For Frederick Douglass' Paper.

HORACE GREELEY.

The gentleman whose name stands at the head of this article, saw fit in his Daily Tribune of July 15th, to pass some severe strictures upon 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. , for not deviating from his long and excellent habit of retiring early at night, on the evening preceding the morning the final vote was taken upon the Nebraska Bill. The question to be decided is, did Mr. Smith do right in setting a good example? or should he have followed the multitude to do evil? Mr. Greeley thinks he should have sat up all night, if it had been morally certain a severe illness would have been the result. Now, I maintain no such doctrine. The result of a severe illness is not unfrequently death; and it would be far better for the world at large, and especially for the oppressed, if all the profane, drunken blackguards in Congress should die, than to lose one such man as Mr. Smith.—"Be not partakers of other men's sins; keep thyself pure," is much higher and better authority than Mr. Greeley. There ought to be dignity enough in an American Congress to set good examples. Their duties are not so arduous as to require them to sit up all night. Truth and righteousness are not afraid of daylight. The majority of an American Congress, "love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil."—There was but one righteous man in Sodom, and he was warned to "up and get out of this place, for the Lord will destroy this city." I do not know that Mr. Smith has been warned to leave Washington in a similar manner; but his letter of Resignation savours strongly of it. But, now, does Mr. Greeley attempt to prove that Mr. Smith was wrong in this matter? He assigns but one reason, to wit: Mr. Greeley informs us that he sometimes sits up all night, and works hard in a hot gas-lighted office, to give the news up to the latest practicable hour of the night, early in the morning; and then triumphantly asks, "Why does not the rule indicated, apply to Congressmen as well as an editor?" Now, strange as it may seem to Mr. Greeley, we shall appeal from his

decision to the court of "common sense," in which court the case he presents has never had a hearing. We rely on his admissions alone to reverse his judgment. 1st. We say it is wrong to sit up all night in a hot gas-lighted office, for the purpose of being the first in the morning to chronicle the sayings and doings of rowdies and drunken blackguards. 2d. He admits this is unwholesome and shortens life. Now, Mr. Greeley, we would not give a fig for such a martyr's crown as you aspire to wear. You are a fool for your pains. You appear to be an exception to the rule laid down by Paul in Ephesians, ch. v., v. 29th—"For no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord, the church." We will refer Mr. Greeley to one of Solomon's Proverbs, where Mr. Smith and himself are brought to view. Proverbs, ch. x, v. 21st—"The lips of the righteous feed many; (Mr. Smith;) but fools die for want of wisdom." He then (Mr. Greeley) goes on to inform Mr. Smith that at least one thousand of his constituents who, had they been in his place, would have set up all night and fought the passage of the bill. Another saying of Solomon would apply to this case: "One man among a thousand, have I found." Mr. Greeley would be much better employed in getting the beam out of his own eye, than in trying to get the mote out of the eye of Mr. Smith. It would have been altogether more becoming in Mr. Greeley to have spent his time in repenting of his great wickedness during the last Presidential campaign. It might be profitable for him to call to mind the long, wearisome nights he toiled in that hot office by gas-light, for the purpose of elevating Gen. Scott to the Presidency—a man who deliberately pledged himself before "Israel and the sun," to sustain the Baltimore platform and discountenance the agitation of the subject of human freedom henceforth and forever. Long he lingered before he raised "death's pale flag;" but there was a magic spell in the word Whig, which prevailed over the fear of God and the rights of man. That was a mistake, Mr. Greeley, and we hope you will live to realize it; but with the light you had upon the subject, it is more to be feared, like Esau, you will seek a place for repentence, with tears, without being able to find it.

DAVID A. WARREN.

VERONA, July 24. 1854.