FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH

Rochester[, N.Y.] 27 March 1855.

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 am glad my Speech¹The speech that Douglass refers to was delivered to the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society on 19 March 1855 at Corinthian Hall. Douglass had delivered versions of this lecture, entitled “The Anti-Slavery Movement,” many times that winter to audiences in New England, Pennsylvania, and New York. He printed a text of the speech in his weekly on 23 March 1855, and later had it republished as a pamphlet. While Douglass failed to credit the contribution of Elizabeth Heyrick to abolitionism in his newspaper account of the speech, he did add a reference to her in the pamphlet’s text. , 23 March 1855; Frederick Douglass, (Rochester, 1855), 13. pleased you. I had a pretty high opinion of it before—and your kind approval has not detracted from that opinion—I did, in my Spoken Speech, accord all due honor to the Clear lighted, and right hearted Elizabeth Herrick.²The English Quaker Elizabeth Heyrick (c. 1769–1831) wrote the pamphlet (London, 1824). C. Duncan Rice, (New York, 1975), 254. The omission is only in my printed Speech—The correction Shall be made in the pamphlet edition—which I am about to publish.

Oh! yes—do let us have a National Liberty PartyLiberty Party

The Liberty party was organized on 1 April 1840 in Albany, New York. The central principle of this third party was the abolition of slavery. Specific proposals included abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia, ending Jim Crow practices, and opposing the colonization movement. Whereas prominent antislavery figures such as Myron Holley, Gerrit Smith, Joshua Leavitt, and William Goodell all supported the creation of a political party dedicated to antislavery principles, some abolitionists--most notably William Lloyd Garrison and his followers--disapproved of the move to political action. Garrisonians argued that a separate party would divide rather than unite abolitionists. Drawing a large portion of its support from New York, the Liberty party nonetheless persevered for several years. By the 1848 presidential election, however, most Liberty party members had moved to the newly formed Free Soil party. A small faction led by Gerrit Smith retained much of the Liberty party's platform under the name of the Radical Abolition party. Alan M. Kraut, "The Forgotten Reformers: A Profile of Third Party Abolitionists in Antebellum New York," in Antislavery Reconsidered: New Perspectives on the Abolitionists, ed. Lewis Perry and Michael Fellman (Baton Rouge, La., 1979), 119-45; Sewell, Ballots for Freedom, 43-47, 152-69, 285-87. Convention³In a public letter dated 4 April 1855, published later in this volume, Douglass joined Gerrit Smith and six other abolitionist veterans in a call for a Radical Political Abolitionist Convention to be held in Syracuse, New York, on 26–28 June 1855. , 13 April 1855.—Let us have a Strong Call—We must leave the free Soilers⁴Members of the political organization, founded in Buffalo, New York, in August 1848 worked to resist the further extension of slavery into western territories of the United States. The group ran candidates for national office under the label Free Soil party in 1848 and Free Democratic party in 1852, as well as candidates for state and local office in the same era. Blue, , 70–80, 169. and garrisonians⁵In May 1840, the American abolitionist movement divided into hostile, competing factions. The Boston editor William Lloyd Garrison led the most perfectionist-inclined group, most of whose members abandoned the nation’s religious and political institutions for being hopelessly corrupted by tolerance toward slavery. Garrison’s followers, who retained control of the American Anti-Slavery Society, were popularly referred to as “Garrisonians.” McKivigan, , 56–92.—to uphold their own Standards—and Stand on our own ground—. You have but to Speak the word—to have a grand convention here—and here is the place to have it. Do you, my dear Sir, write the Call—No other man muSt write the Call for the Liberty Party—while Gerrit Smith lives and is able to wield a pen.

Most truly yourS, Always,

FRED. DOUGLASS

ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU.