FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH

Rochester, [N.Y.] 14 July 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,

Your notes of this and yesterday morning¹Neither of Smith’s letters to Douglass has been located. cheer me. You not only keep life in my paper but keep Sperit in me. I owe you much every way—for my people—and for myself. Your letter to my friend Miss Griffiths²Julia Griffiths. in which you send 25 doll[ar]s to be used in publishing my 4th July Speech—makes me uneasy. The zeal of my friend is great—and I fear she sometimes seems too urgent on my behalf. I must tell you however that I really am desireous to make some money as well as do some good with that speech. I am intending to do considerable lecturing—and I must have something to carry with me to sell. I rely mainly on this method for the means of living and travelling. Every town has not a Gerrit Smith in it—to slip a five “dollar bill” in the hand of the antislavery lecturer, to enable him to pay his way. I must have something to sell. Your pamphlets which you generously gave me are now nearly exhausted—and I must have something to fill their place. Yet my dear Sir—I would not, in view of what I know to have been your expences in the ChaplinChaplin, William Lawrence

In August 1850 William L. Chaplin (1796-1871) was among a group arrested for aiding fugitive slaves. Originally a lawyer, Chaplin left his legal practice in Easton, Massachusetts, to devote himself to the abolitionist movement in New York in the 1830s. He worked for the Liberty party as a lecturer and editor, becoming an associate of Gerrit Smith. In 1850 Chaplin assisted a group of slaves who had escaped from slave owners Alexander H. Stephens and Robert Toombs. Authorities arrested Chaplin and charged him with violating the Fugitive Slave Act in both Washington, D.C., and Maryland. Three of Chaplin’s longtime New York abolitionist friends, James C. Jackson, Joseph C. Hathaway, and Theodosia Gilbert, rushed to Washington to attend to Chaplin’s needs while jailed. Free Democrat Congressman Joshua Giddings and Senator Salmon P. Chase aided in Chaplin’s legal defense. Opponents of the Fugitive Slave Act, led by Smith, rallied around the case and posted the bond of $25,000 for Chaplin. Back in New York in 1851, Chaplin refused to return south for his trial and worked only briefly to raise funds to reimburse those who stood his bail. He drifted away from Gerrit Smith and, together with Jackson and Hathaway, moved into the Free Democratic camp. Chaplin later married Gilbert and joined Jackson in operating a water cure establishment in Glen Haven, New York. Henry Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 3 vols. (Boston, 1874), 2:80-82; Stanley Harrold, Subversives: Antislavery Community in Washington, D.C., 1826-1865 (Baton Rouge, La., 2003), 157-62; Friedman, Gregarioas Saints, 123; Harlow, Gerrit Smith, 290-95; Lawrence J. Friedman, “The Gerrit Smith Circle: Abolitionism in the Burned-Over District,” CWH, 26:19-37 (March 1980).In August 1850 William L. Chaplin (1796-1871) was among a group arrested for aiding fugitive slaves. Originally a lawyer, Chaplin left his legal practice in Easton, Massachusetts, to devote himself to the abolitionist movement in New York in the 1830s. He worked for the Liberty party as a lecturer and editor, becoming an associate of Gerrit Smith. In 1850 Chaplin assisted a group of slaves who had escaped from slave owners Alexander H. Stephens and Robert Toombs. Authorities arrested Chaplin and charged him with violating the Fugitive Slave Act in both Washington, D.C., and Maryland. Three of Chaplin’s longtime New York abolitionist friends, James C. Jackson, Joseph C. Hathaway, and Theodosia Gilbert, rushed to Washington to attend to Chaplin’s needs while jailed. Free Democrat Congressman Joshua Giddings and Senator Salmon P. Chase aided in Chaplin’s legal defense. Opponents of the Fugitive Slave Act, led by Smith, rallied around the case and posted the bond of $25,000 for Chaplin. Back in New York in 1851, Chaplin refused to return south for his trial and worked only briefly to raise funds to reimburse those who stood his bail. He drifted away from Gerrit Smith and, together with Jackson and Hathaway, moved into the Free Democratic camp. Chaplin later married Gilbert and joined Jackson in operating a water cure establishment in Glen Haven, New York. Henry Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 3 vols. (Boston, 1874), 2:80-82; Stanley Harrold, Subversives: Antislavery Community in Washington, D.C., 1826-1865 (Baton Rouge, La., 2003), 157-62; Friedman, Gregarioas Saints, 123; Harlow, Gerrit Smith, 290-95; Lawrence J. Friedman, “The Gerrit Smith Circle: Abolitionism in the Burned-Over District,” CWH, 26:19-37 (March 1980). ³William L. Chaplin. case, have called upon you for one cent to help me publish my lecture here on the 4th or 5th July.

You shall not be called upon further to aid in publishing my lectures—and yet I do not doubt if I should very much need your friendly aid—you would give it. Since on this point, I may say, that I am not looking for one cent more from you, in support of “Frederick Douglass’ Paper,” than you kindly offered to give at the first. And should the paper not be able to live when that sum is exhausted—I will submit with resignation to its death. Not that I sit lightly by it for so I do not. I have nursed it too long not to love it and to desire long life and usefulness to it; But that feeling must be sub-

ject to proper limits. I ought not to strip myself of all I have to sustain my paper. I have already given the half of my worldly goods—and the whole of my time for five years—with the incedental support—which friends like you in heart but unlike you in purse have been able to give me. Now I am unwilling to tax my friends for my support—unless with their freest consent. I am fully able to work and to get a living and if after a fair trial, I find that my paper shall not be deemed of sufficient use to be sustained, I will freely give up and go to work.

With Sincere gratitude and warm affection Yours to the end

FREDERICK DOUGLASS.

ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU. PLSr: Foner, Life and Writings, 2:205.