For Frederick Douglass' Paper

CANANDAIGUA, Oct. 28th, 1854.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS: DEAR SIR:—I have just read Gerrit SmithSmith, Gerrit

Gerrit Smith (1797– 1874), a New York businessman and land speculator, became best known for his philanthropic work for such reform causes as temperance and abolition. Between 1828 and 1835, he donated large sums of money to the American Colonization Society, but abandoned that movement in 1835 when his sympathies shifted to the immediate abolitionists. In the 1840s, he gave approximately 140,000 acres of land in upstate New York to three thousand black settlers, thus qualifying them to vote. Smith was a founder and frequent candidate of the Liberty party, running for governor of New York on that ticket in 1840 and winning a seat in Congress in 1852. When the Free Soil merger with moderate antislavery Democrats and Whigs lured away many Liberty party supporters, Smith helped bankroll that organization until 1860. Smith befriended Douglass when the latter moved to Rochester, and Smith frequently helped finance Frederick Douglass’ Paper. Like Douglass, Smith supported John Brown, but psychological stress caused by the failure at Harpers Ferry brought on the first of a series of bipolar episodes that greatly reduced his subsequent reform activities. Ralph Volney Harlow, Gerrit Smith: Philanthropist and Reformer (1939; New York, 1972); Gerald Sorin, The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism (Westport, Conn., 1971), 269– 87; Lewis Perry, Radical Abolitionism: Anarchy and the Government of God in Antislavery Thought (Ithaca, N.Y., 1973), 170– 80; John R. McKivigan and Madeleine Leveille, “The ‘Black Dream’ of Gerrit Smith, New York Abolitionist,” Syracuse University Library Associates Courier, 20:61– 76 (Fall 1985); NCAB , 2:322– 23; DAB, 17:270– 71. 's letter to Judge Bronson, which throws some doubt on the Anti-Slavery position of our estimable townsman, Myron H. ClarkClark, Myron H.

. Mr. Smith thinks because Mr. Clark is a Whig, and the nominee of the Whig party, therefore he cannot hold to unconstitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Law, and refuse to obey its inhuman requirements.

Now, I apprehend Mr. Clark is not the kind of Whig that used to be running for office in "Tippacanoe and Taylor too" times; but he is a Buffalo Platform Whig, and will be found true as steel to whatever he has said against slavery. He is not the man to look one way and row the other. We have not seen the like in nomination by the Whig party before. Mr. Smith also complains of Mr. Clark's want of sympathy with him when he spoke in Canandaigua last year, in behalf of the noble rescuers of Jerry.—But perhaps Mr. Smith was not aware that his meeting was held on Mr. Clark's ground; that seats were fitted up in part at Mr. Clark's expense; and that we were assured of Mr. Clark's protection from molestation. Mr. Smith gives but one man credit in Canandaigua, of standing up straight with him in his noble effort for the Jerry Rescuers.—He evidently feels like a certain prophet in ancient Israel, who thought there was but one man left to worship the Lord; yet he was assured, on high authority, that there were more than 700 of the same sort left. So, I trust in this vicinity it will be found that there are more than that number who will not bow the knee to slavery, nor obey its bloody code.

It is very important that every friend of Freedom and Temperance should cast their vote for Clark at the coming election. Not a truer man lives, or one that the allied forces of Rum and Slavery hate with more bitterness. It is death upon them without benefit of clergy, and they know it.

Yours for the right,

JOHN MOSHER.