JOSIAH LETCHWORTH¹Josiah Letchworth (1791-1857) was born in Philadelphia. After marrying Ann Hause in 1815, he moved to Burlington, New Jersey, where he pursued a living as a saddler. Letchworth later lived and worked in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and the Black River region of New York. After 1819, Letchworth removed to Moravia, New York, and later to Sherwood in the same state. It was in Sherwood, that Letchworth began to involve himself in several reform movements. He was a member of the Society of Friends, and became heavily involved in the emerging temperance movement. Letchworth similarly became involved in the antislavery movement, long before its beliefs were widely accepted. He declined the nomination of the Whig party to run for the New York State Assembly. In 1852 Letchworth moved to Auburn, New York, where he resided until his death. His sons William Pryor and Josiah Jr. later went on to earn renown as businessmen in Buffalo. , 2 vols. (New York, 1906-08) 1:187-89; Elliot G. Storke and James H. Smith, (Syracuse, N.Y., 1879), 269; Emily Howland, “Early History of Friends in Cayuga County, N.Y.” in (Auburn, N.Y., 1882), 49-90. TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Auburn, [N.Y.] 27 Oct[ober] 1854.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS:

ESTEEMED FRIEND:—

I see you sign under the cognomen of “American Freedom,” that sounds well to my ear; but knowing, as , that thousands are on your side in anticipating the day when this shall no longer be a question—but shall stand on the basis on which it was originally placed; to wit, “that we hold it to be a .”²A paraphrase of the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence.

You will permit me to express my sincere regret, that you are assisting to lead off a under a different name, with no difference of sentiment, for which you give us no equivalent. We cannot all think alike, as is evident from the want of union among abolitionists. Now, would you not feel to regret in the event of those conflicting influences presenting themselves, if the absence of the vote of your friends should defeat the candidates, the most friendly to the cause of freedom and temperance? Perhaps we may not come quite up to your standard, but there is an onward progress in that direction.

Now, sir, it is not my wish to despoil you, or GarrisonGarrison, William Lloyd

William Lloyd Garrison (1805-79) was the foremost white abolitionist of the nineteenth century and was credited with the discovery of Douglass as a speaker at an antislavery meeting in Nantucket in 1841. He began his career as an apprentice printer on the Newburyport (Mass.) Herald at the age of thirteen. Garrison became editor of the Newburyport Free Press in 1826, but the paper closed within a year. He was then associated with a series of periodicals in Boston that advocated reform before Benjamin Lundy offered the young journalist the opportunity to write for his antislavery newspaper. Garrison joined Lundy in editing the Genius of Universal Emancipation in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1829, during the last year of the paper's 1821-1830 run. In 1830 a libel suit against the editors forced the paper to close and landed Garrison in jail. After his release, he courted the wealthy merchants of New York and Boston in order to start the Liberator (1831-65), a weekly journal based in Boston in which he advocated an immediate end to slavery. Garrison's brand of abolition condemned any institution that would tolerate the existence of slavery, including churches, political parties. and even the United States itself and any scheme aimed at removing black people from the country. Instead, Garrison hoped to raise the public's awareness that slavery was morally wrong and thereby force its end in an almost millennial moment of emancipation. His approach appealed to both white and black antislavery advocates but earned him many enemies among those only moderately opposed to slavery and slaveholders alike. Seeing the need for greater action and organization beyond the pages of the Liberator; Garrison joined with other abolitionists to form the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1831. Two years later he helped found the larger American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1833 he established ties with English abolitionists after a trip to Great Britain, and he later brought the noted and notorious speaker George Thompson to the United States for a tour. Garrison also dedicated himself to women's rights, encouraging women to enter the public sphere by inviting them, via the Liberator, to form female antislavery societies. In addition to the thirty-three women's antislavery societies that flourished by 1838, Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society welcomed women as well as blacks into its ranks. However, female delegates were excluded from the World's Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840 in London. The issue of women's participation in the antislavery movement and Garrison's absolute refusal to turn to politics to end slavery caused a division in the American Anti-Slavery Society. Brothers Lewis and Arthur Tappan, who opposed women's acting as speakers and who hoped to use politics toward abolition, broke with Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society, forming the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, or the "New Organization" in 1841. Garrison's ideas were so closely associated with the "Old Organization" that the American Anti-Slavery Society became known simply as the "Garrisonians." With the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, Garrison believed that he had accomplished his life's work and that of the antislavery movement. He then resigned from the presidency of the American Anti-Slavery Society and closed the Liberator. Wendell Phillips Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Children, 4 vols. (New York, 188589); Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery (New York, 1998); James Brewer Stewart, William Lloyd Garrison and the Challenge of Emancipation (Arlington Heights, Ill., 1992); John L. Thomas, The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison (Boston, 1963); Dictionary of American Biography, 20 vols. (New York, 1928-36), 7:168-72. , or 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. , of any of the laurels³A symbolic recognition of achievement. you may think yourselves entitled to; but if I had time, methinks I could demonstrate that the pro-slavery folks have assisted you most mightily; and but for them and their acts, the abolition party would be but a small affair, , from the fact, that it is but few besides the friends of freedom that care to pay for your paper. The additions to your ranks are first disgusted with the acts of the pro-slavery parties, listen to hear what you have to say. I feel in hopes that few can be lead away by your special pleading. We know full well that the present Whig ticket,⁴Auburn, New York, was host to a number of political conventions on 25 and 26 September 1854. The Free Democratic party met on both days and nominated a state ticket identical to that recently nominated by the state’s Whigs, headed by Myron H. Clark. An “Anti-Nebraska Convention” met on the latter date and debated organizing a state Republican party. A meeting of seceders from that convention declared that Henry J. Raymond, the “fusion” candidate for lieutenant governor and founder of the New York Daily Times, was neither sufficiently antislavery nor pro-temperance. Clark eventually won the governor’s office and identified himself with the Republican party. , 6 October 1854; Bancroft, , 1:366-71; Robert Sobel and John Raimo, eds., , 4 vols. (Westport, Conn., 1978), 3:1082-83. endorsed by the Anti-Nebraska Convention, as well as the Temperance Convention, embodies the principle of freedom; and if it succeeds, there will be no misunderstanding at Washington, but if it fails, through your failing to grant it support, then it will be in vain to carry any influence, thereby stating that we should have been in the majority, if were a test. No, its votes will be wanting, and I fear too many; there’s your Hards, and Softs, and Silver Grays,⁵Silver Gray Whigs were conservative, proslavery supporters of President Millard Fillmore within the Whig party. The Whigs had a “Silver Gray” organization as early as 1836, but that group solely comprised men over sixty years of age. Francis Granger of New York popularized the term in the 1850s, but then the phrase was used derisively for Whigs of any age whose views were seen as out of touch with the rest of the Whig party, especially on the issue of slavery. Holt, , 87-88, 105, 107-08; Hans Sperber and Travis Trittschuh, (Detroit, 1962), 404-05. and Know-Nothings.⁶Nativists organized lodges and semipolitical clubs in reaction to the waves of Catholic immigrants that began coming to the United States in the 1830s. Frequently engaging in violence against the largely Democratic Irish voters, these lodge members were reputed to answer, “I know nothing” when questioned by police. The nativist movement, dubbed “Know-Nothings” by their opponents, became a significant political force in the 1850s as the Whig party declined. Under the banner of the American party, nativists ran ex-president Millard Fillmore for the White House in 1856. His third-place finish caused the Know-Nothings’ political power to steadily decline thereafter. Maisel, , 1:549-50. If these unite, we are done for, I fear. Mammon⁷"Mammon” is the Mishnaic Hebrew word for “wealth” or “money.” It is also “broadly parallel [in meaning] to that of Qumran hōn, which often refers to the money or wealth which the member is required to bring into the community when he joins it.” Mammon is referred to in the Bible, specifically in Matt. 6:24 and Luke 16:9-11. David Noel Freedman et al., eds., , 6 vols. (New York, 1992), 4:490. will do more than principles sometimes.

Yours,

J. LETCHWORTH

PLSr: , 27 October 1854.