Letter from Gerrit Smith.

Frederick Douglass: My Dear Friend: Have you read, in the last number of the National Era, the letters of Lewis Tappan and Dr. LeMoyne? Before reading them, I did not intend to go to the Convention, which is to be held in Pittsburgh 11th of August. But, now, I have so much hope, that all the friends of freedom will be welcomed to the Convention, that I mean to attend it.

What an unspeakably happy thing, should that Convention take ground in favor of an every way just civil government! What a blow (perhaps a death-blow it would be to American slavery, [)] should that Convention declare that no such abomination can be legalized! For the Convention to yield to expediency, and to take any lower position than these, would be to make itself a curse, instead of a blessing.

I think, that several persons from this county will attend the Pittsburgh Convention. I hope that you will not fail to attend it.—Many Liberty Party persons should attend it.

How happy it would be if the Liberty Party Convention, which is to be held in Buffalo, 1st September, should have nothing to do but to concur in the truth and wisdom, and bravery of the Pittsburgh Convention! God grant, that it may be so!

In haste, your friend,

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. .

Peterboro, July 14th, 1852.