Letter From Gerrit Smith.

Frederick Douglass:ーI learn from the account of the Pittsfield meeting, in your last paper, as well as from numerous other [illegible], that I am supposed to be a large landholder in Florence, N.Y. I formerly held some eighteen thousand acres in that town. I have, however, but a few hundred [illegible] left in it.

There is a strong disposition in some quarters to have the colored people purchase the lands which I have left in Florence. But these lands are of very moderate fertility, are not favorably situated, and are held by my agent, who resides in that town, at prices probably quite equal to their value. Why then should the colored peple buy them?

It may be very well for the colored people to emigrate to lands which are given to them, even if they are of [illegible] quality, as are most of the lands which I have given to them. But when the colored people buy lands, and especially at their full value, I think they should buy such as are fertile, easy of cultivation, and advantageously situated.

Very respectfully, your friend,

Gerrit Smith.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.

Peterboro, Feb. 24, 1849.