FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH

Rochester, [N.Y.] 28 May [18]51.

Gerrit Smith EsqSmith, 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. :

MY DEAR SIR:

Pardon me for writing so often. I send this to say that, I have made the proposal to our friend, Mr. Thomas,¹John Thomas. which you suggest in the letter now before me;²Gerrit Smith’s letter to Douglass has not been located.—I have offered him the freedom of the office—assistant

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.