Rochester, March 6.

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:
I am Slowly recovering from my illness and hope Soon to be at work again. I am, with you, quite Sorry, that W. H. Seward's abolitionism is not of a more decided a type; and that he annexes So many hard conditions to the freedom of the Slave, in the D.C. yet So anxious am I to See Emancipation there, I would See it at almost any price, and Since we cannot have you, and Such as you to propose plans in Congress for Emancipation I am glad of even So much as Wm H. Seward's plan. As to "indemnifying" Slaveholders, that is by no means So repulsive to me Since your great Speech on the Nebraska Bill—which Speech by the way, I was reading but yesterday—I hope it will not be long before I Shall See and hear [you] again for I always feel the better for having Seen [and heard you]—I am Dear Sir,
Yours as every truly and affectionately
Frederick Douglass