In April, 1845, I came to reside in Syracuse. Having visited the place
twice before, I was pretty well acquainted with the characters of
the people with whom I should be associated, and the rapidly growing
importance of the town, owing to its central position and its staple
product. During each of my visits I had delivered antislavery lectures
to good audiences, and found quite a number of individuals here who had
accepted the doctrines of the Immediate Abolitionists. Mr. Garrison,
Gerrit Smith, Mr. Douglass, and others, had lectured in Syracuse
several times, and, though at first insulted and repulsed, they had
convinced so many people of the justice of their demands for the
enslaved, and of the disastrous influence of the “peculiar institution”
of our Southern States, that the community had come to respect somewhat
the right of any who pleased to hold antislavery meetings. The minister
and many of the members of the Orthodox Congregational Church, as well
as the Unitarian, were decided Abolitionists, and several members of
the Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist churches openly favored the
great reform.
On the first of the following August, at the invitation of a large
number of the citizens, I delivered an address on British West India
Emancipation from the pulpit of the First Presbyterian Church, and it
was published by the request of a large number of the auditors,--half
of them members of one or another of the orthodox sects.
On the 10th of the next month a large meeting was held in the
Congregational Church to uphold the freedom of the press, and to
protest against the alarming assault that had been made upon that
palladium of our liberties in Kentucky, by the violent suppression of
_The True American_,--a paper established and edited by Hon. Cassius
M. Clay, to urge upon his fellow-citizens the self-evident truths of
our Declaration of Independence, and their application to the colored
population of that State. Our meeting was officered by some of the most
prominent and highly respected citizens of Syracuse. And after several
excellent speeches, a series of very pertinent, explicit, emphatic
antislavery resolutions was unanimously adopted. Thus was my great
regret at being removed so far from the New England Abolitionists
assuaged by the sympathy and co-operation of many of my new neighbors
and fellow-citizens.
On another account I had reason to rejoice in my removal to this
place. Here I found myself within a few miles of the residence of
Gerrit Smith, and very soon was brought into an intimate acquaintance
with that pre-eminent philanthropist. Here I must indulge myself in
telling some of the much that I have known of the benefactions of this
magnificent giver.
If I have been correctly informed, Mr. Smith obtained by inheritance
from his father and by purchase from his fellow-heirs (besides much
other property) _seven hundred and fifty thousand acres of land_ lying
in various parts of New York and of several other States. Erelong he
became deeply impressed by a sense of his responsibility to God for
the right use of such an immense portion of the earth’s surface,--the
common heritage of man. He could not believe that it had been given him
merely for his own gratification or aggrandizement. He received it as a
trust committed to him for the benefit of others. He felt as a steward,
who would have to give an account of the estate intrusted to his care.
He contrasted his condition with that of others,--he the possessor of
an amount of land which no one man could occupy and improve,--millions
of his fellow-men, inhabitants of the same country, without a rood
that they could call their own and fix upon it the humblest home. He
profoundly pitied the landless, and earnestly set himself to consider
the best way in which to bestow portions of his estate upon those who
needed them most.
The father of Mr. Smith, like most other gentlemen of his day in New
York, was a slaveholder until many years after the Revolution. Gerrit
was accustomed to slavery through his childhood, and until he was old
enough to judge for himself of its essential and terrible iniquity. He
has repeatedly assured me that, although the bondage of his father’s
negroes was of the mildest type, he early saw that slaveholding was
egregiously wrong, and sympathized deeply with the enslaved. He
rejoiced when the law of the State, in 1827, prohibited utterly its
continuance, and immediately felt that all that could be should be
done to repair the injuries it had inflicted upon those who had been
subjected to it. He longed for the entire, immediate abolition of the
great iniquity throughout the land. He early joined the Colonization
Society, believing that the tendency of the plan, as well as the
intention of many of its Southern patrons, was to effect the subversion
and overthrow of that gigantic system of wickedness. Notwithstanding
the exposures of its duplicity made by Mr. Garrison and Judge William
Jay, he retained his confidence in the Colonization Society, and
contributed generously to its funds, until near the close of the year
1835. At that time, as I have stated heretofore, Mr. Smith became fully
convinced that the Society was opposed to the emancipation of our
enslaved countrymen, unless followed by their expatriation. Thereupon
he paid three thousand dollars, the balance due on his subscription to
its funds, and withdrew forever from the Colonization Society, to which
he had contributed at least _ten thousand_ dollars.
This discovery that even these professed friends of our colored people,
with whom he had been co-operating, were planning to get them out
of the country, and proposed to make their _removal_ the condition
of their release from slavery, roused Mr. Smith to new efforts and
still more generous contributions of money for their relief. He not
only joined the American and the New York Antislavery Societies, and
gave very largely to the funds of each,--in all not less than _fifty
thousand_ dollars,--but, he set about endeavoring to get as many free
colored men as possible settled upon lands and in homes of their own.
Before the middle of 1847 he had given an average of forty acres apiece
to three thousand colored men, in all one hundred and twenty thousand
acres. He did me the honor to appoint me one of the almoners of this
bounty, so I am not left merely to conjecture how much time and caution
were put in requisition to insure as far as practicable the judicious
bestowment of these parcels of land. The only conditions prescribed by
the donor were, that the receivers of his acres should be known to be
landless, strictly temperate and honest men.
Mr. Smith exerted himself in various ways to secure the blessings of
_education_ to those of the proscribed race who were at liberty to
receive them. He established and for a number of years maintained a
school in Peterboro’, to which colored people came from far and near.
He was an early and very liberal patron of Oneida Institute, the
doors of which were ever open, without any respect to complexion or
race. He gave to that school several thousand dollars, and upwards of
three thousand acres in Vermont, besides land contracts upon which
considerable sums were still due.
Mr. Smith did much more for Oberlin College, because of its hospitality
to colored pupils and those of both sexes as well as all complexions.
He gave to it outright between five and six thousand dollars, and
twenty thousand acres of land in Virginia, from the sales of which the
college must have derived more than fifty thousand dollars.
Moreover, the unsuccessful attempt to establish and maintain New York
Central College at McGrawville, where colored and white young men and
women were well instructed together for a few years, cost Mr. Smith
four or five thousand dollars.
But I cannot leave my readers to infer from my silence that his
benefactions were confined wholly or mainly to colored persons. His
gifts to other needy ones, and to institutions for their benefit, were
more numerous and larger than he himself has been careful to record.
Many of them have come to my knowledge, and I will so far depart from
the main object of my book as to mention two.
In 1850 Mr. Smith called upon me and other friends to assist him in
selecting five hundred poor white men, strictly temperate and honest,
to each of whom he would give forty acres. And having learnt that some
of his colored beneficiaries had been unable to raise means enough to
remove with their families to the lands he had given them, he added ten
dollars apiece to the portions that he gave to the white men.
Not satisfied with these bestowments, yearning over the poverty of
the many who had little or nothing in a world where he had so much,
and having given fifty dollars to each of a hundred and forty poor,
worthy women, whose wants had been brought to his consideration, he
again requested me and others to find out in our neighborhoods five
hundred worthy widowed or single poor white women, to whom such a
donation would be especially helpful, that he might have the pleasure
of bestowing upon them also fifty dollars apiece. I need not say that
these unasked, unexpected gifts carried great relief and joy wherever
they were sent.
But such labors of love, although so grateful to his benevolent
heart, were _labors_. Then Mr. Smith’s sympathy with his suffering
fellow-beings, whom he could not immediately relieve, and his lively
interest and hearty co-operation in all moral and social reforms,
were unavoidably wearing. As might have been expected, his health was
impaired and at length gave away. In the latter part of 1858 he had a
serious attack of typhoid fever, which was followed by months of mental
prostration. And after his recovery he was obliged for a long while to
be sparing of himself, especially avoiding exciting scenes and subjects.
This incident in the life of my noble friend came upon him when he was
planning a magnificent enterprise for the public good. His enlightened
benevolence prompted him to devise an institution for the highest
education of youths of both sexes, and all complexions and races. It
was to be a university based upon the most advanced principles of
intellectual and moral culture. He disclosed his intention to his
intimate friend and legal adviser, the late Hon. Timothy Jenkins, of
Oneida, and to myself, informing us that he meant to appropriate five
hundred thousand dollars to its accomplishment. At his request I made
known his purpose to the late Hon. Horace Mann, whom we regarded as
the best adapted to develop the plan and preside over the execution
of it, and who we thought would like to take charge of an educational
institution that might from the beginning be ordered so much in
accordance with his own enlarged ideas; but he promptly declined the
invitation, being, as he said, too far committed to Antioch College.
Mr. Mann’s refusal deferred the undertaking, and no other one,
who could be had, appearing to Mr. Smith to be just the person to
whose conduct he should be willing to commit the university, it was
postponed until his alarming sickness and protracted debility, and the
threatening aspect of our national affairs, led him to dismiss the
project altogether. So he distributed among his nephews and nieces the
larger part of the money he had intended to expend as I have stated
above.
Shortly after, our awful civil war broke out. Of this he could not be a
silent or inactive spectator. He freely gave his money, his influence,
himself, to the cause of his country in every way that a private
citizen of infirm health could. He not only gave many thousand dollars
to promote the enlistment of white soldiers in his town and county,
but he offered to equip a whole regiment of _colored_ men, if the
governor of the State would put one in commission. But, alas! the chief
magistrate of New York was not another John A. Andrew.
Mr. Smith contributed largely to the funds of the Sanitary Commission,
and not a little to the Christian Commission; and he kindly cared
for many families at home that had been called to part with fathers,
husbands, or sons, on whom they were dependent.
So soon as the grand project of establishing schools for the freedmen
was started, Mr. Smith entered into it with his wonted zeal and
generosity. I have heard often of his donations larger or smaller, and
have not a doubt that he has contributed as much as any other person in
our country.
I need not say that it has indeed been a great benefit, as well as joy,
to me to have been brought to know so intimately, and to co-operate
so much as I have done, for more than twenty years, with such a
philanthropist as Gerrit Smith.
Not alone by his bountiful gifts of land and money has he mightily
helped the cause of our cruelly oppressed and despised countrymen.
He has spoken often, and written abundantly in their behalf,--always
faithfully, sometimes with exceeding power. I am sure there is not an
individual in Central New York, I doubt if there be one in our whole
country, unless he has been an agent or appointed lecturer of some
Antislavery Society, who has attended so many antislavery meetings,
has made so many antislavery speeches, and written and published so
many antislavery letters, as has our honored and beloved brother of
Peterboro’, always excepting, of course, those devotees, Mr. Garrison
and Mr. Phillips. I shall have occasion hereafter to tell of one or
more of his timely and most effective speeches.
Mr. Smith has entertained and freely expressed some opinions that have
been peculiar to himself, and has done some things that have appeared
eccentric; but I believe that he has never consciously done or said
anything unfriendly to an oppressed or despised fellow-being, white or
black.