FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH

Rochester[, N.Y.] 21 September 1864.

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:

Just a word, thanking you for your circular on McClellan and his letter of acceptance.¹Because Gerrit Smith’s nephew John Cochrane had played a leading role in the abortive effort to have John C. Frémont supplant Lincoln as the Republican party nominee, the wealthy abolitionist published a twelve-page circular designed to clarify his own view of the upcoming election. The circular, titled “On McClellan’s Nomination and Acceptance,” was distributed in September 1864 to clarify Smith’s position on the opposing candidates in the presidential election. Smith minced no words regarding General George B. McClellan and his party, declaring that the Democratic party was, in short, neither more nor less than the Northern wing of the rebellion. Smith prophesied that after Lincoln’s reelection, the Democratic party, that “ugliest of all the enemies of human rights and human happiness," would be dead. Gerrit Smith, , 3 vols. (New York, 1865), 2:25-36; Harlow, , 440-41. I am in the habit of thinking your last production your worthiest. This one conferms me in this amiable habit. No one can be in doubt as to the path of duty in this campaign, who reads your circular. The whole case is plainly, strikingly and admirably Stated—If I have any fault to find with any part of the circular [it is that] in which you seem to admit that Some Abolitionists have Shown a disposition to the war to Abolitionism.²In his circular, Smith made the passing comment “I admitted that there were instances of a disposition to pervert the war.” Rather than accuse the abolitionists of this failing, Smith turned this charge into an accusation that McClellan as a general had attempted to pervert the war’s mission by being extremely solicitous toward slaveholders within his army’s lines. Smith, , 2:30. You and I know that the natural use of this war is to abolish slavery and that that only is a perversion [of it] which would it from this its natural work. But merely wished to thank you for your excellent circular which I do most heartily.

Very Truly yours

FREDK DOUGLASS

ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU.