The Gerrit Smith-Frederick Douglass Partnership

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It was an unusual partnership: a runaway slave and a wealthy New York landholder. Gerrit Smith and Frederick Douglass were drawn together by a shared commitment to ending slavery and guaranteeing equal rights for all. Their friendship began tentatively in the late 1840s at about the time Douglass launched his first newspaper, the North Star, in Rochester NY. It solidified in the early 1850s and contributed to Douglass’ acrimonious break with his original abolitionist associates, the followers of Boston editor William Lloyd Garrison. His growing ties to Smith enabled Douglass to leave the narrow ideological orbit of the Garrisonians and join the growing ranks of the northerners pursuing political antislavery tactics.

John R. McKivigan Ph.D. will speak further on his studies of this unique partnership during his keynote address The Gerrit Smith &#8211 Frederick Douglass Partnership for the annual dinner of the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum on Saturday, October 22, 2011 at the Hall of Presidents at Colgate University in Hamilton NY.

Douglass and Smith were two of the most influential, respected, and powerful abolitionists in our nation. Both reformers were among the first five persons inducted into the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum in Peterboro in 2005. McKivigan will focus on the collaborative work of these two famous men.

Dr. McKivigan received his Ph.D. from Ohio State University and is currently a professor of United States History at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis. McKivigan, a respected scholar of the American anti-slavery movement, was an adjunct member of the History and Afro-American and African Studies Department at Yale University from 1979 to 1989 and series co-editor of The Frederick Douglass Papers 1989 to 1992. Since 1994, McKivigan has been the director of the Frederick Douglass Papers, a documentary editing project supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. McKivigan co-authored research articles on Gerrit Smith as early as 1983 with such works as The Ambivalent Six, He Stands like Jupiter: The Autobiography of Gerrit Smith, and The &#8216-Black Dream’ of Gerrit Smith, New York Abolitionist.

The collaborations of Douglass and Smith will be revisited at 10:00 a.m. on Sunday, October 23 at the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark and the National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum in Peterboro when Dr. McKivigan and Dr. Norman K. Dann walk together among the structures and exhibits on abolition and the Underground Railroad further discussing the partnership of the two men and the words and deeds that transpired from their times together in Peterboro over 160 years ago.

C. James Trotman Ph.D. will close the Upstate Institute afternoon symposia at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, October 22 in Golden Hall at Colgate University with a tribute to Frederick Douglass as the Pioneering Reformer. Dr. Trotman is professor emeritus and the founding director of the Frederick Douglass Institute at West Chester University PA. Dr. Trotman presented for the Hall of Fame commemoration of Douglass in 2006.

The public is encouraged to attend parts or all of the annual National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum event. For the complete schedule and the registration form: www.AbolitionHoF.org or contact [email protected] and 315-366-8101.

Taking New York History to the Next Level

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Regular readers of this online newsmagazine about New York State’s history should be happy to learn that we’re stepping it up a notch. The state has one of the richest histories in the United States, a tremendous opportunity for education, economic development, and creating social, cultural, and political links to our shared past.

This site’s aspirations are to provide what Bruce Dearstyne has called New York’s &#8220historical enterprise&#8221 an opportunity to collaborate and connect with history lovers and practitioners in order to help foster a sense of shared mission and purpose among New York historians of every stripe.

&#8220Too many programs are struggling with unclear missions, undefined audiences, and inadequate resources,&#8221 Dearstyne recently wrote on these pages. &#8220There are several state programs in the history arena, but coordination among them is limited and there is little sense of common purpose in the state’s history community.&#8221 I couldn’t agree more.

For the past several years I’ve edited New York History as a daily journal of news and events. That serves as a good base, but the more important goal is to explore the hard issues that trouble New York’s historical enterprise, from a variety of perspectives.

Regular readers may not be aware that I founded Adirondack Almanack in 2005. The site has been very successful by featuring some 20 contributors intimately familiar with life in the Adirondacks and drawing one of the largest online readerships in the Adirondack region. In 2010, Adirondack Almanack was honored by the Adirondack Mountain Club for &#8220outstanding talent and journalistic achievement in building an online, independent news source for the Adirondacks.&#8221 I expect nothing less for New York History. Hopefully, if you’ll join us, we’ll begin today to take our first small steps toward Dearstyne’s &#8220common purpose in the state’s history community.&#8221

Taking New York History to the next level will mean more commentary around public history issues, cultural resource economics, legislative efforts, and the concerns of the various disciplines (cultural history, political history, economic history, preservation, etc) the stat’s rich history deserves. It will require those with something important to say about New York’s historical enterprise to stand up and be counted.

Our audience are those interested in New York History, including lay people interested in learning more about the history of the state, history professionals interested in keeping up with what others around the state are doing, educators and academics interested in making connections to state and local history, and those concerned with historical cultural resource management more generally.

Beginning this week we’ll see new contributors and an increasing number of commentaries comparing and contrasting state history issues, exploring the problems of local historians, state historic sites, academia, and more. No doubt some toes will be stepped on, there will be some critical comments and commentary. Hopefully some old machinery will be taken apart to study is wheels and gears, to suggest some new fuels or encourage new operators to run that machinery in new ways.

Shortly we’ll I’ll be introducing our first new contributor, Peter Feinman, founder and president of the Institute of History, Archaeology, and Education. Over the next weeks and months we’ll be rolling out new contributors from a variety of disciplinary and regional perspectives.

I’m confident the site has great potential and I welcome those interested in contributing regularly or a single guest essay to contact me ([email protected]).

Welcoming New Contributor Peter Feinman

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New York History is pleased to announce it’s first new regular contributor, Peter Feinman, founder and president of the Institute of History, Archaeology, and Education (IHARE). IHARE is a non-profit organization which provides enrichment programs for schools, professional development program for teachers, and public programs.

Feinman received his B.A. in history from the University of Pennsylvania, a M.Ed. from New York University, an MBA from New York University, and an Ed. D. from Columbia University. His interests cross disciplinary boundaries from Egyptian and biblical studies, (forthcoming is “The Tempest in the Tempest Stela: A Cosmic Story in History,” for the Bulletin of the Egyptological Seminar), to American and New York State history (“Chautauqua America,” in The American Interest).

Feinman recently organized and spoke at a conference on Immigration: The Melting Pot and the American Dream, organized five county history conferences in New York State, and led a group of educators on a week program in the Mohawk Valley before Tropical Storm Irene hit.

His first piece for New York History will run this afternoon on Irene on New York State history.

Peter Feinman: Irene and New York State History

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This past July, a group of educators toured the historic Mohawk Valley. The group consisted of teachers from the region, particularly the Utica school district, people from historical societies, and cultural heritage tourists. The program was described as an &#8220immersion experience&#8221into the history of the Mohawk Valley. Little did we know that the metaphorical image soon would become a literal one. Read more →

Ansel Adams Masterworks Exhibit in Utica

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Images of the American West by the premier photographer of the 20th Century will be showcased in the major exhibition, Ansel Adams: Masterworks through January 8 in the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute Museum of Art in Utica.

The collection of 48 images by Ansel Adams (1902-84) represents two-thirds of his Museum Set, a selection the photographer himself made to represent the best of his life’s work. In these images one sees the importance Adams placed on the drama and splendor of natural environments, particularly in the American West. Visitors to the exhibition will see iconic Adams’ images such as Monolith, the Face of Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, California, 1927 and Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941.

Adams, a California native, first photographed Yosemite National Park at the tender age of 14 with a Kodak Box Brownie. He fell in love with the forests, valleys, and sublime rock formations there and soon dedicated his life to photographing and advocating for the conservation of the environment. In the 1920s Adams became a guide for the Sierra Club at Yosemite, where he covered the terrain via burro or woody station wagon, setting up his large camera and tripod on the roof of the car. He would be active in the Sierra Club for nearly five decades.

Adams’ stature in the history of photography is monumental. With Edward Weston, he was co-founder of the California–based photography group named f64, which emphasized “straight” or “pure” photography over soft-focus pictorialism. Photographer Alfred Stieglitz, who was an important influence on Adams, gave him a one-artist show at the New York City gallery, An American Place, in 1936. In 1941 Adams was commissioned by the Department of the Interior to document western national parks, including the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, and Carlsbad Caverns. He received the competitive Guggenheim Fellowship three times- was a consultant for Polaroid- was named to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s environmental task force in 1965- was a co-founder of both the Friends of Photography and the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in 1967- was the subject of a major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, as well as a cover story subject for Time magazine in 1979- and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Jimmy Carter in 1980. In 1985, on the first anniversary of his death, Yosemite National Park named “Mount Ansel Adams” on the Merced River. Throughout his long career Adams was also an influential teacher- he lectured extensively and wrote several books.

A technical master, Adams developed the Zone System for black-and-white photography, in which light is divided into eleven zones, from pure black to white. This system regulated light exposure and development of negatives in the dark room in order to maximize the photographer’s control of each print. Such control was imperative for Adams, who believed photography reflected the maker’s emotional response to his subject matter.

Photo: Ansel Adams from the 1950 Yosemite Field School yearbook (Wikipedia Photo).

Ashbel Fitch: Champion of Old New York

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The concept of an &#8220honest Tammany man&#8221 sounds like an oxymoron, but it became a reality in the curious career of Ashbel P. Fitch, who served New York City as a four-term congressman and a one-term city comptroller during the late nineteenth century. Although little known today, Fitch was well respected in his own day and played a pivotal role on both national and local stages. Born in Northern New York, he was once challenged to a duel by an impulsive Theodore Roosevelt.

In the U.S. Congress, Fitch was a passionate advocate of New York City. His support of tariff reform and his efforts to have New York City chosen as the site for an 1892 World Exposition reflected his deep interest in issues of industrialization and urbanization. An ardent defender of immigrant rights, Fitch opposed the xenophobia of the times and championed cosmopolitan diversity.

As New York’s comptroller, he oversaw the city’s finances during a time of terrible economic distress, withstanding threats from Tammany Hall on one side and from Mayor William L. Strong’s misguided reform administration on the other. In Ashbel P. Fitch, Remington succeeds in illuminating the independence and integrity of this unsung hero against the backdrop of the Gilded Age’s corrupt politics and fierce party loyalty.

David F. Remington is a retired investment banker and amateur historian. He is the great grandson of Ashbel P. Fitch. He lives with his wife on the coast of Maine.

Note: Books noticed on this site have been provided by the publishers. Purchases made through this Amazon link help support this site.

Revolution Exhibit Funded For Travel

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The New-York Historical Society has announced that the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has awarded it a grant of $400,000 to support a traveling program and educational initiatives surrounding its new exhibition Revolution! The Atlantic World Reborn.

Revolution! is the first museum exhibition to explore the revolutions in America, France and Haiti as a single grand narrative from 1763 to 1815, tracing their cumulative transformation of politics, society and culture across the Atlantic world. It will also be the first major history exhibition to be presented by the New-York Historical Society when it fully re-opens its galleries on November 11, 2011, after a three-year, $65 million renovation.

&#8220The New-York Historical Society is deeply grateful to the National Endowment for the Humanities for this very generous endorsement of our mission, which is to engage the broadest possible public in the enjoyment of learning about history,&#8221 said Louise Mirrer, President and CEO of the New-York Historical Society. &#8220Through this grant, we will be able to extend the reach of Revolution! and make it accessible to a much wider audience.&#8221

The NEH has awarded the grant through its “America’s Historical & Cultural Organizations Implementation Grant” program, which supports museum exhibitions, library-based projects, interpretation of historic places or areas, websites and other project formats that excite and inform thoughtful reflection upon culture, identity and history.

Revolution! traces how an ideal of popular sovereignty, introduced through the American fight for independence, soon sparked more radical calls for a recognition of universal human rights and set off attacks on both sides of the Atlantic against hereditary privilege and slavery. Among the astonishing, unforeseen outcomes was an insurrection on the French possession of Saint-Domingue, leading to the world’s only successful slave revolt and the establishment in 1804 of the first nation founded on the principles of full freedom and equality for all, regardless of color.

This Weeks New York History Web Highlights

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Each Friday afternoon New York History compiles for our readers a collection of the week’s top weblinks about New York’s state and local history. You can find all our weekly round-ups here.

Subscribe! Nearly 2,000 people get New York History each day. You can follow the site via E-Mail, RSS, or Twitter or Facebook updates.

Encampment For Battles of Saratoga Anniversary

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This Saturday and Sunday, September 17-18, Saratoga National Historical Park, located on Routes 32 and 4 in Stillwater, will present an 18th century living history encampment marking the 234th anniversary of the world’s “most important battle of the last 1,000 years.” Camps will be open Saturday from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM, and on Sunday from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM.

The 2-day encampment will surround visitors with the sights, smells, and sounds of military camp life from the American Revolution. Dozens of re-enactors portray American and British officers, soldiers, cavalry troops, and camp followers from the Battles of Saratoga. See cavalry charge, join in a court-martial and decide the soldier’s fate, take part in a musket drill, follow along with a scouting party, or listen to stories of the revolutionary war experience. Feel the thunderous roar of cannons, smell the acrid smoke of musket fire as well as the welcoming wisps of camp cooking fires.

On Saturday evening at 6:00pm, come to the American camp (tour road stop 2) to see British actor Howard Burnham give a hilarious and insightful portrayal of Marquis de Lafayette, a French nobleman who became an American army general in the Revolutionary War. An encore performance of his program will be given at the park Visitor Center at 1:30pm on Sunday.

The event is free, but the normal entrance fee to the park of $5 per car (good for one week entry) is charged. For more information about this or other events, please call the Visitor Center at 518-664-9821 or check the park website at www.nps.gov/sara.