Dear Douglass:—My friend John Pierpont has sent me these lines. You will be glad to print them. Gerrit Smith.Smith, 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.

THE SLAVE-CATCHER.

Children of the Pilgrim flock,

Off-shoots from the Pilgrim stock,

Planted first on Plymouth Rock,

By the surging main!

When upon that shore they dwelt,

When upon that rock they knelt,

Would those men have lived, and felt

Slavery's galling chain!

When they all were kneeling there,

And the incense of their prayer

Rose upon the frosty air.

From a wigwam's shade

Had they heard the savage call,

"Hunt us down that fleeing thrall!

Seize and hold him, each and all!"

Would they have obeyed?

Had they done it, would they dare

Kneel again and breathe a prayer

To the God they worshipped there?

Had they prayed, would HE,

Who their steps had thither led,

Who his guardian wing had spread

Over their defenceless head,

On the wintery sea.

His all-gracious ear have bowed?

Had they called on him aloud,

Would the column and the cloud,

Once to Israel given,

Have descended, as their guide

Through those forests, dark and wide,

Where to thee, O God, they cried,

And were heard of Heaven?

Hark! that savage call we hear!

Now 'tis ringing in our ear!

See! the panting thrall is near!

Shall we play the hound?

Shall we join the unleashed pack,

Yelping on a brother's track?

Shall we seize and drag him back,

Fainting, bleeding, bound?

Yes, when we're in love with chains!

Yes, when, in our dastard veins,

Not a drop of blood remains

From those Pilgrim men!

Yes, when we our back shall strip,

That what blood we have may drip

For the lordlings of the whip,

Then, and not till then.