Rochester, Aug. 18: 1857

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 have not yet received your Milwaukee Speech. I have been looking for a copy of it ever since I learned your intention to write it out. I shall read it gladly, as I read and study all your speeches. I do not know that I thanked you for a copy of your speech on discriminating tolls. I meant to do so but fear I did not. I read that speech and read it with much interest. You surprize me every time you step aside to speak on other than moral subjects.

When I get hold of a copy of your Milwaukee argument I shall publish it forth with.

I should much like to be present at the Cleveland Convention simply as a lecturer and reporter, but hardly think I shall be able to leave home. Mr Watkins, is now in Illinois and I have no one to look after my young printers.

I thank you for your offer to take fifty copies of my first of August speech; and should I publish it in pamphlet form, I will send you a parcel of them. Alway truly your Friend

Frederick Douglass

Do give us a call as you pass westward.