THOMAS SMITH¹A Thomas S. Smith (1829-60) was buried in Gratiot, Licking County, Ohio, in 1860. Born and raised in nearby Muskingum County, Smith became a tailor there. Records indicate that he was working as a farmer at the time of his decease. 1850 U.S. Census, Ohio, Muskingum County, 79; 1860 U.S. Federal Census Mortality Schedule for Hopewell Township, Muskingum County, Ohio, n.p. TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Gratiot, Ohio[.] 28 Feb[ruary] 1857.

“FRED. DOUGLASS:

SIR:—
I have taken your paper for the last four months, and feel convinced that
every white man who reads it ought to be rode on a rail, and then given a
coat of tar and feathers.²Although the origin of tarring and feathering remains obscure, the act can be traced as far back as medieval times. A well-known example dates from 1189 when Richard I of England ordered that it be used as a means of punishment for Crusaders found guilty of theft. As late as the 1770s, tarring was occasionally prescribed as a method of punishment in England. In British North America, where the earliest recorded examples of it are associated with sailors and maritime culture, tarring and feathering does not seem to have come into use until the eighteenth century. In the 1760s, however, it gained wider acceptance as a means of shaming those seen as supporting British interests against their fellow colonists. During the American Revolution, it became the nonlethal punishment of choice for those viewed as holding Tory sympathies. Tarring and feathering remained a feature of American vigilante justice into the twentieth century. Richard Maxwell Brown, Strain of Violence: Historical Studies of American Violence and Vigilantism (New York, 1975), 56-57; Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Honor and Violence in the Old South (New York, 1986), 187-213; Benjamin H. Irvin, “Tar, Feathers, and the Enemies of American Liberties, 1768-1776," NEQ, 76:197-203 (June 2003).

“Please publish this, and stop my paper.

“THOMAS SMITH.”³Douglass followed his publication of Thomas’s letter in his newspaper with the following editorial statement: “Thomas Smith having prescribed the treatment he deems proper for white men who indulge in the practice of reading our paper, and having confessed himself guilty of the practice, we trust his neighbors will take him in hand, and administer his prescription.”

PLSr: FDP, 13 March 1857.