FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH

Rochester[, N.Y.] 14 Ap[ril] 1863.
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 send you herewith an acc.t, of my Stewardship. I have recruited and sent
forward to camp at Readville Mass. more than one hundred men for the
54th regiment. Lewis and Charles, my two sons, are a part of that regi
ment, Lewis a sargeant major—and Charles an orderly.¹Muster rolls list Charles R. Douglass as a private in Company F in the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry Regiment. Lewis H. Douglass initially enlisted as a private in Company F and was promoted to the regiment’s sergeant major effective 23 April 1863. Massachusetts Soldiers, 4:658, 686. Upon the earnest
request of Mr Stearns,²George Luther Stearns. I am endeavouring to raise another company. The
two hundred dollars you gave me and the five hundred you donated in
Boston³Reports indicate Smith sent a check for $500 to Massachusetts governor John A. Andrew in early 1863. There is no record of funds sent directly to Douglass, but the $200 might have been the sum mentioned in Douglass’ Monthly as an additional pledge that Smith made to recruit 100 New York free blacks for the Fifty-fourth. Lib., 6 March 1863; DM, 5:804 (March 1863). will about cover the cost of raising the company raised by me—While I venture to say that no other company has been raised for less
than twice that sum. You will see per acc.t, that I have given you credit to
Mr Stearns for two hundred Dolls—I feel that the work to be done now
is to fill up this Massachusetts regiment without delay—and I am leaving
home to day to add its numbers.
With neverfailing love for you and yours,

FREDERICK DOUGLASS.

ALS: Grenville H. Norcross Manuscripts, MHiS.