Florence.

Mr. Editor:—I find in your paper certain resolutions published, respecting myself, purporting to have been passed by a Florence Association, as condemnatory of what I stated to Mr. Douglass, in a private letter, which was never intended to appear before the public.

I stated nothing but what I learned on my passage through, from good authority, as I supposed; and I stated nothing but my honest convictions of TRUTH. I harbor no ill-will against Stephen Myers, or any of the Florence Association, as men. I have nothing to say or do with any of their actions or concerns. I have no desire to enter into a controversy with them. It is also insinuated in the said resolutions, that I am opposed to our people going on to land which has been so generously given them by our much-esteemed friend Gerrit SmithSmith, 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. . In this they are very much mistaken. I have never uttered a word against our people moving on to their own land; I regard it as being far better for us than gold or silver. I am highly in favor of our people leaving the cities just as fast as may be practicable for them so to do, and going into agricultural pursuits. I have done all that I could to encourage it, not only on account of the strong prejudice against us in crowded cities, but because I believe farming to be the most certain road to independence and prosperity. I most fully agree with the sentiments of Gerrit Smith on the same Subject. Read his letter.

Yours for the truth,

Henry BibbBibb, Henry

Henry Bibb (1815-54), born a slave in Shelby County, Kentucky, escaped in 1837, only to be recaptured in his unsuccessful attempt to rescue his wife and child. By 1842 he had escaped once again and settled in Detroit, Michigan, his residence until 1850. Immediately plunging into political and antislavery work, Bibb was hired as a lecturer by the Michigan Anti-Slavery Society and spoke on behalf of Liberty party candidates. Although Bibb planned to visit England in 1848, he was advised against making such a tour because the bigamous implications of his marriage to a free woman, Mary E. Miles, might limit his antislavery appeal. He toured the East in 1849, at one point acting as an agent for the North Star, and published his Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb (1849). After the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, Bibb settled in Windsor, Canada West, where he published the Voice of the Fugitive (1851-53). In January 1852 the Refugee Home Society was founded to assist American blacks to migrate to Canada and chose Bibb as a trustee. Bibb was also active in the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada, serving as one of its vice presidents in 1852. NS, 24 March 1848; Henry Bibb, Narrative of the life and Adventures of Henry Bibb: An American Slave (New York, 1850); Floyd J. Miller, The Search for a Black Nationality: Black Emigration and Colonization, 1787-1863 (London, 1975), 106-07, 110-15, 149; Winks, Blacks in Canada, 204-08, 254-55, 396-97; Quarles, Black Abolitionists, 61-62, 185, 218-19; Pease and Pease, Black Utopia, 109-22; idem. They Who Would Be Free, 65, 252-53; Fred Landon, "Henry Bibb: A Colonizer," JNH, 5:437-47 (October 1920). .

New York, March 7, 1849.