JOHN COCHRANE¹John Cochrane (1813–98) was the son of Cornelia Smith Cochrane and Gerrit Smith’s nephew. Cochrane first attended Union College in Schenectady, New York, but graduated from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. After college, Cochrane began practicing law. A Democrat, he served two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives (1857–61). He entered the Union army and rose to the rank of brigadier general. Gerrit Smith got Cochrane involved with the Loyal Leagues Convention in Utica in May 1863, where he was appointed both the temporary, and then permanent, chairman. Cochrane described the goal of the league: “Let each one of us here go to the work set before us of organizing loyalty, and disciplining patriotism, fulminating their reason and arguments, with the force of lightning from Heaven.” In 1864 he was chairman of the Independent Republican National Convention, based in Cleveland, Ohio, which nominated him for vice president on John C. Frémont’s ticket in a challenge to Lincoln’s reelection. Cochrane and Frémont both withdrew from the race in the early fall. A joint nomination by War Democrats and Republicans won Cochrane the post of New York attorney general (1864–65). He went on to be a delegate to the Liberal Republican National Convention in Cincinnati in 1872, and later was elected to the New York City Common Council. He also briefly served as acting mayor during the Tweed ring scandal. New York Times, 9 February 1898; BDUSC (online). TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

New York, [N.Y.] 3 F[ebrua]ry 1878[.]

FREDERICK DOUGLASS ESQ

MY DEAR SIR

You probably have noticed that Rev. O B. Frothingham²After graduating from Harvard College and Harvard Divinity School, Octavius Brooks Frothingham (1822–95) followed his father into the Unitarian ministry. Influenced by his close friend Theodore Parker, Frothingham developed liberal views on theological questions and on the slavery issue. In 1867, he was one of the founders, and the first president, of the Free Religious Association, a society that advocated rationalist principles of theology. Poor health forced Frothingham to retire from preaching in 1879, and he devoted his later years to writing. He is best remembered for biographies of Parker, George Ripley, and William Henry Channing. Frothingham also wrote Gerrit Smith: A Biography for the New York publishing firm G. P. Putnam’s Sons in 1878. J. P. Quincy, “Memoir of Octavius Brooks Frothingham,” Proceeding of the Massachusetts Historical Society, ser. 2, 10: 507–39 (1896); NCAB, 2: 243; DAB, 7: 44. has written a
biography of my uncle Gerrit Smith. It was written by agreement with
[illegible] his daughter Mrs Miller,³Elizabeth Smith Miller. who has arrested its further publication & all because of the author’s implication of Mr Smith with John
Browns attack on Harpers Ferry.⁴Frothingham’s biography of Smith is overall very flattering. In his discussion of Smith’s involvement with John Brown’s Harpers Ferry plot, however, Frothingham explicitly describes evidence that Smith had advance knowledge of Brown’s violent intentions. Frothingham recounts a visit by Brown to Smith’s home in Peterboro, New York, on 22 February 1858. Also present was Franklin B. Sanborn, acting as the go-between for a group of Massachusetts supporters of Brown. They met in the room of Edwin Morton, a former classmate of Sanborn, who was a live-in tutor for Smith’s son Green. Brown laid out details of his plan to Smith and Sanborn and disposed of any objections. According to Frothingham, Smith then told Sanborn, “Our friend has made up his mind to this course of action, and cannot be turned from it. We cannot give him up to die alone; we must stand by him.” Smith pledged funds for the plot and asked Sanborn to raise additional funds for it back in Massachusetts. Frothingham noted that Smith kept a strict public silence for years about his alleged connection with the raid, but the author gave seven pages in the biography to a “manifesto” that Smith wrote in 1867, disclaiming “the slightest knowledge or intimation of Brown’s intended invasion of Harper’s ferry.” In that 1867 circular, Smith printed a letter from Douglass to Smith, testifying that Brown had never told Douglass that Smith had been informed about the planned raid. Frothingham, Gerrit Smith, 238–39, 246–53. I have published a letter on the subject—in the New York Daily Tribune of yesterday,⁵Cochrane’s detailed rebuttal of Brooks’s charges that Gerrit Smith had prior knowledge of and supported Brown’s attack on Harpers Ferry appeared in a three-column article headlined “Gerrit Smith Not a Liar,” in the New York Daily Tribune on 2 February 1878. Cochrane cited Douglass as agreeing with his exculpatory argument. a copy of which I send
to you. If you have not read the work, you will see by my letter the nature
of the charge against Mr Smith & the error of his evidence—

You will be chiefly interested much in the part which alludes to your
agreeing and the evidence it furnishes.

I was not familiar with these accusations as you were, and was an
actor in them. You & Mr Smith seem to have agreed in opinion that John
Brown had not disclosed his change of plans to any one in the North;
before he called you to Chambersburg.⁶At Brown’s request, Douglass had met him at a stone quarry near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, in mid-August 1859, two months before the attack on Harpers Ferry. Oates, To Purge This Land, 282–83. You would very much oblige me

could you refer me to any opinion or knowledge you may have, personally,
or be aware of otherwise which would confirm your views.

I am satisfied that Mr Smith was aware only of the “old plans” of John
Brown, and I think that you must be also satisfied of it—I should be very
glad to hear from you, under the assurance that what you say shall be held
in confidence—

Truly Yours

JOHN COCHRANE

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 226–27, FD Papers, DLC.