Rochester Aug. 18. 1853.

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,

You, and your prospective career in Congress, are much talked about among your friends in the east. I had a long talk with a gentleman of much learning, belonging to the Boston bar, (E.G. Loring) who expressed the deepest interest in your success, at Washington. But he expressed some solicitude for you, upon a point of which I had not of before thought. It is a small point but he deemed it very important. I therefore take the liberty to mention it. He remarked that, you might be so occupied with other subjects-the bissons principles, and measures of Government-as not to be well instructed in parliamentary rules. I thought the remark a wise one, and asked him to write you. He modestly declined-but gave me leave to use his name, as I have done. So get yourself the best manual of Parliamentary rules-which the country affords-forget, for a little while subjects of greater weight-shut yourself up place me in the Chair of the H. Surround yourself with a company of the most watchful and skillful parliamentary tacticians-and make yourself such a master of the rules of Congress as to defy all the main traps which will surely
set for your feet. Now just hear this