For Frederick Douglass' Paper.

WE DEMAND FAIR TREATMENT OF HON. 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. .

FRIEND DOUGLASS:—We are so fully conscious
that Hon. Gerrit Smith is able to defend
himself, that it is possible that we are
in danger of neglecting to say some things
which we ought to say, to guard his reputation
from the assaults of the enemies of impartial
freedom. His reputation is among
the richest legacies which the friends of suffering
humanity can inherit; therefore we
have a right to be jealous for its protection
from rude assault, and more especially from
such misrepresentations and misconstructions
of motive as may mislead some honest
minds. We are to examine his doctrine of
the admission of Cuba, "even with slavery,"
with an eye distinctly on his construction of
the Constitution. Then Cuban slavery comes
under the axe.

Yours, CANDOR.