New York, June 17, 1852.

Friend Douglass:—I did not write the following article, but on hearing the writer say he intended to free his mind in relation to the apostacy of H. B. Stanton, by writing a letter for your paper, I persuaded him to allow me to offer it to the Tribune, believing, by thus obtaining a wider circulation, it would do more good. Accordingly, I offered it to Mr. Dana, one of the editors of the Tribune, but Mr. Greeley objected to inserting it solely on the ground that it gave too much consequence to Stanton. The duty now devolves on me, a little chagrined at the necessity, of sending to you the article which was originally designed for your paper.

Do with it as you please. In conclusion, I will say that a devotion of his heart and soul to the cause of the crushed bondman, from the first days of the struggle, entitles the writer in question to use that "great plainness of speech," which characterizes his strictures upon the horrible defection of the associate of Theodore D. Weld, Alvan StewartStewart, Alvan

Alvan Stewart (1790-1849) was a lawyer and abolitionist born in Granville, New York. In 1834 he joined the American Anti-Slavery Society and began establishing abolitionist organizations in New York. The following year the New York State Anti-Slavery Society was founded with Stewart as the president. Stewart also helped to form the Liberty party in 1840 and was its gubernatorial candidate in 1842 and 1844. Along with Lysander Spooner, Stewart pioneered the abolitionist argument that slavery was not protected by the U.S. Constitution. William M. Wiecek, The Sources of Antislavery Constitutionalism in America, 1760-1848 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1977), 154, 205, 218, 254-57, 265-66; Sorin, New York Abolitionists, 47-52; ACAB, 5:683; NCAB, 2:331-32; DAB, 18:5-6. and William GoodellGoodell, William

William Goodell (1792-1878), a New York abolitionist and newspaper editor, helped to form both the American Anti-Slavery Society and the Liberty party. As a writer and editor, Goodell contributed to a number of reform and antislavery publications, including the Genius of Temperance, the Emancipator, the Friend of Man, the American Jubilee, the Radical Abolitionist, and Principia. Goodell's abolitionist ideals did not always fall in line with the Garrisonians. On religion, Goodell agreed wholeheartedly that established churches supported proslavery ideology, and he went so far as to establish his own nonsectarian church in Honeoye, New York, on the principles of temperance and antislavery. In contrast, Goodell broke with the Garrisonians on the issue of politics. He helped found the Liberty party, looking to use political means in the fight against slavery. Sorin, New York Abolitionists, 57-62; Perry, Radical Abolitionism, 46-48, 180-83; DAB, 7:384-85. .

Yours, &c., Elias SmithSmith, Elias

This is probably Elias Smith (1815–17), a Methodist minister and antislavery advocate in New York City. He was noted for being a friend of Garrison. Dale Cockrell, ed., Excelsior: Journals of the Hutchinson Family Singers, 1842–1846, (New York, 1989), 192n27. .