[Gerrit Smith]. The Poor Man's Party. Peterboro, Madison County, [New York], 17 October 1846. Broadside. Signed "Your Friend" in type. 9 1/2 x 11 7/8 in.

An anti-slavery broadside issued by leading abolitionist Gerrit Smith (1797-1874) on behalf of the Liberty Party, a forebearer of the Free Soil and Republican parties, during the ratification process of the Third Constitution of New York.

Addressing "the poor men of the County of Madison," Smith highlights the interests they share with Blacks: "How unnatural, that you should pass by this party to give your votes to proslavery parties! How vain for you to hope, that parties, which hold the poor black man in slavery, will be true to the poor white man!"

In the 1846 Constitution, there was a clause regarding the suffrage of Blacks in the state. Here, Smith outlines that it is dependent on their ownership of land, and how it is ultimately an anti-poverty measure: "The proslavery Whig and Democratic parties of this State have just made a Constitution, which they ask you to adopt. Read it, that you may known, how deeply it insults and wrongs honest poverty...Read it - and you will see, that if the colored man be poor, he shall not count among those who are to be represented in the Legislature." The clause was voted upon separately from the constitution and failed to pass.

Gerrit Smith (1797-1874) was an intelligent and wealthy man who committed his time advocating temperance, women's suffrage, and chiefly the abolition of slavery. The town of Peterboro, where Smith was a resident and this broadside was published, became a prime destination for self-emancipated slaves and the center of abolitionism in the 19th century. He was a major supporter of the Liberty Party, which reached its zenith in the 1840s, running James G. Birney as a presidential candidate in the elections of 1840 and 1844.

An important abolitionist political broadside.

[Broadsides, Ephemera, Printing, Posters, Handbills, Documents] [African Americana, African American History, Black History, Slavery, Enslavement, Abolition, Emancipation]