FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH

Rochester, [N.Y.] 28 Feb[ruary] 1852.

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 have just read your letter on colonizeation,¹Douglass devoted five columns of his newspaper to reproducing Gerrit Smith’s letter to New York governor Washington Hunt. FDP, 4 March 1852. adressed to Gov. HuntHunt, Washington

.²A longtime lawyer from Lockport, New York, Washington Hunt (1811–67) served three terms in the U.S. Congress (1843–49) and one as state comptroller (1849–50) as a Whig. In 1850 he pulled together the feuding Fillmore and Seward factions of his party to win a narrow victory in his campaign for governor over Democrat Horatio Seymour. Defeated for reelection, Hunt retired to Lockport. In the 1860s he shifted his political allegiance to the Democratic party. New York Times, 3 February 1867; Sobel and Raimo, Dictionary of Governors, 3:1081; DAB, 9:395–96. I read it to my friend JuliaCrofts, Julia Griffiths

A native of London, Julia Griffiths (1811–95) was the oldest of seven children born to Thomas Griffiths, a onetime stationer turned publisher and bookseller, and his wife Charlotte Powis. She first met Douglass during the latter half of 1846 when he lectured in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where she was visiting with friends. Her mother had been a friend of William Wilberforce, who had advocated for the abolition of slavery in England, and she herself was active in the British antislavery movement. Charmed by the American, Griffiths followed Douglass back to the United States with her younger sister, Eliza, in 1848. In 1850, Eliza married John Dick, one of Douglass’s printers for the North Star, and the couple moved to Toronto. Julia became a constant companion and partner to Douglass and a leading antislavery organizer in Rochester for the next five years. She contributed to the North Star as copy editor and journalist, and saved the paper from financial ruin by organizing its books and by aggressively pursuing subscribers and donations. She helped found the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society, acting as its secretary, and organized the Rochester Anti-Slavery Fair. Initially, she lived with the Douglass family, which led to tension in the household and to unsubstantiated rumors that Douglass and Griffiths shared more than a business relationship. In 1853, the vicious attacks upon her in abolitionist newspapers drove her from the Douglass home and finally forced her to return to England in 1855, ostensibly to raise funds for the North Star. In 1859 she married a Methodist minister from Halifax, Henry O. Crofts (1814–80), who acted as an agent for Frederick Douglass’ Paper. Through the Civil War, she continued to organize and revitalize ladies’ antislavery societies and to lecture against slavery. After the war and her husband’s death, she ran a boarding school and worked as a governess. Her friendship with Douglass continued in frequent correspondence, and she welcomed him and his second wife, Helen Pitts Douglass, when they visited England in 1886. British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Reporter, new ser., 5:82 (1 April 1857); 1871 England Census, Durham County, Gateshead, 41; London, England: Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538–1812, Ancestry.com; Maria Diedrich, Love Across Color Lines: Ottilie Assing and Frederick Douglass (New York, 1999), 179–84; Waldo E. Martin, Jr., The Mind of Frederick Douglass (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1984), 40–41; Janet Douglas, “A Cherished Friendship: Julia Griffiths Crofts and Frederick Douglass,” Slavery and Abolition, 33:265–74 (June 2012); Erwin Palmer, “A Partnership in the Abolition Movement,” University of Rochester Library Bulletin, 26:1–17 (Autumn/Winter 1970–71). ,³Julia Griffiths. at the North Star office. Pardon me, your letter

has filled me with a deeper Love, and a higher admiration, than my heart had yet known. You have inflicted the heaviest blow upon the colonizeation scheme, which it has recieved for many years. God bless you for this noble letter. It is worthy to succeed your powerful address to the voters of your county.

I shall do my best to get your letter into my columns, as perfect as it is, in your circular. I hope you have sent one of these circulars to all each of the Antislavery Journals, the letter ought to have the widest circulation. It is a letter for the Nation, and one which the nation would do well to read.

I am more and more desireous that, you should be here on the 18 & 19th March. I will not hear you say that, you are unpopular without asking and using my right to dissent. You are a popular man, in the most blessed sense in which a human being can be. The hearts of all good men bless thee.

I am, in haste, yours most truly and affectionately,

FREDERICK DOUGLASS.

ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU.