FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH

Rochester, [N.Y.] 10 June 1851.

Gerrit Smith Esq.Smith, 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—

I am most thankful—for your ready compliance with my request for two hundred dollars; and, also, for the good letter you have sent me for my New paper. I have been absent from home,¹No other record has been found of Douglass’s traveling immediately prior to writing this letter. and got somewhat behind in my work: otherwise, I should have written immediately on the reciept of your letter, containing the money order.

It will be impossible to get the new paper out before the 26th June. The prospectus for it will be published to day in the “Star”²Douglass published an editorial in the North Star on 12 June 1851 announcing the impending merger of his paper with the Liberty Party Paper and possibly the Impartial Citizen. The first issue of Frederick Douglass’ Paper appeared on 26 June 1851. and will be at once forwarded to you. I do hope you will be pleased with it.

Julia Griffith,—my faithful friend, and co worker,—(to whom I am greatly indebted for many lessons of wisdom—) is all zeal in our new enterprize.

The call of L Party Convention,³Gerrit Smith held a national nominating convention for the Liberty party in Buffalo on 17 and 18 September 1851. The call for this convention appeared in the inaugural issue of Frederick Douglass’ Paper on 26 June 1851. FDP, 4, 25 September, 20 October 1851; New York Daily Times, 19 September 1851; New York Daily Tribune, 19 September 1851; Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 2:337–41. shall appear next week. Thomas⁴John Thomas. shall be written to come on here next Monday.

In great haste Yours most faithfully and affectionately

FREDERICK DOUGLAS

ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU.