FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH

Rochester[, N.Y.] 14 Aug[ust] 1855[.]
Hon: 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. .
My DEAR FRIEND:
It would have been quite compenSation enough to know that the dedication of my Book¹Dedicated to Gerrit Smith, Douglass’s My Bondage and My Freedom, released in August 1855, tells the story of Douglass’s life as a slave, his escape, his first fourteen years as an abolitionist, his manumission, and his life a freeman, including his ventures in the printing business. The autobiography sold five thousand copies in the first two days of its release, at $1.25 per copy, and sold one thousand in Syracuse, New York, alone. The book required second and third printings in 1856 and 1857, and by the time of the release of the German edition in 1860, some twenty thousand copies had been sold. Despite the book’s limited initial circulation, it met with rave reviews and rivaled the popularity of his autobiographical Narrative. Douglass Papers, ser. 2, 2:xxx-xxxi. afforded you pleasure. That dedication was inSerted not to place you under obligations, nor to discharge my obligation to you, but rather to couple my poor name with a name I love and honor, and have it go down on the tide of time with the advantage of that name. Nevertheless, I gratefully accept your draft for fifty dollars—I do not know, just yet, what use I Shall make of it. I am ever disposed to prefer the useful to the ornamental, and shall no doubt find some useful purpose to which I may properly devote the money—

My family are well and join me in kind regards to you and yours.
I leave home tomorrow on a four weeks Campagn thorugh Niagara and Orleans Counties.²Douglass toured central New York from 15 to 25 August 1855 in the company of William J. Watkins. After touring alone for two weeks, he attended the State Convention of Colored Men at Troy, New York, on 4-6 September 1855. FDP, August 1855; Douglass Papers, ser. 3, 3:xxii-xxiii. I shall try to uphold the great principles of freedom as laid down by yourSelf, and Mr Goodell³William Goodell. at the radical abolition Convention.
Yours Most truly

FREDERICK DOUGLASS

ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU.