Letter from G. W. Johnson.

Dear Sir:—A National Convention of the LIBERTY PARTY is called to meet in this city, on Wednesday and Thursday, the 17th and 18th inst.

Townsend Hall, corner of Main and Swan Streets, a fine, central hall, has been secured, and board at respectable Temperance Taverns, at from 87½ cents to $1,50 a day has been engaged. The Temperance Houses are the Phelps House, board $1,50; Bennet's, $1; and the Niagara, 87½ cents.

The Call issued by the National Committee sets forth the objects of the Convention. 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. and other distinguished men will be present.

As the fare on railroads and steamers is now comparatively cheap, and the season for absence from home a convenient one, it is hoped that the friends of Freedom, throughout the length and breadth of the land, will, in large numbers, come up to Buffalo on the occasion, to consult together, compare views, and resolve on a course of future action best calculated to carry forward the great cause of HUMAN RIGHTS in this its hour of darkness and peril.

Your presence is particularly desired.

Truly yours,

G. W. JohnsonJohnson, George Washington

George W. Johnson (1801–80) was a lawyer and land agent who spent most of his life in Buffalo, New York. He was active as an abolitionist as well and was said to have worked in aiding fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad. Born in Enfield, New Hampshire, he came West after graduating from Dartmouth. Johnson read law under Millard Filmore in East Aurora, New York and also ran a school there. He then became a land agent in Buffalo. Johnson was a supporter of both the Liberty and Free Soil parties in turn and vociferously endorsed the impeachment of Andrew Johnson. He diligently kept a diary of his time in Buffalo, chronicling the course of many civil rights movements there, including abolition and debtor’s rights. Biographical Note, MS 38, George Washington Johnson diaries, 1848, 1857, University Archives, State University of New York at Buffalo; Reinhard O. Johnson, The Liberty Party, 1840–1848: Antislavery Third-Party Politics in the United States (Baton Rouge, La., 2021), 1848. ,

One of the Committee.

Buffalo, Sept. 1, 1851.