Rochester[, N.Y.] 13 Oct[ober] 1857[.]

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:
The fifty pamphlets of my two Speeches¹The pamphlet contained the text of two of Douglass’s recent speeches. The first speech was delivered on 4 August at the West Indian Emancipation celebration in Canandaigua, New York. The other speech, about the Dred Scott decision, was delivered on 14 May at the American Abolition Society’s anniversary meeting in New York City. Speech File, reel 14, frames 168-92, FD Papers, DLC; Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 3:xxvil. will be[]Sent to you to day.
Three dollars and fifty cents will pay for them. I have just read Mr Gar
rison’s article²Garrison’s coverage of the Compensation Emancipation Convention characterized Smith, one of the keynote speakers, as eccentric, and his plan preposterous. Smith asserted that slaveholders had a moral right to compensation if slavery were abolished, an argument that Garrison believed gave them the moral and legal right to own slaves. Garrison equated Smith’s proposed plan to compensating criminals for breaking the law. Lib., 4 September, 9 October 1857. on your compensation Speech, delivered at Cleveland.³Smith’s speech was delivered to the Compensation Emancipation Convention on 25 August 1857 in Cleveland, Ohio, and was covered in Frederick Douglass’ Paper and the Liberator. Just as Britain’s Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 included a £20 million parliamentary appropriation for the West Indian planters, Smith’s measure would compensate U.S. slave owners for the loss of their property, an act he hoped would encourage Southerners to support the abolition of slavery. The convention, which was organized by Smith and Elihu Burritt, resulted in the formation of the National Compensation Society. Lib., 4 September, 9 October 1857; FDP, 11 September 1857; Fladeland, “Compensated Emancipation,” 169-86; EAAH, 1:242. It
is, to my thinking, very Smart, very adroit, very cunning, very artful, and
very like Mr Garrison. He does not in that article, aim at the discovery or
vindication of the Simple truth involved in the Subject, or to point out the
true path of duty; his Sole aim Seems to be, to present you in a rediculous
attitude before his readers. To those who only read his editorial as will be
the Case with many who think they have a fair Synopsis of your views in
his editorial, he will be Successful. Do write a reply⁴No response from Smith to Garrison’s criticism of his stance on compensation can be located in the Liberator. to his most unfair treatment of your Speech and Send it to the Liberator

Always Yours Truly,
FREDERICK DOUGLASS

ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU.