GERRIT SMITH TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Peterboro, [N.Y.] 4 Nov[ember] 1851.

MR. DOUGLASS:—

I left my sick wife¹Ann Carroll Fitzhugh Smith. at the Water Cure in New Jersey²The water cure to which Smith refers was probably the Orange Mountain Water Cure, a spa located in South Orange, New Jersey, and operated by Dr. Joseph A. Weder. The establishment boasted of extensive acres of grounds and private rooms with attached private baths and offered transportation to the facility from locations such as New York City. Many abolitionists, including Angelina Grimké Weld, frequently patronized the facility. New York Daily Tribune, 4 November 1851; Robert H. Abzug, Passionate Liberator: Theodore Dwight Weld and the Dilemma of Reform (New York, 1980), 250–51. to come home to vote. I return to her in the morning. Were another proof of my insanity wanting, it would, perhaps, be furnished in the fact that I suffered my desire to vote to cost me six hundred miles’ travel.

Owing to the unfavorable state of the weather and roads, the vote of this town (Smithfield) is very light. It is as follows Liberty, 119; Democratic, 53; Whig, 39.³Members of Gerrit Smith’s circle of abolitionists in and around Smithfield were among the founding members of the antislavery Liberty party, formed in 1840. Madison County, in which Smithfield is located, typically returned the highest percentage of votes for the Liberty party of all districts in New York. Alan M. Kraut, “Partisanship and Principles: The Liberty Party in Antebellum Political Culture,” in Crusaders and Compromisers: Essays on the Relationship of the Antislavery Struggle to the Antebellum Party System, ed. Alan M. Kraut (Westport, Conn., 1983), 79–86; McKivigan, “Frederick Douglass–Gerrit Smith Friendship,” 210.

Yours,

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: FDP, 13 November 1851.

RICHARD D. WEBB TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Dublin, [Ire.] 7 Nov[ember] 1851.

MY DEAR DOUGLASS:—
I have to thank you for a copy of your paper, in which you take me to task
for my report of George Thompson's meeting in Bristol, and for my agree
ment with his opinion of the Liberty Party.¹ I thought of replying through
the Standard,² but believe I had better address myself directly to you, and
if you think my letter worth insertion, your readers will have a better op
portunity of knowing what I have to say for myself, than if I published my
reply in any other paper.

On refer[r]ing to my letter in the Standard of Oct. 2d,³ I find the fol
lowing passage:

"Mr. Matthews⁴ having expressed a strong desire to explain the claims
and merits of the Liberal Party, his wish was acceded to, and, on the com
mencement of the proceedings, he took the floor, and dilated at consider
able length, on the principles and proceedings of those who devote their
time to an attempt to convince the people of the U.S. that their Constitution
does not mean what the people, their Judges, and their Legislatures, de
clare that it means, and who are trying to form a party, to swear to this doc
ument, with the intention of neglecting some of its most solemn provisions,
or are intending to keep them (and so renounce the claims of justice and hu
manity,) until they can obtain a sufficient majority to turn the balance of po
litical power in favor of an amended Constitution, consistent with the Dec
laration of Independence, and with the cardinal doctrine of the abolitionists,
that "slavery is a sin that should be immediate abandoned."⁵