Rochester Aug 19th 1852
Gerrit Smith Esqr.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.
My dear Sir,
Your circular came to hand when when my paper was nearly ready to go to press, but, on account of its great importance, I have, at the cost of Some delay, handed it in for this number. The circular pleases me much. I think you quite hard enough, My dear Sir, on your opponents and that you cut their logic into very Small Slips.
I am leaving home to night to attend the annual meeting of the Western A. S. Society, to be held in Salem, Ohio. I am off before I have time to recruit; but work is the order of the day. There was much dissatisfaction amongst the Colored people in Buffalo—when I told them, Sunday night, that Canistota, not Buffalo, would be the place for holding the Libery Party Convention. Julia Griffiths Sends Love to Mrs and Mr Smith.
May you find your dear Family well—and yourself without detriment, on your arrival home.
Yours most truly, and to the end;
Frederick Douglass