Rochester[, N.Y.] 8 Sept[ember] 1862.

HON GERRIT SMITH

MY DEAR FRIEND:
Let me sincerely thank you for your kind note and for twenty dollars to
help me in the further publication of my monthly.¹Douglass failed to publish an acknowledgment of a donation of $20 that accompanied Gerrit Smith’s 6 September 1862 letter in lists of contributors published in Douglass’ Monthly that fall. Gerrit Smith to Douglass, 6 September 1862, General Correspondence File, reel 1, frame 733, FD Papers, DLC. I had not known of your
poor health until your note came.²In his letter to Douglass, Smith wrote: “My health has been poor for three months.” Gerrit Smith to Douglass, 6 September 1862, General Correspondence File, reel 1, frame 733, FD Papers, DLC. May you soon recover your wonted
vigor, and live yet many years to cheer the heart of the lowly and suffer-
ing. I had attributed your silence of late, to what I supposed, must be your
ineffable disgust at the wretched management of the war. Your gloomist
predictions have been even now more than realized—and I shudder at
what the future may still have in store for us. I think the nation was never
more completely in the hands of the slave power. This Government is now
in the hands of the army, and the army is in the hands of the very worst
type of America Democracy—the chief representation of which is now in
doing his utmost to destroy the Country. I think, in such hands, we shall
do well if we at last succeed in buying a peace from our Southern masters
without fully indemnifying them for the entire expense to which they have
been put in humbling us. My good friend Julia seems to have been greatly
delighted with her meeting with your Dear household in London.³In a letter to Douglass, published in Douglass’ Monthly, Julia Griffiths Crofts reported: “Since I last wrote to you I have had the happiness of spending a few days with the family of my dear and highly valued friend Gerrit Smith, while they were in London, a few weeks since. To be driving through our metropolis, and walking through our abbeys and parks and gardens with dear friends from Peterboro seemed like a dream. We had many a chat together about far distant friends and old times. I can assure you, could the noble head of the family have looked in upon us, the joy would have been augmented you will readily imagine; but I was obliged to be contented with a life like portrait of him, and with the privilege of hearing his interesting and graphic letters, which made me fully realize his present home life and occupations in Peterboro.” Julia Griffiths Crofts to FD, 18 June 1862, in DM, 5:696 (August 1862). I feel
sure that a quiet visit to England would do wonders for your health.

Always truly and gratefully yours friend,
FRED’ K DOUGLASS—

ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU.