COLUMBIANA, Col. Co., Ohio,

April 15, 1853.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS: DEAR SIR:—I re
ceived your printed circular yesterday.—You request me to "try to add another
name beside my own to your subscription
list." In addition to the "one named," you
will not, I presume, take it amiss in my ask
ing you to send each of the following per
sons a copy of your elegant paper for the en
closed.

"Magna est veritas et prevaelebit." I have
been a reader of your paper for two years,
and I would be last without it; and am thor
oughly convinced in my own mind that the
Constitution, if taken as it reads, without
being perverted by interpretation, &c., &c.,
is an anti-slavery instrument, affording, by
many of its ample provisions, the broadest,
the strongest, and the most effectual ground
for the abolition of slavery. If we would ask
for the abolition of the slave, strip the slave
holder of the law that binds him. Give him
the law—acknowledge his legal claim to his
victim, and yet ask him to let his "slave go
free," and he laughs at you to scorn. In the
language of 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. , deny the existence
of such a thing as law to hold slavery—as
slave laws. Out upon all such fooler I say,

especially among reformers who would be
friend the oppressed.

While it is an indispensable prerequisite
to society, and to a nation's safety, that its
people should be a law-loving and law-abid
ing people, it is obviously no less so that it
be understood that this arises from an evi
dent and manifest principle of law, namely,
that it protect its citizens in the full enjoyment
of all their natural rights; and when laws
fail to do this, (much less snatch them from
its subjects,) they should be, for the same
reason, disregarded—trampled underfoot by
every law-loving and intelligent citizen. Is
there one intelligent political reformer who
is willing to say "what is morally right is po
litically impossible?" I think not—no,
never; this has done for a motto for the little
band of disunionists to harp on, but it is be
coming well nigh exhausted with them, and
the party with it. Like Stoicism, it is to be
found all vanity—worse than labor lost. But
I must close. I shall endeavor to send you
other patrons to your elegant paper. Its pe
rusal, more than that of any other of my ac
quaintence, is calculated to do good in the
right channel.

Believe me truly,

Your friend in reform,

J. D. COPELAND.