Peterboro, Oct. 4, 1851.

Dear Douglass:—I send you for publication a letter of my esteemed friend Daniel Thomas, who belongs to the first class of wise and true men. I wrote him for permission to publish it.

Truly yours,

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.

Greatfield, Cayuga Co.,

9 mo. 24, 1851.

Gerrit Smith: Dear Friend:—I have read thy letter to F. BarryBarry, Francis

A frequent contributor to the Liberator in the 1850s, Francis Barry, a founder of a utopian community in Berlin Heights, Ohio, was an advocate of spiritualism and free love. He and his wife, Cordelia, were members of the free-love community of Firelands and edited a short-lived utopian periodical, the Age of Freedom. Lib, 24 November 1854, 14 January, 26 July, 2 November 1855; Perry, Radical Abolitionism, 192. of the 13th last, and am so well suited that I wish to add a few remarks. Some of thy expressions relative to the Fugitive Slave Law may sound harsh "to ears polite;" but no friend to truth, varnished or unvarnished, will contradict them.

As far as my knowledge of history extends, no public act more atrociously wicked has been done in a thousand years, and if a peace man might speak in military phrase, I would sooner have had the White House battered about my ears than have signed that bill. The treason of Benedict Arnold was a small affair in comparison. That plot in its most disastrous results would only have frustrated a political revolution; but this was meant to degrade a nation, and to make war against God and humanity.

In certain cities they have committees of safety instead of government, to prevent the union of these states from falling to pieces! Now if such had been formed in 1774, in aid of government, to prevent our union with England from falling to pieces, what would our revolutionary fathers have called them? Why, TORIES, and nothing short; but they

only required us to pay a paltry tax on tea, and were of a fairer type than our Union committees, who aim to degrade us from the dignity of men.

I was not aware till the question of slavery came up, that there was so much spurious religion in the land, and if any one were to say that Mahometanism is better than the principles advocated by some learned divines amongst us, how could we contradict him?—If the bible upholds American slavery, (as they assert,) it upholds all the crimes that naturally flow from the system, and these constitute a blacker list than the prophet ever countenanced.

The ancient Jews were forbidden to return the servant who had escaped from his master, instead of helping to catch him, as our infamous law requires; and they were also commanded not to oppress him, but to let him reside among them. Now I would ask if this statute has ever been abrogated? If not, how did our constitution-makers in 1787 get over it? and how do professing christians reconcile the disregard of such solemn injunctions to their consciences?

The constitution defines treason to be the levying of war against the United States.—Before the Fugitive Slave Law was passed, (which Congress had no more right to do than any other mob,) a man could excusably defend himself against kidnappers; but since Uncle Sam has become one, it is treason to make any resistance! The time will come, however, when these villanies will be seen in a clearer light by the nation.

Many leading politicians seem eager for the blood of the poor fellows that defended

themselves at Christiana; and what hope is there that he, whose moral courage failed him in the hour of trial, will dare to pardon them, if convicted? When a man's course is downward with such rapid strides, I doubt his return to a better state.

But there are thousands who believe that the master has an equitable right to his slave. How stands his title? Robbers, whose punishment would have been death in any civilized land, brought their African prisoners to our shores and sold them; but could they give a title to the purchaser? Can the vender give a better title than his own? Assuredly not. The slaveholder's claim is, therefore, no better than the original pirates, and no lapse of time can improve it. If the child takes the condition of its mother, (and such is Southern law,) then the slaves stand as their maternal ancestors stood when they first stepped on our shores - stolen property, the victims of men-stealers. The slavery of the South is one grand system of piracy.

Very truly, thy friend,

Daniel Thomas.