FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH

Washington[,] D.C. 7 Oct[ober] 1874.

HON: GERRIT SMITH:

MY DEAR SIR:

You will receive this with a call for a national convention of the friends
of Equal Civil and political rights.¹There is no surviving record of Smith’s response to the proposed national African American convention. Thomas W. Conway independently wrote Smith on 21 October 1874, asking him to sign and return an enclosed draft of the call for the convention. Conway told Smith that he was moving the date for the convention from November to December, “as Congress will then be in session, the Convention will do the more good. . . . I will have the call printed and sent to every part of the Union for signers after you have headed the call with your honored name.” Smith died just two months after this request, so he may not have responded. Thomas W. Conway to Gerrit Smith, Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU. This call originated with Mr ²A Baptist minister from New York, Thomas W. Conway served as chief administrator of the Bureau of Free Labor, created in 1863 by the Union general Nathaniel Banks. O. O. Howard, commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau, chose Conway as assistant commissioner for the state of Louisiana. Conway was committed to achieving justice for blacks and approved of the distribution of former slaveholders’ land to black people. After Conway had distributed over sixty thousand acres to freed blacks, President Andrew Johnson, sympathetic to former southern landowners, restored their land to them in August 1865. Conway was released by Johnson from his Freedmen’s Bureau position. He later became superintendent of education in Louisiana and worked to achieve racially integrated schools there. He also wrote “The Freedmen of Louisiana: Final Report of the Bureau of Free Labor, Department of the Gulf.” Disillusioned by the collapse of Reconstruction, Conway wholeheartedly supported the black “Exoduster” movement to the West in 1879. To assist and coordinate that movement, he and eastern sympathizers organized the National Emigration Aid Society in April 1879. Robert G. Athearn, In Search of Canaan: Black Migration to Kansas, 1879–80 (Lawrence, Kans., 1978), 135, 144–52; Nell Irvin Painter, Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas after Reconstruction (New York, 1992), 198–99, 228–29; William Malvin Caskey, Secession and Reconstruction of Louisiana (Baton Rouge, La., 1938), 142, 193, 196; John Cornelius Engelsman, “The Freedmen’s Bureau in Louisiana,” Louisiana Historical Quarterly, 32: 145–224 (January 1949). and myself—We felt that some formal and impressive notice
should <be> taken of the murderous warfare going on against the newly
emancipated citizens and their friends at the South. We both agreed that
such a convention to be effective, should be approved by the ablest and
best men of the land and that your name should stand first on the list of
callers.³There is no surviving copy of the call, and no such convention was held. I have advised Mr Conway to see you on the subject during his
visit to Western N.Y.⁴Conway did not visit Gerrit Smith at Peterboro, New York. In his 21 October 1874 letter to Smith, he said: “I have been waiting for time to go to Peterboro to see you, but the need of my presence with my family in Washington makes me forego that pleasure.” Thomas W. Conway to Gerrit Smith, Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU.

I thank you for saying the right word to your friends and neighbors
upon the issues of the hour in the forthcoming Election in the State of
New York.⁵Smith had two public letters printed and circulated during the 1874 New York state elections. One undated letter was entitled Every Vote for Mr. Tilden Helps to Bring on the Ruin of the Country by Helping to Restore the Democratic Party to Power (Peterboro, N.Y. [1874]). On 8 September, Smith issued Our First Duty Is to Keep Down the Democracy (Peterboro, N.Y. [1874]). Despite his efforts, the Democratic party ticket, headed by the gubernatorial candidate Samuel J. Tilden, carried the state in the 3 November 1874 election. New York Times, 19 November 1874.

Yours truly and gratefully

FREDK DOUGLASS

[P.S.] Mr Conway wrote the call and modestly handed it to me for
correction, I have merely copied it from his rough draft without alteration
or amendment

ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU.