Our Presidential Nomination.

Brother Douglass:—The state of the case in regard to our Liberty Party nomination for President, ought to be distinctly understood. My view of it is thus:

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. is as really our candidate now, as he ever was, or certainly, as much so as he was when we last voted for him. Last Sept., when we nominated him at Buffalo, as is his custom, he declined. Professor Hudson of Oberlin made a powerful speech, in which he maintained the argument that Mr. Smith ought to accept. Mr. Hudson attempted to answer the objections which Mr. Smith had offered, and some of us thought him eminently successful in the attempt. To this speech Mr. Smith made no reply. We took silence for consent—at least, others beside the writer did. So by many it was thought that the nomination was fairly made. There are those who will recollect, that as I was fully aware of Mr. Smith's opposition to that use of his name which we desired, and as I presumed that we could not then agree to select any other candidate, I was for postponing the nomination to a future time,—hoping, also, (I confess,) that a few months might exhibit to us some great and favorable change in political aspects, making the path of duty plain before us.

Mr. Smith earnestly remonstrated against such postponement. Then we nominated him; he declined; Mr. Hudson replied to him; Mr. Smith kept silent, not even proposing another candidate. Then for one I felt resolved to hold him to the nomination. But as he persists in declining, there is no use whatever in fighting this battle over and over again. Let us not meet for that purpose on the first day of Sept. next, at Buffalo. If no genuine anti-slavery nomination should ere that day float on any banner—none such as we can safely endorse, perhaps we may unite on the name of the author of the "Democracy of Christianity"—William Goodell.

Yours for a Righteous Civil Government,

J. R. JohnsonJohnson, James Rawson

Probably the frequent correspondent of Frederick Douglass’ Paper, James Rawson Johnson, an African American abolitionist from Syracuse, New York. Johnson was a supporter of the Liberty party and the religious abolitionist cause, as well as hydropathy. FDP, 26 June, 11 September, 9 October 1851, 1 January, 12, 26 February, 25 March, 8 April, 20 May, 9 July, 15 October 1852; DouglassPapers, ser. 3, 1:582-84, 587-88, 590-92, 596, 599.

Syracuse, May 3d, 1852