4

632 HISTORICAL ANNOTATION

speculator, became best known for his philanthropic work in such reforms 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
enabling them to qualify 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
the Liberty party until 1860. Smith befriended Douglass when the latter moved to
Rochester and frequently assisted in financing the 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 Test Case 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.
4.3 Giddings] Joshua Reed Giddings (1795-1864), antislavery congressman
from Ohio, was first elected to the House of Representatives as a Whig in 1838. He
vigorously opposed the "gag rule," the annexation of Texas, and the Mexican-American
War. In 1842, while negotiations were underway with Great Britain over
the Creole affair, Giddings introduced unpopular resolutions supporting the right of
mutiny for slaves aboard the British ship. Widely opposed, Giddings immediately
resigned his seat, appealed to his constituents, and won reelection by an overwhelming
margin. In 1848 Giddings left the Whig party to join the Free Soilers and then
allied himself with the Republicans after the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Passed over for
renomination in 1858 on account of his antislavery radicalism and declining health,
Giddings was a delegate to the 1860 Republican convention, at which he and his allies
forced the adoption of a plank endorsing the principles of the Declaration of
Independence. In the last three years of his life, Giddings served as the consul general
to Canada. James Brewer Stewart, Joshua R. Giddings and the Tactics of Radical
Politics (Cleveland, 1970); Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 6 vols.
(New York. 1888-89), 4:478; DAB, 7:260-61; Biographical Directory of the United
States Congress, 1774-Present (online).
4.3 Sumner] Best remembered as the victim of a vicious attack by a congressional
colleague, the senatorial career of Charles Sumner (1811-74) from 1851 to 1874
was dedicated to the cause of emancipation. Born in Boston, Sumner attended and
then taught at Harvard College. He engaged in a semisuccessful law practice but was