Lockport, Oct. 16, 1852.

Dear Douglass:—On reading over the District Electors, I see the name for the 31st District is given Peter M. MurphyMurphy, Peter M.

; it should be given Peter P. Murphy. Ought not our State Committee find out the correct name of each Elector immediately? as it is of vast importance in case we should carry the State; and if the mighty change is going on amongst the people elsewhere, that there is here, it is not impossible. Look for a good vote from Niagara; but remember that vote will be the result of labor—labor unceasing and untiring. Our county is thoroughly organized; there is not less than three or four meetings held every night in some parts of it. Documents are spread broadcast; and we, who are going without sleep night after night, neglecting our business, and freely paying our money, want to know that our friends in other parts are plying the laboring oar. Work! Work!! WORK!!! should be our watchword; and if every man does his duty, we will cast a vote that will make the old, dry bones shake.

I hope 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. will be elected. If I was in that District, I should count it a privilege to sacrifice and be sacrificed about so desirable an object.

Yours to the end,

John RobertsRoberts, John

.