GERRIT SMITH TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Peterboro, [N.Y.] 16 March 1[8]49.¹The printed letter erroneously lists the year as 1349.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS:—

The last North Star is before me. I am surprised to see my letter in it.²In a letter dated 9 February 1849, Gerrit Smith criticized Douglass’s belief that the U.S. Constitution supported slavery. That letter appears in this volume. NS, 16 March 1849. It would have been written more carefully had I supposed that you would print it.

You admit, “that the Constitution of the United States, standing alone, and construed only in the light of its letter, is not a pro-slavery instrument.”³Smith’ s quotations are taken from a longer passage in Douglass’s editorial on the Constitution and slavery. Douglass wrote that “the Constitution of the United States, standing alone, and construed only in the light of its letter, without reference to the opinions of the men who framed and adopted it, or to the uniform, universal and undeviating practice of the nation under it, from the time of its adoption until now, is not a pro-slavery instrument.” NS, 16 March 1849. This admission is fatal to your argument. You must retract it, or you cannot prove your argument. You must, as the lawyers say, “get leave to amend your declaration.”

If the Constitution is capable of being construed in the light of its letter, it is utterly contrary to the laws of interpretation to attempt to prove it in any other light, or by any other aid.

You allude “to the opinions of the men who framed and adopted it, and to the practice under it.” But nothing of all this can be resorted to to discover its meaning, if its meaning can be discerned through its letter.

I wait for you to retract your admission, and to take a new position. Will the new position be, that it is doubtful whether the letter of the Constitution is for or against slavery? Then shall I claim the benefit of your doubts for liberty; and that you pronounce the Constitution anti-slavery. Will your new position be, that the letter of the Constitution is pro-slavery? Then will I ask you to prove it; and to prove not merely that, in its imputed form, and three-fifths persons, and fugitives from services, slaves are referred to;⁴During the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, a controversy erupted between delegates who wanted to count slaves fully for purposes of congressional representation and those who wanted to exclude slaves from the population counted for representation. The “three-fifths clause” was a compromise measure that determined that the slave population would be counted at that proportion for the purposes of representation. Finkelman, Slavery and the Founders, 7–9.
for if you could prove all this, the material thing would nevertheless remain unproved. The material thing for you to prove is, that the Federal Government has not power, under the Federal Constitution, to abolish every part of American slavery; for if it has this power, then, clearly, it is not wrong, (as you hold it is) to vote under it. That it has power (I need not now say whether through its Legislature or Judiciary, or both) I once spoke to at length, in your hearing. A copy of my argument on the occasion, is herewith sent to you.

With great respect, Your friend and brother,

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. .

PLSr: NS, 23 March 1849.