DEAR FRIEND DOUGLASS:—

More than a month has now elapsed since I last suffered you to hear from me. Do not, I entreat you, be too severe in your judgments upon this silence. The duties of my present calling in life exact a large share of my time; and when I do have a little leisure, I find it far more accordant with a temperament unhappily not too active, to while it away over the pages of some pleasant book, than to devote it to the jotting down of my own significant reflections. Add to this, too, the fact that am stowed away here in retreat whose daily quiet is unbroken save by a repetition of the incidents which happened yesterday, and the recurrence of which may be looked for to-morrow; and you can readily imagine that, should you, who are already acquainted with the general routine of my existence again call upon me for the story of it. I might in truth, cry out with Canning's knife-grinder. "Story! God bless you! I have none to tell, Sir."

Then, again, if the announcement of some incident that has occurred in the "busy haunts of men," should penetrate into our service it comes to us so decked out with moralizings, with approvals or censures, at the hands of the journalists, our sole mediums of communication with the outer world, that an original suggestion with regard to it is an utter impossibility. I trust that these several excuses will be received graciously by you; especially, as they are offered preliminarily to a promise of being more regular in correspondence in future.

It was a matter of both of gratification and regret to me, to learn that your aide and zealous co-worker, Miss Griffiths, was about to revisit her native England;—of gratification because that estimable lady will doubtless experience much pleasure in seeing once more her friends of former days,—of regret, because the oppressed and the enslaved will necessarily, during her absence, be deprived of an earnest and untiring advocate. Well, indeed, does she deserve encomiums and noble acknowledgments of assistance which you expressed in reference to her, in announcing her departure. She has been truly devoted and self-sacrificing in her philanthropy, and in this, can afford an example of duty to many a derelict abolitionist. It is a sad reflection that too many of the professed friends of the colored man have either never learned, or too readily forget the fact, that he does not stand in need merely of words of condolement, but of acts of earnest, practical benevolence. It is hard enough for him who has fallen among thieves and been left bleeding in the highway, to see the priest and the levite pass by on the other side:—it is more than he can bear, to learn that the good Samaritan has nothing but expressions of sympathy, and tears of wo, to serve as a balm for his many wounds. But let me rather speak of one who is faithful than of many who are false. Sincerely do I trust that a safe voyage, a pleasant visit and a speedy return to her chosen field of labor, may be accorded to our worthy friend. Her active zeal merits, as a reward, the furlough which she has now taken; but the good servive she has rendered thus far in the battle of freedom, is of too valuable a nature to allow us willingly to perceive her long absent from her post.

I hope to have the pleasure of meeting with you, next week, at the Syracuse Convention.—It seems to me that it has been called very opportunely; and I, therefore, anticipate much good to result from its assembling. A very few such demonstrations as the late Kansas outrages, will most certainly prompt Northern men to invoke the protection of the Federal Constitution in behalf of their own liberties; and when they are once called upon to examine diligently into its provisions in view of the aggressions of the slave power, it will not be long before they discover that those provisions, when justly and legally construed, are as equally efficacious for the security of the rights of black as of of white Americans. It will, indeed, be a great pleasure to meet with the 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. , Beriah Green, William Goodell, and the other noble champions of the right, who have ever labored to direct the political power of the nation into such channels as will eventuate in securing the blessings of liberty to every man, woman and child within the limits of the Union.

"Is there a North?" Really, in view of the conduct of the Northern delegates in the recent Know Nothing conclave, there does seem to be a pretty decided one. The political [press?] current shows a plentiful supply of back-bone in the market. The ossification of the spinal column, this side of Mason and Dixon's line has certainly increased in a wonderful manner and it is, indeed, very humiliating to reflect that the only vertebra which continues to exhibit a cartilaginous texture, is the one representing our own State. But that is only a false vertebra; and the people who have already numbered Gerrit Smith among their representatives, and who have chosen William H. Seward to be their spokesman in the Federal Senate, will yet set the masses all right, and show that their instincts, like those of their brethren in Massachusetts and the other States who seceded like her, are true to freedom.

Truly yours, &c.

G. B. V.

Mc Grawville, June 22, 1855