FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH

Rochester, [N.Y.] 12 March 1852.

MY DEAR FRIENDSmith, 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. ,

Your favor of yesterday¹Gerrit Smith’s letter to Douglass from approximately 11 March 1852 has not been located. reached me to day. I am taken by the announcement in it, like a ship at sea, by a head wind—all aback! Right bravely have we dashed through the waves of opposition until now;—but your giving up the idea of being present at our Festival has deranged our whole ship’s deck—and cast over us a cloud.²Smith attended the festival sponsored by the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society. FDP, 25 March 1852.

The New York Tribune, National Era, Boston Commonwealth, American Baptist, the Rochester papers, and many others have pointed to this occasion,³On 18 March 1852, Frederick Douglass’ Paper reprinted the editorial by the Syracuse American Baptist, while the annual report of the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society acknowledged the editorials in other newspapers. FDP, 1 April 1852. in a manner which makes it important. I have and so have the other members relied mainly upon your coming, for the success of the occasion,—and now although you have from the first told me that it was quite uncertain whether you should be with us,—and now further, given my organ of hope a pretty decided blow—yet I can not consent “to give it up so.”

You are doing great good where you are—thats certain, and I dare not say leave it—to come to Rochester—but this let me say—should you be leaving Albany⁴Smith was in Albany to provide legal counsel in the Jerry Rescue trial. on Wednesday—or even Thursday of next week, Do my dear Sir, keep you comfortably in the Rail Road carriage, on your way west,

till you hear the brief authoritative command—“Change cars for Buffalo”. Then get you out—and you have such a welcome as Kossuth⁵Louis Kossuth. never got.

Most truly yours

FREDERICK DOUGLASS

ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU.