STEPHEN A. MYERS TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Albany, [N.Y.] 1 March 1859.

In your “reply to Mr. Watkins,”¹William J. Watkins. of last week,²The 25 February 1859 issue of Frederick Douglass’ Paper, mostly likely containing Douglass’s editorial reply to William J. Watkins, has not survived. my name is used several
times in the course of your remarks. My offence, in your eyes, seems to
be in acting with the Republican party, in order to affect certain reforms.
Well, what other practical thing can I do? How much have you done by
voting for 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. ? How much will you accomplish by voting for
him at every election for a score of years to come? The only difference
between us is, that one acts on the practical side of the question, and the

other on the theoretic. It is all very fine to talk about the shor-tcomings of
the Republican party, but the question is, What are you going to do about
it? There can be but two parties, and no man who is worth reasoning with,
will deny that the Republican is the best. Every body knows that for the
next generation, probably, either the Democrats or Republicans must rule
the State and Union. Now, what does all our theorizing amount to in face
of this stubborn reality? It may do for scholars and recluses. But a living,
earnest, working man wants to see some result to his labor.—The only
real question before a man seeking for the equal rights of all men is, shall
I vote for the Republican party or for the Democratic party? All other talk
is a waste of words—mere hair splitting.³The most likely origin in English of the expression “hair splitting” is Robert Boyle’s Excellence of Theology Compared With Natural Philosophy (London, 1674), author’s preface, 10: “The great difficulty . . . so to behave oneself, as to split a hair between them, and never offend either of them.” Let us be done with it. I, for one,
shall not vote for Democrats and consequently shall vote for Republicans.
The Republicans in this State with few exceptions are in favor of Univer
sal Suffrage and a Personal Liberty Bill.⁴Though many states adopted “personal liberty laws” to nullify the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, New York was not among them. The issue remained unresolved until 1858, when Republicans gained control of the New York State Legislature. Abolitionists and antislavery Republicans sent in numerous petitions urging the legislature to adopt a law similar to one in Massachusetts in order to create obstacles to enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act. Despite divisions among conservatives in the Republican party, a select committee recommended the adoption of such a law, one that would include the phrase “every person who shall come or be brought into the State shall be free.” But conservative Republicans with Democratic allies successfully buried attempts to pass two bills sent to the legislature. Consequently, New York remained without a personal liberty law. New York Herald, 12 March 1860; Thomas D. Morris, Free Men All: The Personal Liberty Laws of the North, 1780-1861 (Baltimore, 1974), 181-83.
They give thousands of dollars
to aid fugitive slaves. They defend our rights in the schools, the cars, an——d
the steam boats. No candid man will deny these facts nor assert that the
Democrats do any such things. Then what is the sense of all this rhetoric
about “a head without a heart," “the Serpent and political Eve of the Gar
den,”⁵An allusion to the devil in the form of a serpent tempting Eve in the Garden of Eden. Gen. 3:1-5. and the like. Common sense men will throw their influence, give their labor and cast their votes where they will tell. Others may indulge
in air castles.

STEPHEN MYERS.

PLSr: FDP, 4 March 1859.