slaveholder⁷Gerrit Smith was the son of Peter Skenandoah Smith (1768-1837) of Dutch extraction. As a partner with John Jacob Astor in fur trading and land speculation, Smith eventually acquired over half a million acres of undeveloped land in upstate New York. In 1806 he established his commercial base at Peterboro, the town he founded in Madison County. Depressed after the death of his wife and increasingly obsessed with religious evangelism, Peter Smith turned his business over to Gerrit in 1819. Harlow, , 1-4; Stauffer, , 74-81. until after I had reached manhood and had formed my habits of intercourse with men—my wife having been a slaveholder⁸From a wealthy slaveholding Maryland family, Ann Carroll Fitzhugh had moved with her family to Rochester, New York, before becoming Gerrit Smith’s second wife at age seventeen in 1822. Stauffer, , 92-94. when I married her—and a number of my friends and relatives still being slaveholders. Am I not, in the light of such facts, entitled to a little patience at this point? It is however but justice to myself and to the slaveholder to add, that whilst you and I do from our more favorable stand-point see the criminality of slaveholding, most slaveholders see it very imperfectly, and many do not see it at all—Hence it is not difficult to find a slaveholder who is characterized and adorned with virtues which enter largely into the composition of a gentleman.

But, my old friend, if it is a wonder that I can associate with Southern men who are blinded by their education, the greater wonder is that I can associate with Northern pro-slavery men for whom this plea of blindness cannot be made.

Your friend,

GERRIT SMITH.

PLSr: , 1:158 (October 1859).