Peterboro, May 6, 1852.

Dear Douglass:—I send you a Hymn, which my dear friend John Pierpont composed, the morning of May 3d, 1852, for the use of a church in his neighborhood. It is worthy of this true poet and true philanthropist.

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 THE DEDICATION OF A CHRISTIAN CHURCH

O, Holy Spirit, who alone
Inhabitest Eternity,
We bow before thy glorious throne,
And this new temple give to thee.

On thee our waiting spirit calls!
May our communion, now begun
Within these consecrated walls.
He with the Father and the Son.

Here let thy gospel's heralds stand.
And, breasting sins wide-sweeping storm,
Preach to the great and guilty land.
Thy stern old Baptist a cry—"Reform!"

"Reform your ways, however old.
"That in the gospel a light are wrong!
"Let man no more be given for gold.
"Nor weak ones mastered by the strong!

"At God's house let Reform begin!
"Of the oppressed maintain the cause!
"And, if our laws uphold a sin,
"In God's great name, reform your laws!"

Then shall the Savior's God be ours!
And they, who in this temple stand.
Ere long shall shout, with all their powers,
"Behold, God's kingdom is at hand!"