Rochester: September 1st 1868.

Mr: Gerrit Smith:

My dear Sir, You understand me fully and know that I value your words of encouragement highly. A recent speech by a Mr Brown one of the Delegates to the recent Democratic Convention, does I confess, put a much better face upon Mr Chase's attitude before the Convention[.] These outsiders were permitted to [see?] during the Convention. I have done him great wrong if he did not during the Convention over his own signature consent to have the whole question of Suffrage left to the individual States—which to my mind, so far as the Southern States are concerned, was to abandon Suffrage for the negro entirely.

I am glad you are going to Oswego, and should be more so to have you speak again in Rochester—I am not much of a Stumper but I shall do a little in this line during the canvass.

Always your Grateful friend

Frederick Douglass.