To the Liberty Party of the United States.

At your Convention in Buffalo last fall, you nominated 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. for President, and Charles DurkeeDurkee, Charles

Charles Durkee (1805—70), politician and pacifist, was born in Royalton, Vermont, and educated in the town schools and at the Burlington Academy. A merchant, he emigrated in 1836 to Wisconsin, where he was one of the founders of Southport, later Kenosha. Durkee served in the territorial legislature before being elected as a Free Soiler to two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives (1849—53). At the World's Peace Conference in Paris in 1849 he was one of twenty-three American delegates. He later became president of the short-lived Wisconsin Peace Society. After joining the Republican party, Durkee served one term in the U.S. Senate (1855—61) and was appointed governor of Utah Territory in 1865. Curti, American Peace Crusade, 172, 217; BDAC, 839. for Vice-President; but neither of them consents to be a candidate. Hence, we call another Convention to nominate persons for these offices, and we propose that it be held in Buffalo on Wednesday the 1st day of next September. This Convention should be a large one, and it will be if the men and women who love the Liberty Party feel as deeply as they should feel how indispensable to the salvation of the country is the speedy success of the principles of that party.

National Committee of Liberty Party,

[GEORGE W. JONSON, New York.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS, "

JOHN THOMAS, "

ANTOINETTE L. BROWN, "

ELIAKIM ROBERTS, Ohio.

T. B. HUDSON, "

JAMES H. COLLINSCollins, James H.

, Illinois.

JAMES CATLINCatlin, James

James Catlin (1824–90) was a farmer and physician who lived in Warren County, Pennsylvania. He was known to be active in aiding fugitive slaves. Catlin began aiding fugitives in college, hiding them in his room. He married his wife, Martha Van Rensselaer, another physician and abolitionist. James and his brother, Henry, began publishing the True American in Erie, Pennsylvania in 1853, using their print shop as a safehouse until fugitives could be ferried over Lake Erie. 1850, 1860, and 1880 U. S. Census, Sugar Grove, Warren, Pennsylvania; Mary D. Putnam, “Connections with the Miller House,” Stepping Stones, 64:2887 (May 2020); Mary Ellen Snodgrass, ed., The Underground Encyclopedia: An Encyclopedia, 2 vols. (New York: Routledge, 2015), 1:106. , Pennsylvania.

SAMUEL AARON, "

E. B. CROCKER, Indiana.

April 6, 1852.