FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH

Rochester[, N.Y.] 22 December 1861[.]

HON. GERRIT SMITH:

MY DEAR SIR.

I have not yet seen Spooners new Book,¹Lysander Spooner published his book A New System of Paper Currency in mid-1861. In it he proposed an economic system based on “real estate” and an “invested dollar” instead of precious metals such as gold and a “specie dollar.” Spooner argued that each banking company should adopt similar “articles of association” in order to avoid disputes and effectively trade with one another. Spooner acknowledged that state constitutions would need to be changed in order for his new system to be legal. Lysander Spooner, (Boston, 1861); Steve J. Shone, (Lanham, Md., 2010), 32–34.
when it comes I Shall remember your note. I have just read your letter²Gerrit Smith’s letter to Thaddeus Stevens was written as a broadside on 6 December 1861. Smith argued that colonization was now the best method of dealing with the highly racist U.S. society. Smith further informed Stevens that while he hoped blacks would be allowed to participate in the war, they would return to Africa following the war. The letter is an example of Gerrit Smith’s newfound pessimism over the future of blacks in the United States after the start of the Civil War. Stauffer, , 263–65. to Thaddeus Stephens.³The son of a Vermont shoemaker, Thaddeus Stevens (1792–1868) graduated from Dartmouth College and moved to southeastern Pennsylvania to practice law. From 1833 to 1841, Stevens, an Anti-Mason, served in the Pennsylvania legislature, where he championed the establishment of a free public school system; from 1849 to 1853 he was one of the most outspoken antislavery Whigs in the U.S. House of Representatives. Stevens helped organize the Republican party in his state and again served in Congress from 1859 to his death. As chairman of the Ways and Means Committee during the Civil War, he actively worked for emancipation, high tariffs, and a transcontinental railroad. On 5 December 1861, Stevens proposed a resolution in favor of emancipation under the president’s war powers. Many abolitionists were disappointed in President Lincoln’s early-December message to Congress because he failed to address the issue of emancipation. In a public letter to Stevens, Gerrit Smith described the president’s message as “twattle and trash.” Furthermore, Smith praised Stevens’s resolution on emancipation, claiming that while he had not expected Congress to pass a law on emancipation, Steven’s resolution was “the highest ground to which I had hoped Congress and the country could be brought.” As the leading House member of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, Stevens helped push the Fourteenth Amendment, the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill, and the Civil Rights Act of 1866 through Congress, despite the opposition of President Andrew Johnson and the hesitancy of conservative Republicans. Although in failing health, he served as one of the House managers in the unsuccessful impeachment trial of President Johnson. Fawn M. Brodie, Thaddeus Stevens: Scourge of the South (New York, 1959); Leonard P. Curry, Blueprint for Modern America: Nonmilitary Legislation of the First Civil War Congress (Nashville, Tenn., 1968), 26–27, 64, 98, 173; Beverly Wilson Palmer and Holly Byers Ochoa, eds., , 2 vols. (Pittsburgh, 1997–98) 1:232–33; Benedict, , 34–35, 137, 149–50, 190–91, 224–25, 251; , 4:30–31; , 17:620–25. It is thus far the ablest paper—and the most thrilling—I have met with on the war—either from your pen or that of any other statesman. As you ply the knife to our rotten Government—I Shudder with a feeling of something like despair of finding any sound place upon which to build a hope of national salvation. I am bewildered by the spectacle of moral blindness—infatuation and helpless imbicelety which the Government of Lincoln presents. Is there no hope? I shall think there is not if all the Antislavery measures now before Congress are laid aside as was Lovejoys ⁴Owen Lovejoy (1811–64), a congressman and Congregational minister, studied briefly at Bowdoin College in the early 1830s. Influenced by Theodore Dwight Weld, Lovejoy became a staunch abolitionist in 1836. He moved to Alton, Illinois, to study for the ministry under his brother Elijah P. Lovejoy, who published an antislavery newspaper, the Alton Observer. When Elijah was killed at the hands of an antiabolition mob in 1837, Owen vowed to devote himself to “the cause that has been sprinkled with my brother’s blood.” Beginning in the 1840s, Lovejoy was an active political abolitionist and supported first the Liberty party, then the Free Soilers, and eventually the Republican party. In 1856 he won a seat in Congress. In 1860, Lovejoy campaigned for Lincoln’s election to the presidency and advocated a heavy-handed prosecution of the war against the Confederacy. In December 1861, Lovejoy proposed a bill to free all slaves in the United States and called for the use of black troops. In 1862 he played a major role in the passage of the Homestead Act and the Pacific Railroad Bill, which authorized the building of the first transcontinental railroad. When Lovejoy died in 1864, Lincoln eulogized him as “the best friend I had in Congress.” Edward Magdol, (New Brunswick, N.J., 1967); idem, “Owen Lovejoy’s Role in the Campaign of 1858,” , 51:403–16 (1958); Ruth Ewers Haberkorn, “Owen Lovejoy in Princeton, Illinois,” , 36:284–315 (1943); , 14:6–7. resolution on friday. But go on, my Dear Sir, with your mighty work. Continue to fling the bright beams of truth upon the conduct of Cabinet and President and upon that of Congress. Your expereince, knowledge, age, and position all give a right to speak in this mighty and momentous struggle—besides your pen is more powerful than ever—your last letter is your best.

Very Truly and Gratefully.

FREDK DOUGLASS

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 1, frames 697–99, FD Papers, DLC.