GERRIT SMITH TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Peterboro, [N.Y.] 30 March 184[9].¹The printed letter erroneously lists the year as 1846.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS.

MY DEAR SIR:—

I have just read the last North Star. I thank you for the correction of last week. That letter can now be understood.²In a letter dated 18 March 1849, Douglass apologized for printing Smith’s letter of 9 February 1849, in which Smith criticized Douglass’s position on the Constitution. Both letters appear in this volume. NS, 23 March 1849. I thank you, also, for your comments on the address, which I reported last June, to the National Convention of the, Liberty Party, at Buffalo.³Douglass attended the 22 and 23 June 1848 convention in Buffalo of political abolitionists who opposed the Liberty party’s nomination of John P. Hale for president the preceding October. Gerrit Smith introduced and read two lengthy addresses to the gathering, in which he presented a detailed argument that slavery was not protected under the U.S. Constitution. In his report in the North Star, Douglass praised Smith’ s oratorical skills, but concluded with the affirmation that Douglass remained a believer in the Garrisonian view of the Constitution as proslavery. NS, 23 June 1848; Harlow, Gerrit Smith, 184–86. These comments are rich in thought and feeling. Valuable, however, as they are, I must object to them, that for the most part, they are not pertinent to the question in controversy between us. That question is, whether the Federal Constitution is pro-slavery or anti-slavery.

You occupy much of your space, in opposing the doctrines of the Address, that Government must, whether with or against the Constitution, abolish slavery. But this doctrine, if right or wrong, does not touch the question between us. That question I am prepared to discuss with you, as soon as you may have retracted the admission made a fortnight since, in the North Star, “that the Constitution of the United States, standing alone, and construed only in the light of its letter is not a pro-slavery instrument.”⁴Smith misquotes a letter that Douglass wrote in reply to C. H. Chase of Rochester. Like Smith, Chase argued with Douglass about the antislavery nature of the Constitution. Douglass partially quoted from Chase’s original letter when he wrote, “I am satisfied that if strictly ‘construed according to its reading,’ it is not a pro-slavery instrument.” These letters appear in this volume. NS, 9 February 1849. Until this and your similar admissions are retracted, you will be on my side of the question, and therefore, in no attitude to discuss it with me. If the Constitution is incapable of being construed according to its letter, there is, of course, liberty to go outside of it for help to construe it. But you admit, that it is capable of being interpreted in the light of its letter; and I appeal to all, who are acquainted with the rules which govern the interpretation of such papers whether I am not right in saying, that if the Constitution be capable of being interpreted in the light of its letter, it is utterly contrary to such rules to attempt to interpret it in any other lights, or by any other helps.

Now, if you will take the position, and defend it by argument, that the

Constitution is, in its letter, pro-slavery, I will reply to you. Or, if you will take the position, and defend it by argument, that the Constitution is not self-interpreting, and is seen in the light of history, to be pro-slavery, I will reply to you. Moreover, I will, in either case endeavor to show: lst, that that Constitution calls for no surrender of slaves, and for no aid whatever to slavery; and 2nd, that it gives power to the Federal Government, or Federal Judiciary, if not indeed to both, to abolish every part of American slavery.

Permit me to say in closing, that the part of the Address, which you suppose argues “disdain” of the Constitution, and want of “deference” for it, and distrust of its friendliness to the “slaves” redemption,”⁵These quotations come from Douglass’s commentary on Smith’s address about the Constitution and slavery. A portion of that speech appeared in the 30 March 1849 issue of the North Star. has no such meaning in my eye, and was not intended to be susceptible of such meaning. On the contrary, I look upon the constitution to be anti-slavery from its surface to its core: and I insist, that there would not be one just and intelligent mind left to give it a pro-slavery interpretation, were it not that the African race, is a helpless and despised race. Even Frederick Douglass himself, much as he loves his race, would not be found joining in such interpretation, did it bear against another than his own race.

I am, my dear Sir, with great regard,

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, 7 April 1849.