Editorship—and six dollars per week for his services. If he accepts this arrangement, the union of papers will be completed and we shall soon see the new paper afloat.

I shall need, to begin with, four hundred dollars—to provide things suited to enlargement and beauty. This will be all sufficient. I do not wish to go in debt at the commencement of the Enterprize—and I shall save ten percent—by paying cash, for my new press and type. I tremble to ask it—and yet I know not what better to do—will you be so good as to let me have two hundred of that sum—if so I will raise the other two—and you shall, if all be well, see the New Sheet unfurled on the first of July,—the day of cheap postage.³In order to stifle competing private mail delivery services, Congress passed the Post Office Act of 1851, which reduced postal rates. Effective 1 July 1851, the U.S. Post Office cut the cost of mailing a newspaper in half, in addition to reducing the rate for mailing letters. Richard R. John, Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), 49, 156, 160; Lysander Spooner, “Who Caused the Reduction in Postage? Ought He to Be Paid?” in The Collected Works of Lysander Spooner, comp. Charles Shively, 6 vols. (1850; Weston, Mass., 1971), 1:5–12.

Most sincerely & gratefully Your friend.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS.

[P.S.] I am sure that I can work with Thomas—and that together we can do true men’s work—in the cause of “All rights for All”.⁴“ALL RIGHTS FOR ALL” was the motto that Douglass later used for Frederick Douglass’ Paper. FDP, 26 June 1851.

F.D.

ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU.