Macedon, 10th mo. 12th, 1851.
F. Douglass:
Dear Friend:—When at Syracuse, last winter, George Thompson said, "as you wish to know what kind of a Democrat I am, I am such an one as 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. . I fully endorse every word of his speech, delivered in this Hall, last evening." He repeated this remark in private conversation.
The speech alluded to, was made before the "Free Trade League," of Syracuse. It was evidently prepared with much care, and embodied many of the speaker's peculiar opinions, in relation to the character and duties of Civil Government. Wilt thou unite with me, in soliciting a copy for publication, that Geo. Thompson, and his friends of all classes, may judge whether a man has a right to give assent to principles of such magnitude, and refuse co-operation in the direction they so obviously point out?
Thy sincere friend,
William R. SmithSmith, William R.

William R. Smith (1810–1880), a prominent Quaker farmer from Macedon, New York, was a member of the Liberty party and an associate of Gerrit Smith. In August 1850 he traveled to Maryland and Washington, D.C., to negotiate bail for William Chaplin. He may also have aided other fugitives on the Underground Railroad and had a young mulatto woman from Maryland living in his household in 1850. In 1852 he was the Liberty party nominee for governor of New York. By 1854, Smith was living in Wilmington, Delaware where he published an abolitionist newspaper, The Statesman. It seems perhaps that he ended up in California, dying in late 1880. 1850 U.S. Census, New York, Wayne County, Macedon, 64; Harlow, Gerrit Smith, 191, 292–93- FDP 3:1, 545; Judith Wellman, “’Unspeakable Joy,’: Religion, Reform, the Underground Railroad and African American Life in the Burned-over District of Wayne County, New York,”, 27, in Historical New York Research Associates, Databases; “Valuable Farm for Sale,” The Cultivator, vol. 2, no. 3, (March 1854), 101; “Died,” Placer (CA) Herald, 1 January 1881, p. 5, c. 6; “William R. Smith and Eliza Smith House,” Sites Related to the Underground Railroad, Abolitionism, and African American Life, Wayne County Historical New York Research Associates.