FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH

Rochester, [N.Y.] 24 March 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 thank you warmly, for attending our Festival. Your visit to Rochester has done good both to the cause of temperance¹On the evening of 17 March 1852, the day before the official start of the Rochester antislavery festival, Gerrit Smith delivered a speech in Corinthian Hall urging New Yorkers to endorse their own version of Maine’s prohibition law. FDP, 25 March 1852. and to Antislavery. The festival was highly successful and has left a good impression. The receipts amount to more than four hundred dollars²The Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society reported net proceeds for the festival of $407.71, of which $233 was donated to Frederick Douglass. FDP, 1 April 1852.—and I believe, that the expenses do not exceed one hundred dollars. You may well suppose, that Julia Griffiths, is highly pleased with the result.

I regret that you could not have remained to witness to the scene which occurred the morning you left here for home. The constitution of the "New York Anti-Slavery Society," drawn up by our friend Goodell³The Rochester convention appointed a ten-member committee to draft the constitution for the proposed New York State Anti-Slavery Society. Douglass served on that committee, but informed readers of the newspaper that William Goodell had done the principal work in preparing the constitution. FDP, 25 March, 1 April 1852. was submitted at ten oclock that morning, to a large meeting—and before a single article of that constitution could be adopted the indefatigable Stephen,⁴The official proceedings of the Rochester convention record Stephen S. Foster as presenting a resolution that the newly formed New York State Anti-Slavery Society affiliate With the Garrisonian-controlled American Anti-Slavery Society. Rochester abolitionist Henry Bush seconded the motion, but the proceedings record its defeat with only one affirmative vote. FDP, 25 March, 1 April 1852. was on his legs with a motion and speech in favor of making the Society auxiliary to the American Antislavery Society,—telling us that he had come to test us—and to compel us to show cause for not uniting with the American Society &c.⁵The official report of the convention’s proceedings mentions Stephen S. Foster as a participant in the debate over the affiliation of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society with the American Anti-Slavery Society. In his own editorial coverage of the convention, Douglass did not acknowledge Foster’s presence. FDP, 25 March, 1 April 1852. The next objection to the Constitution by Mr. Foster was the assertion of the impossibility of Legalizing Slavery. I need not tell you that these objections were all overcome. The Constitution was adopted very heartily and almost unanimously. In the account which I have given of the convention, in my paper, I have thought proper to leave out all mention of

the FostersFoster, Abigail Kelley

Abby Kelley (1811-87) was born in Pelham village, Worcester County, Massachusetts, the seventh daughter of Wing Kelley, a farmer, and Diana Daniels, his second wife. Kelley was heavily influenced by her Quaker upbringing, but she later broke from the church because of its relative conservatism. Although her early schooling was scanty and deficient, Kelley saved and borrowed money in order to attend the New England Friends Boarding School in Providence, Rhode Island. At age nineteen she returned home and then began a career of teaching in Lynn, Massachusetts, where she became an abolitionist through the Lynn Female Anti-Slavery Society. In 1838 Kelley spoke at Pennsylvania Hall in Philadelphia as it was being attacked by an angry protesting mob. In the same year she joined the New England Anti-Slavery Society, previously a male-only organization. She began a career as a lecturer, at both women's and men's gatherings, especially in conservative Connecticut. Kelley married Stephen Symonds Foster, another radical abolitionist, on 21 December 1845. Traveling together on the reform circuit, they were among the most prominent antislavery lecturers in the 1840s and 1850s. Sterling, Ahead of Her Time; EAAH, 2:39-40. Perhaps the best known female American abolitionist. Abigail Kelley Foster (1810-87) was born in Pelham, Massachusetts. She was educated at the Friends School, Providence, Rhode Island, and later taught at a similar establishment in Lynn, Massachusetts. In 1837 she joined the antislavery movement and two years later, following the path blazed by Angelina Grimké, embarked on a career as an abolitionist lecturer. Her talents led Garrisonian abolitionists to choose her as an officer of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1840, provoking antifeminist abolitionists to bolt the organization. She continued to lecture and raise funds for the Garrisonians and in 1845 married Stephen S. Foster. another prominent abolitionist lecturer. In the 1850s both Fosters became outspoken advocates for women's rights in addition to abolition. Quarrels with Garrison over political action led Abby Foster and her husband to become inactive in the American Anti-Slavery Society in the late 1850s. Ill health forced her to be less active as a reformer after the Civil War, but in 1873 she attracted considerable publicity for woman suffrage by refusing to pay taxes on the family farm in protest against her disenfranchisement. The Fosters and Douglass had lectured together in Rhode Island in November and December 1841. Jane Hanna Pease, “The Freshness of Fanaticism: Abby Kelley Foster: An Essay in Reform" (PhD. diss., Univ. of Rochester, 1969); C. B. Galbreath, “Anti-Slavery Movement in Columbiana County," Ohio Archaeological and Historical Publications, 30: 391-92 (1921); DAB, 6: 542-43. . I am persuaded that there is a desire to provoke me into a controversy with them. They accuse me now, openly, of having sold myself to one Gerrit Smith Esq. and to have changed my views—more by your in consequence of your purse than your arguments! These things are disagreeable but they do not move me. A consciousness of my own rectitude affords me abundant repose and enables me heartily to despise these assaults.

I wait for their accusations to appear in some of their papers.⁶Giles B. Stebbins, not Abby Kelley or Stephen S. Foster, launched the attack on the founding of the Rochester-based New York State Anti-Slavery Society in a hostile letter, published in the National Anti-Slavery Standard. Douglass replied in an editorial on 22 April 1852, to which Stebbins responded directly on 26 April 1852 in a letter that appears in this volume. NASS, 15 April 1852; FDP, 22, 29 April 1852. I may then make a reply. One handle they have against me is, that I told you of the change in my views before I told the public. This they think is proof positive of corruption.

But I will pester you no longer with these slanders. I am content to bide my time.

In haste Most truly Yours—

FREDERICK DOUGLASS

ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU. PLSr: Foner, Life and Writings, 2:174.