158

Rochester

June 1st. 1853

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 Friend. Yours with the letter from Mr Green came this morning. I am Sorry to learn of your illness. Do not venture to Syracuse unless fully restered to health. My own health is good--never better. My family are well, and my good friend Julia is well also. I reciprocate your kind wish to See and talk with me, for I desire always to have your counsel. The meetings at Newyork are well got a long with. Just as you wished, opportunity offered and I embraced the Same, to Speak at both meetings. So the Garrisonians could not Say that I deserted them--nor the new organization that I failed to recognize them as workers in the Slave's cause. My paper which goes to press this afternoon contains your Call for a "Christian Union" convention" at Syracuse. The good women are now holding their State temperance meeting here--and I want to be there--Excuse haste Always truly yours,

Fred. Douglass