A friend at Auburn writes:—

BROTHER DOUGLASS: DEAR SIR—Your fa
vor of March 31st was duly received, con
taining a circular, and my bill for your pa
per. Enclosed is two dollars, please pass to
my credit. I cannot refrain from express
ing my concurrence with the views con
tained in said circular. That humanity de
mands some thorough and independent me
dium, through which its claims can be advo
cated, and the rights of man sustained
against the monopoly and wicked legislation
of the nation, is felt by every thinking
mind. I am rejoiced at the allusion you
make to the elevated principles of the Lib
erty Party; to my mind, it is the only true
foundation of civil government. As the U.
S. increases in wealth and population, there
seems to be a determination among the politi
cal leaders of this country to exterminate en
tirely the free colored population, under the
false and damnable pretext of civilizing and
christianizing some other parts of the globe.
The South have made their demands mainly
on the general government; now the State
of Illinois, as if anxious to show her devo
tion to the slave interests of the nation,
bows down before it with all the sanctity of a
Romish Priest, or the devotion of a heathen
Pagan. Many of the States of this Union
are reviving the Colonization scheme—a
scheme that never ought to have existed;
and if it had sprung up as if by magic, it
should have been murdered with its first in
dications of life, and have been buried so
deep that the most designing and treacher
ous enemies of mankind could never have
raised it.

Our worthy friend and brother, W. W.
Chapman, of Oswego Co., has written to me
in regard to calling a convention; he is
chairman of the State Committee; I am
chairman of the National Committee of the
Liberty Party. He asks, shall it be a Na
tional, or State Convention? My opinion
is, it should be a State Convention. He says
if this is thought best, he will call it to be
held on the 4th day of July next, at Syra
cuse or Canastota. I would suggest that
Auburn be the place; there is plenty of fal
low ground to be broken up here, and there
are many who wish to see and hear Fred
erick Douglass, 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. , and others, on
that question. The time, I think, is appro
priate, when the nation is engaged in boast
ing, through its orators, of civil and reli
gious liberty, let us get together and lay be
fore the nation the just demands of millions
that justly ask the rights of manhood. Sir,
please give us your opinion on the subject.

Yours for the enslaved,

WM. C. SHAPCOTT.