FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO GERRIT SMITH

[n.p.] 20 April [18]57[]
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 SIR:
The Bill sent to mr Green¹Beriah Green. was by mistake. The five dollars of which he Speaks is duly Set to his credit, and the five you have now Sent shall also be Set to his credit. He Shall not be troubled with a bill again. I am amazed as well as gratified at the strength of the vote in favor of a radical abolition personal Liberty Bill.²Following the Dred Scott decision, New York’s legislature formed a joint special committsee to determine the impact of the ruling and the state’s response to it. In April 1857 the committee released a series of resolutions and a bill that stated, “Every slave who shall come, or be brought, or be, in this State, with the consent of his or her master or mistress, or who shall come or be brought or be involuntarily in this State, shall be free.” On 17 April, the bill passed the assembly but failed to receive enough votes in the senate for it to continue on to the Committee of the Whole. Thomas D. Morris, Free Men All: The Personal Liberty Laws of the North 1780-1861, (Baltimore, 1974), 182-85. I am sorry the convention appointed here is given up.³A circular dated 1 January 1857 called for a National Convention of Radical Abolitionists to be held in Rochester in June. The convention would discuss the prospect of nominating a candidate for president in 1860. Published weekly in Frederick Douglass’ Paper, the circular last appeared in the 17 April issue. On 1 April 1857, the Radical Abolitionist, the small party’s official newspaper, issued a call for a minimum of 500 people to pledge by 10 April to attend the convention. On failing to achieve that goal, on 1 May the Radical Abolitionist published a notice that the convention had been canceled. But in that same issue, the newspaper assured its readers that since a “large part of [the] prominent leaders [of the Republican party were] about to become Radical Abolitionists,” they would “soon” be able to “avail” themselves of that party’s “extended organization [and] save the trouble of getting up one or our own.” New York Radical Abolitionist, 1 January, 1 February, 1 April, 1 May 1857. FDP, 17 April 1857. [B]ut your proposition for turning Republican Convention into Abolition oneS Strikes me fair.⁴Douglass was probably referring to the Republican party’s next national convention, which took place in Chicago in May 1860, although it is also possible that he was referring to New York’s upcoming Republican party convention, which took place in Syracuse on 23 September 1857. New York Times, 28 July, 24 September 1857; Stan M. Haynes, First American Political Conventions: Transforming Presidential Nominations, 1832—1872 (Jefferson, N.C., 2012), 169-75, 203-08. We have turned Whigs and Democrats into Republicans—and we can turn Republicans into Abolitionists. You have already gone a great way in this direction. I trace that magnificent Show of hands in the assembly directly to your Speech and Counsels.⁵Following the Dred Scott decision, Gerrit Smith publicly supported the passage of personal liberty bills to protect fugitive slaves and free blacks in nonslave states. Smith’s support is evident in a letter he wrote to D. C. Littlejohn, Speaker of the New York Assembly, dated 18 March and entitled “Man is Property Everywhere & Nowhere,’ and in a public speech given at Albany on 11 April. FDP, 10, 14 April 1857. You cannot however, expect that your disciples Shall be quite as Successful as yourSelf—I am better of my throat trouble.

RosaSprague, Rosetta Douglass

Rosetta Douglass Sprague (1839–1906), the first child of Anna and Frederick Douglass, was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, on 24 June 1839. In her childhood, Rosetta wrote and read letters for her mother, whom she assisted with housework and with piecework for the shoe factories in Lynn, Massachusetts. Her father sent Rosetta to school at age seven in Albany, New York, where she lived with Abigail and Lydia Mott. When the Douglass family moved to Rochester, Rosetta began attending the Seward Seminary, where her presence offended the parents of one of the white students and led to her segregation from the other pupils. Her father, in a fury, removed Rosetta from the school and hired a private tutor for his daughter. Rosetta, along with her three brothers, then led other students in the efforts to desegregate Rochester’s public school system. From 1854 to 1855, Rosetta attended Oberlin College preparatory school, one of the first institutions of higher education to accept African Americans and women. She became a teacher in Philadelphia and Salem, Massachusetts, until her marriage in 1863 to Nathan Sprague, with whom she had seven children. Before her death in 1906, she wrote a memoir of her mother that remains one of the most complete documents of Anna Murray Douglass’s life. Rosetta Douglass Sprague, My Mother as I Recall Her: A Paper Read before the Anna Murray Douglass Union, W.C.T.U., May 10, 1900 (1900; Washington, D.C., 1923); Dorothy Sterling, ed., We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1984), 132–45; Ellen N. Lawson and Marlene Merrill, “The Antebellum ‘Talented Thousandth’: Black College Students at Oberlin before the Civil War,” Journal of Negro Education, 52: 145 (Spring 1983); Miriam DeCosta-Willis, “Smoothing the Tucks in Father’s Linen: The Women of Cedar Hill,” Sage, 4: 30–33 (Fall 1987); Sylvia Lyons Render, “Afro-American Women: The Outstanding and the Obscure,” Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, 32: 306–10 (October 1975), 307–10. ⁶Rosetta Douglass. Joins me in Love to Mrs SmithSmith, Ann Carroll Fitzhugh

On 2 January 1822, Ann Carroll Fitzhugh (1805–75), sometimes called “Nancy,” became the second wife of Gerrit Smith. She was born in Hagerstown, Maryland, where her father, William Fitzhugh (1761–1839), was a prominent planter connected to elite families. In 1800 Fitzhugh entered into a real estate venture with his neighbors Charles Carroll and Nathaniel Rochester. The three purchased land in upstate New York and established the town of Rochester, where Fitzhugh moved his family in 1815. He became a prominent resident and philanthropist, contributing to the growth of the town into a City. Gerrit and Ann Smith had eight children, including Elizabeth Smith Miller (1822–1911), who followed in her father’ s footsteps to become an activist and reformer in her own right. Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Gerrit Smith: A Biography (New York, 1909), 27; Harlow, Gerrit Smith, 16; Robert McNamara, “Charles Carroll of Belle Vue: Co-founder of Rochester,” RH, 42:1, 13 (October 1980). ,

I am Dear Sir, Always yours Truly,

FREDERICK DOUGLASS—

ALS: Gerrit Smith Papers, NSyU.