FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH

Rochester, [N.Y.] 18 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 send you the last “North Star” with many imperfections. The printers in my office, have had much additional work to do this week, to prepare for the new paper. Have I rightly comprehended your argument—to which I allude in my reply to the “Free man”?¹Douglass published an editorial reply to an article in another abolitionist paper, the Pennsylvania Freeman. The Freeman article criticized Douglass for changing his position on the proslavery nature of the U.S. Constitution. In spring 1851 Douglass openly embraced the position of Gerrit Smith and other politically minded abolitionists who viewed the Constitution as a tool to be employed by abolitionists. This move widened the schism between Douglass and the Garrisonians, who rejected political means in abolitionism. PaF, 5 June 1851; NS, 12 June 1851; Martin, Mind of Frederick Douglass, 36–39. You see he has attempted to annihilate me with your thunder!

You will find, friend [W]ard’s reply to my letter to him—within.²The last issue of the North Star appeared on 12 June 1851 and did not include a response from Samuel Ringgold Ward. No letters could be located to confirm the correspondence that Douglass mentions in his letter to Smith.

I shall send a letter immediately to our friend John Thomas—calling

him at once to his post of Labor. God grant that the fruit of our union may prove a blessing to the slave—and to suffering man every where—and of every grade.

Yours most truly

FREDERICK DOUGLASS

ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU.