Rochester[, N.Y.] 8 Oct[ober] 1865.

Hon. 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.
My Dear Sir:
I am glad of your opinion of my letter to Mr Wilson.¹Gerrit Smith’s correspondence to Douglass concerning the latter’s 8 August 1865 letter to William J. Wilson has not survived. In a 7 November 1865 letter from Smith to Douglass, however, he did comment positively on previous letters from Douglass to both Wilson and Garnet. Gerrit Smith to Douglass, 7 November 1865, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frame 163, FD Papers, DLC. You have not seen Mr GarnetsGarnet, Henry Highland

Born a slave in Kent County, Maryland, Henry Highland Garnet (1815-82) fled north with his parents in 1824. He attended the African Free School in New York City, the Noyes Academy in Canaan, New Hampshire, and the Oneida Institute in Whitesboro, New York. Garnet was one of the founders of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society and a stump speaker for the Liberty party. Licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Troy in 1842, Garnet went to Jamaica in 1852 as a missionary of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland. An early proponent of black emigration to Africa and founder of the African Civilization Society, Garnet, in his appeal sanctioning slave uprisings before a National Negro Convention in Buffalo, New York, in August 1843, praised the slave rebel Madison Washington. After the Civil War, Garnet was president of Avery College in Pittsburgh and the U.S. minister to Liberia (1881-82). Joel Schor, Henry Highland Garnet: A Voice of Black Radicalism in the Nineteenth Century (Westport, Conn., 1977); Dorothy Sterling, ed., Speak Out in Thunder Tones: Letters and Other Writings by Black Northerners, 1787-1865 (Garden City, N.Y., 1973), 376; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 68, 185, 216-17, 226-27; ANB, 8:735-36. answer.²Henry Highland Garnet, the president of the Colored People’s Educational Monument Association, wrote Douglass a letter on 7 September 1865. Garnet responded to Douglass’s letter to Wilson, in which he criticized the organization and rejected the offer to serve as its representative. Garnet wrote that Douglass’s letter was nothing more than “glaring fallacies and erroneous statements” and that Douglass alone stood in opposition to the association. Douglass responded to Garnet on 4 October 1865, writing that it was unfair to make him appear “as if opposed to those highest interests of our common race.” He emphasized that he did not criticize the organization itself but only its proposed plan to establish a combined monument and school. Both letters were printed in the New York Weekly Anglo-African, making this argument between Garnet and Douglass public. New York Weekly Anglo-African, 16 September, 21 October 1865. It is very severe upon me.

I read your letter to Messrs G— and Phillips³Gerrit Smith sent a long letter to both William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips on 12 September 1865, in which he discussed the necessity of securing black suffrage and equality during Reconstruction. Smith argued that the nation must not ignore the freedman any longer and “shut him out from the enjoyment of political and social rights.” Douglass, who also continued to fight for the ballot, supported Smith’s argument. This letter was published as a circular and was also printed in the Liberator. Printed Ephemera Collection Portfolio 126, Folder 15b, DLC; Lib., 22 September 1865. twice: once in the cercular and once in the Liberator. I need not tell you how fully it expresses my own views and feelings in view of the present state of affairs. I wish you could be in Congress this winter for Congress is now to determine whether all that has been fairly purchased by the patriot blood of the North—and by the brave negroes of the South, shall be given back again to the spoilers of the Nation. I have just been making speeches in Vermont, Penn.⁴On 22 September 1865 in Avondale, Pennsylvania, Douglass attended the celebration of the third anniversary of the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation. He was the main speaker at the event, attended by more than 20,000 people. While he claimed to have made speeches in Vermont during this time, a confirmation of his activities in that state cannot be made. New York Weekly Anglo-African, 14 October 1865. and Maryland. In Baltimore the Colored people have been establishing
and Institute which they have been pleased to Call Douglass Institute.⁵On 29 September 1865, Douglass delivered the dedicatory address for the Douglass Institute on Lexington Street in Baltimore, Maryland. Six hundred blacks and two hundred whites heard Douglass praise the new endeavor for the moral and intellectual uplift of the city’s African American youth. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:86–96. I send you the Baltimore “American” Containing my speech made on the Dedication occasion.⁶The Baltimore American and Commercial Advertiser was the oldest newspaper in Maryland. It was first published by Alexander Martin, a native of Boston, on 14 May 1799. The American was a firm ally of the Whig party and became prominently identified with the Union cause and the Republican party. The American carried a report of Douglass’s speech in its 30 September 165 issue. Scharf, History of Baltimore, 609.

The “American”—has done well to publish any of it. It would have
done better if it had published all I said on that occasion. There were a number of the Radical Leaders in Baltimore present on the occasion—and among them was Mr Snethen⁷Worthington Garrettson Snethen (c. 1805–?) was an attorney and journalist born in Maryland. He published the New Orleans Morning Advertiser (1842), edited the Baltimore Patriot (1859–60), and served as a correspondent for the New York Tribune and the Boston Commonwealth. In addition, Snethen compiled The Black Code of the District of Columbia (1848) and practiced law in Washington, New York, and Baltimore for over two decades. A War Democrat, he supported Frémont for president in 1864 and served as chairman of the Sub-National Committee of the Radical Democracy for Maryland, Delaware, and West Virginia. Snethen both reported on and spoke at the inauguration of the Douglass Institute. Frederick (Md.) Examiner, 15 June 1864; Lib., 13 October 1865; Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 4:86; Andrew Johnson, The Papers of Andrew Johnson, eds., LeRoy P. Graf, Ralph W. Haskins, and Paul H. Bergeron, 16 vols. (Knoxville, Tenn., 1967–2000), 5:221n, 7:434n.—the Baltimore Correspondent of the Boston Commonwealth. Our old friend John Needles⁸John Needles (1786–1878) was a Baltimore Quaker and cabinetmaker. Benjamin Lundy recruited him to the abolitionist movement in 1831. Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 5:207. was also present. He has been has been the black mans friend in Baltimore during more than forty years. Dear Old Man, what an expression of satisfaction sat upon his benignant face as he looked upon the free people before him. By the way, there is a rare man down there named Stockbridge.⁹Born in Massachusetts, Henry Stockbridge (1822–96) graduated from Amherst College and then moved to Baltimore to practice law. A strong unionist during the Civil War, Stockbridge was elected to the Maryland state legislature and sponsored the legislation for a constitutional convention to abolish slavery in that state. For the remainder of his life, Stockbridge remained an active Republican in state and national politics. Frederick Clifton Pierce, ed., Field Genealogy: Being the Record of All the Field Family in America Whose Ancestors were in this Country prior to 1700, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1901), 1:165. He is the Phillips of our Cause in Baltimore. He spoke for a few moments after me—and it was a delight to hear such sentiments rolling out from one so
white in Baltimore.

I am soon to leave home on another tour.

Always Truly yours,
FREDERICK DOUGLASS.

ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU.