311

Lewis Tappan, Frederick Douglass, et al.

To the Radical Political Abolitionists.

No place, 4 April 1855
Printed circular letter, 10½ x 8 inches, signed in type by 8 abolitionists; mailing folds, moderate foxing.

An invitation to the founding convention of the new Radical Abolitionist Party, which met at Syracuse, NY from 26 to 28 June 1855. While all of the American political parties at that time had some members who opposed slavery, this new party formed from the remnants of the 1840s Liberty Party and occupied the most absolutist end of the spectrum, beyond the comparatively moderate Free Soil and Republican parties. They never elected any candidates to office, but influenced the young Republican Party.

The letter begins: "We are few--but we are not, therefore, to cease from our work. . . . Our undertaking, as radical political abolitionists, is to remove slavery from the national territories by means of our national political power, and to remove it from the States also, by means of the same power, whenever the States shall themselves refuse to remove it." It goes on to discuss the shortcomings of the existing anti-slavery efforts before proposing the Syracuse convention, and hoping ultimately to "sustain lecturers, and to extend the circulation of periodicals devoted to our cause." 

Eight prominent abolitionists lent their names to this letter. Lewis Tappan, the  eldest of them, had helped secure the release of the Amistad captives in 1841. William Goodell had been the Liberty Party's nominee for president in 1852. Gerrit Smith was a prominent radical intellectual and one of the movement's main financial backers. Simeon Smith Jocelyn was a Black minister who worked with Tappan on the release of the Amistad captives. William Whiting would later write "War Powers of the President," arguing that Lincoln had the right to confiscate and free enslaved people in the south. James McCune Smith was a pioneering physician and pharmacist, and at the Syracuse conference would become the first Black man to chair an integrated public meeting. The Rev. George Whipple went on to help launch the Hampton Institute. Finally, Frederick Douglass was of course the movement's leading orator and thinker. 

This letter was widely circulated in abolitionist circles. It appeared nine days later in Frederick Douglass' Paper on 13 April, in the National Era on 19 April, and in the National Anti-Slavery Standard of 21 April, and also appeared after the event in the "Proceedings of the Convention of the Radical Political Abolitionists." However, this circular letter appears to be the first and only separate printing. We trace only one example in OCLC (American Antiquarian Society), and no others at auction.

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