Frederick Douglass — I am credibly informed that there will be a sale of the lands generously given by 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. to poor white men, for taxes, in May next, unless previously paid. The taxes now due amount to about $1.00 on forty acres. It should be paid at the Comptroller's office in Albany. The Comptroller will need the discription of each lot as given in the deed. Any person reading this notice should notify all persons in their vicinity holding deeds. No time should be lost; delay is dangerous

Your for Liberty and Land,

E. M. K. GlenGlen, Elijah McKinney

Elijah McKinney Glen (1807–1879) of Minaville, Montgomery County, New York. Glen was an agent of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society in the 1830s and ran for the state senate in 1840 on the Liberty party ticket. Glen was still lecturing for the Liberty party in 1849 and shared a platform with Douglass at an antislavery meeting in Penn Yan, New York, on 20 February of that year. Glen held several other political posts including the warden of the Sing Sing prison and postmaster of Macedon from 1861 to1866. In 1868, he was elected to the New York state assembly from the first district of Wayne County. Later in life, Glen moved to Rochester where he passed the last few years of his life. New York Emancipator, 20 August, 22 October 1840; Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle, 16 October, 1879; Alice H. Henderson, "The History of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society" (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1963), 273, 319, 347.

Argyle, Washington Co., Mar. 22d, [18]52