FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH

Rochester, [N.Y.] 15 May 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 was unable last week to write such an article—as I wished to have accompany my call upon you, for your views in respect to the mission and course of Louis Kossuth. The case shall appear next week.¹On 20 May 1852 Douglass invited Smith to express his opinion publicly in the pages of Frederick Douglass' Paper on the Louis Kossuth case. Smith responded with a lengthy letter on 25 May. FDP, 20 May, 3 June 1852. The American A. S. So. closed its annual meeting here thursday night.²In May 1850 a proslavery mob had disrupted the annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York City. Unable to find a suitable meeting place in that city for several years, the Garrisonians held their annual meeting in Syracuse in 1851 and in Rochester's Corinthian Hall on 11–13 May 1852. NASS, 6 May 1852; Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 2:235–36, 330–31. I am hardly qualified to give an opinion of its proceedings, for the reason that I have been pretty roughly handled by some of the “Choice and Master Spirits”³Julius Caesar, act 3, sc. 1, line 163. of the Society. Taken as a whole the meeting was far from a happy one and has done little to strengthen itself in the Society in the good opinion of the friends of the slave in this vicinity. The first morning of the meeting was very properly devoted to the memory of the humane I. T. Hopper—tidings of whose death had just reached us.⁴Isaac T. Hopper died Friday, 7 May 1852, at the age of eighty-one. NASS, 13 May 1852. The afternoon meeting was mainly occupied by a speech from Friend Garrison, defining the position of the Am. So. towards the world at large and to its own members in particular.⁵On the afternoon of 11 May 1852, in his address to the American Anti-Slavery Society, Garrison outlined the society's position on its "unceasing war against Slavery," and made a resolution that the society "gladly welcome all (however they may differ in other respects) who will aid faithfully in our great work," regardless of religious or party affiliation. NASS, 20 May 1852. I was pleased with his exposition—but while the theory was sound I felt that the practice of the Society had not been according to its theory. I found myself treated as an enemy to the American Society—a deserter from its fold—and I was bound to know the cause. I therefore took occasion to place myself before the Society the next morning in such a manner—as to enable—my fellow abolitionists to search me and to probe me to the bottom.⁶The second morning of the annual meeting was "occupied in an informal discussion amongst the members of the society," for which no official record was kept. In his newspaper, however, Douglass reported that the session devolved into a personal attack on him, and that he "was in effect hailed no longer as a friend of the American Anti-Slavery Society." NASS, 20 May 1852; FDP, 20 May 1852. I enquired why I was treated as an alien there? You may depend this was enough. They were already, and more than ready to meet me and to show cause for coldness towards me. My accusers stood full seven men deep.⁷The phrase "seven men" refers to a group of New England selectmen with authority over local matters. When using the expression, Douglass indicates that his opponents held the semblance of such institutional power. Mathews, Dictionary of Americanisms, 1501. There were many things alledged against me. My whole course was brought under review and my old friends were far from mealy mouthed.⁸First appearing in English in the mid-sixteenth century as "meal mouth," the phrase "mealy-mouthed" derives from carrying meal, or coarsely ground grain, in the mouth, rendering someone unable to be direct or clear in speech. Thus the phrase denotes an unwillingness or inability to state facts or opinions in a simple and direct manner. Stevenson, Book of Proverbs, 1635. My spirit and acts were criticised fully and, I am happy to be able to say, that, for the most part, I was as strengthened to bear it without perturbation. I have time only to set down a few of the points made against me.

1st I had changed my opinion in respect to the US. Consti[tutio]n.

2d I had acquainted Gerrit Smith with that change before I said any thing about it in my paper.

3d I had joined in forming a Society in this State—not aux. to the American Society.⁹The New York State Anti-Slavery Society resolved that slavery was “sinful, and ought to be immediately and unconditionally abandoned.” The society was open to both men and women of all races and was independent of the American Anti-Slavery Society. At the first meeting, the society chose Gerrit Smith as president, with Douglass as corresponding secretary. Most members supported Smith and the Liberty party. FDP, 18, 25 March, 15 April 1852.

4th I had allowed myself to be patted on the shoulder by John Scoble at our Buffalo Convention.¹⁰In his newspaper's account of the American Anti-Slavery Society's recent annual meeting, Douglass reported that Garrison had made this charge about Douglass's friendly encounter with John Scoble. Both Scoble and Douglass had attended and addressed the Liberty party's national convention held in Buffalo in September 1851. FDP, 25 September 1851, 20 May 1852.

5th I had accepted a bribe from Benjamin CoatesCoates, Benjamin

Benjamin Coates (c. 1808-87) mostly likely formed his opinions on slavery and abolition under the influence of his devout Pennsylvania Quaker parents. A successful wool merchant and a publisher, Coates was active in many antislavery organizations in Philadelphia, such as the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. Despite his abolitionist connections, Coates argued that colonization was the best way to end slavery. From the 1840s until his death, Coates actively sought financial support from wealthy donors for colonization efforts in western Africa and started a correspondence with Joseph Jenkins Roberts, a successful immigrant to Liberia. In 1858 Coates published Cotton Cultivation in Africa: Suggestions on the Importance of the Cultivation of Cotton in Africa, in Reference to the Abolition of Slavery in the United States, through the Organization of an African Civilization Society, which advocated an increase in international cotton production in order to diminish the world’s dependence on cotton from the American South. Coates believed that with a decrease in profits, Southern slave owners would be compelled to free most, and perhaps all, of their slaves. Coates’s endorsement of colonization hurt his standing in the abolitionist movement, yet Douglass defended Coates, stating that he was a “humane and benevolent man” and “no more a negro hater than we.” , ser. 3, 1:538n; Ripley, 4:322. a Colonizeationist.¹¹Benjamin Coates of Philadelphia made a donation to Frederick Douglass’ Paper shortly before the American Anti-Slavery Society’s annual meeting. Many Garrisonians characterized Coates as a supporter of colonization, because he had written a letter in February 1852 in which he advocated colonization as a means for black people to escape racial oppression. Following the attack on his character at the meeting, Douglass reprinted Coates’s letter in Frederick Douglass’ Paper, defending Coates as “a humane and benevolent man, a sincere philanthropist, and no more a negro hater than we.” FDP, 11 March, 20 May 1852.

6th I had been in fellowship with the deadliest enemies of the American Society.

7th My paper was no longer antislavery but a liberty party paper.
That John Thomas had used its columns to uphold Louis Kossuth.¹²In an editorial on the efforts of European monarchs to crush all assertion of democratic rights, Douglass’s corresponding editor John Thomas praised “the rising spirit of freedom in Europe.” He noted that Hungarian exile Louis Kossuth was among them to blend the sympathies of America with the sympathies of Europe in regard to common rights, and strengthen them “to sweep from two continents the powers that oppress them.” Samuel Ringgold Ward immediately wrote to Frederick Douglass’ Paper to “bring Mr. Thomas back to sanity,” noting that Kossuth had conspicuously rejected all abolitionist entreaties to condemn slavery in the hopes of winning the widest possible support in the United States. FDP, 12, 19 February 1852.
That he had said that slavery was a matter of less importance than land reform.¹³John Thomas, the corresponding editor of Frederick Douglass’ Paper, had long supported the cause of land reform, as had Gerrit Smith. Douglass possibly refers to a remark by Thomas taken out of context in a recent editorial in which he wrote that “there is no subject more interesting to the people of this country, than the land question.” FDP, 1 April 1852.
That Gerrit Smith had vertualy made the same declaration in Corinthian Hall[.]¹⁴Gerrit Smith, who inherited significant acreage in upstate New York, was one of the state’s preeminent landowners. Despite his wealth of real property, Smith opposed land monopoly, ownership of land by a few wealthy whites, and personally donated plots of land to several thousand free blacks and poor whites. Between 1846 and 1850 he gave away approximately 200,000 acres. The philanthropist saw land reform as more than a personal cause and pursued land reform politically. When the Liberty party formulated its platform in 1 848, he ensured a land reform plank, and as a congressional candidate in 1852, he gave speeches asserting that access to soil should be a right, the same as light and air. Although Smith often stated that he wished to rid himself of all real estate, he gave away less than a third of his holdings. Harlow, Gerrit Smith, 241–58; Stauffer, Black Hearts of Men, 127–30, 135–42.
That my paper is a political—and not an antislavery paper—only in the same sense that the Tribune¹⁵The New York Tribune. is.

[8th] Two of the Agents, MrFoster, Stephen Symonds

Born in Canterbury, New Hampshire, radical abolitionist Stephen Symonds Foster (1809-81) studied at Dartmouth College. In 1837, a year before his graduation, he helped to organize the New Hampshire Young Men's Anti-Slavery Society. Foster briefly attended Union Theological Seminary in New York, but by 1839 he had repudiated the ministry. He developed his criticisms of American churches most fully in The Brotherhood of Thieves; or, A True Picture of the American Church Clergy (1843). His practice of interrupting a church service to speak out against complicity with slavery frequently provoked violent reaction. While Foster and his wife, Abby Kelley, whom he married in 1815, were agents for the American Anti-Slavery Society for nearly twenty years, their relationship with the Garrisonians was at best one of strained cooperation. Although Foster believed that the Constitution was a proslavery document, he periodically dabbled in politics. In 1843-44 he endorsed the Liberty party. In the late 1850s, having altered his view of the nature of the Constitution, Foster sought to establish a disunion party "whose avowed aim. . .[would] be the overthrow of the government. . .& whose will. . .[would] be expressed through the ballot box." In the mid-1850s he also argued in favor of slave rebellion in his Revolution the Only Remedy for Slavery (1855). A proponent of distributing land to the freedmen, Foster was disappointed with federal Reconstruction policies. He devoted the last years of his life to agitating on behalf of temperance and women's rights. Parker Pillsbury, Acts of the Anti-Slavery Apostles (Concord, N.H., 1883), 123-55; Lillie B. Chace Wyman, "Reminiscences of Two Abolitionists," New England Magazine, 27:536-50 (January 1903); Parker Pillsbury, "Stephen Symonds Foster,'' Granite Monthly, 5:369-75 (August 1882); Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease, Bound with Them in Chains: A Biographical History of the Antislavery Movement (Westport, Conn., 1972), 191-217; Louis Filler, "Parker Pillsbury: An Anti-Slavery Apostle," NEQ, 19:315-37 (September 1946); ACAB, 2:514-15; NCAB, 2:328-29; DAB, 6:558-59. & Mrs FosterFoster, 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. , said that they had and should continue to labor, to have my paper supplanted by the Standard,¹⁶The National Anti-Slavery Standard. just as they would have abolitionists to drop the Tribune for any or any other paper partly an antislavery paper for one wholly so.¹⁷In his account of the meeting, Douglass reported that Stephen S. Foster claimed that Frederick Douglass' Paper had praised Louis Kossuth and endorsed the position of John Thomas and Gerrit Smith, who "thought Land Reform a greater question than Slavery." Opposition to Douglass led several American Anti-Slavery Society members, including Robert Purvis, to discontinue their subscription to the newspaper. FDP, 20 May 1852.

9th That I had attacked George Thompson &c.

You must know that these naked points were argued with any amount of side blows—inuendo—dark suspicions—such as avarice—faithlessness treachery—ingratitude—and what not.

I will not tell you how I met the onset. Suffice it to say—that I stood it all, with Spirit unruffled—and have now the pleasing satisfaction—to know that I was elected a manager in the Society¹⁸Douglass was one of seven managers of the American Anti-Slavery Society elected from the state of New York at the May meeting. NASS, 20 May 1852.—with but one dessenting vote—and that was the vote of my old jealous friend, Remond.¹⁹Charles Lenox Remond.

You will see some further account of this meeting in my next paper.²⁰On 13 May 1852 Douglass printed a one-column editorial outlining the highlights of the annual meeting. The following week he published a five-column account of the meeting, relating both his version of the "attack" on his character at the meeting and the details of resolutions and sessions. FDP, 13, 20 May 1852.

Ever truly yours— grateful and affectionate Friend—

DOUGLASS

ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU. PLSr: Foner, Life and Writings, 2:180–81.