FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH

Rochester[, N.Y.] 20 February 1856[.]
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. :
I cannot conSent to leave home again (as I shall do tomorrow if all be well) without Sending you a line expressing my Sincere Satisfaction, at finding you Still leading on the moral Sentiment, opposed to Slavery in
every Sense, and every where, as Shown in your letter to your friend—Governor Chase.¹Salmon P. Chase Your’s is the true word in the true time. Years to come it will be easier to Say all you Say, than now—and all the easier because you have made it So. I am now going to Ohio,²Douglass had many speaking engagements in Ohio during February and March 1856. From 21 February through 13 March, he was scheduled to speak in Xenia, Bellbrook, Cedarville, Springfield, Dayton, Painesville, and Hamilton. He was scheduled to lecture in Deshler Hall in Columbus on 24 February, Smith and Nixon Hall in Cincinnati on 3 March, an unknown location in Columbus on 4 March, and Chapin’s Hall in Cleveland on 5 March. Douglass Papers, ser. 1, 3:xxv. to Spend a fortnight in lecturing. Thereafter, I Shall be more at home. My lecturing this winter has been constant—and as I have lectured before Lyceums—as well as other public bodies. I have, you will be glad to know, got Some money by my lectures. Five weeks Spent in New England—gave me the handsome [sum] of five hundred Dollars. In Ohio—I mainly go out as antiSlavery lecturer—and Shall get but little compensation other than what arises out of the consciousness of doing good and hastening the regeneration of the public mind. I have Stood my work well this winter—but I dare not boast much of my health—as I draw nearer the Close of winter my old throat disorder—will probably Show itself—I already begin to feel the Symptoms of its approach. Please to remember me kindly to Mrs Smith.³Ann Carroll Fitzhugh Smith. Both to you and to her Anna wishes to be remembered.
Yours most truly
FREDERICK DOUGLASS—

ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU.