Ski-Smy: Skinner through Smyth

See below for annotated biographies of American abolitionists and anti-slavery activists. Sources include: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography and Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography.


SKINNER, judge, former Governor.  Organized and headed local auxiliary of the American Colonization Society. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 132)


SLADE, William, 1786-1859.  Governor of Vermont.  U.S. Congressman from Vermont (Whig party).  Submitted numerous anti-slavery petitions to Congress, December, 1837.  He distinguished himself as an uncompromising opponent of slavery, and with John Quincy Adams fought tenaciously against the gag rules. Submitted 430 anti-slavery petitions to Congress.  Opposed slavery in the District of Columbia and introduced a bill in the House in December 1837 that called for its abolition.  He supported gradual emancipation. 


(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 243-245, 295; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 547; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, pp. 203-204). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, pp. 203-204:

SLADE, WILLIAM (May 9, 1786-January 16, 1859), statesman and educator, was born at Cornwall, Vermont, the son of Captain William Slade, a veteran of the Revolution, who had moved to Vermont from Washington, Connecticut, about 1783. He was a descendant of William Slade who was in Lebanon, Connecticut, as early as 1716. The youngest William's mother was Rebecca (Plumb). After preparatory work in the Addison County grammar school at Middlebury and four years at Middlebury College, where he was graduated in 1807, Slade studied law in the office of Judge Joel Doolittle of Middlebury. Admitted to the bar in the summer of 1810, he at once opened an office in the sa me village. Clients, however, were few, and the excitement of a bitter political contest in his state drew him into politics.

Like his father he was an ardent Democrat and he now devoted himself he art and soul to the interests of his party. Speeches and pamphlet s were puny weapons against the Federalist press of Middlebury; Slade, therefore, in 1813, helped to found the Columbian Patriot, a weekly newspaper, which two years later became the National Standard (Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, n.s. volume XX X V, 1925, p. 125). Soon he was its proprietor and editor, conducting in connection with it a book printing and selling establishment. The Patriot was a decided political success and it was partly responsible for the Democratic triumph in Vermont in 1815; as a business venture, however, it was a failure and by 1817 Slade was ruined. Refusing bankruptcy, he was saddled with a heavy debt which he struggled the re st of his life to repay; hence, in part, his eager search for political office.

Fortunately, the Democratic triumph of 1815 carried him into the office of secretary of state, a post which he filled with credit until 1823. Meanwhile (1816-22), he was judge of the court of his county. Having relinquished his state offices, he served as a clerk in the Department of State, at Washington (1824-29), until discharged at the beginning of Jackson's administration. He had married Abigail Foote of Middlebury, February 5, 1810, by whom he had nine children, and he now sought to support his family by resuming his practice of law; but politics re, mained his prime interest and the main source of his livelihood. While serving as state's attorney for Addison County he was elected in 1830 to Congress, where he sat for twelve years, in the course of time joining the Whig party. He distinguished himself as an uncompromising opponent of slavery, and with John Quincy Adams fought tenaciously against the gag rules. Though not a great orator, he was a quick-witted and a ready debater with a command of searing phrases which enraged the Southern representatives. With an eye to the Vermont woolen industry he was a persistent champion of protective tariffs.

For one year (1843-44) after his retirement from Congress he was reporter of the state supreme court, resigning to become governor, in which office he served from 1844 to 1846. Under his leadership the legislature provided for a geological survey of the state and for a thorough reorganization of the public school system. He bitterly opposed the admission of Texas to the Union and the policy which led to war with Mexico. Before the end of his second term as governor he had lost the support of many influential Whig leaders, partly because of his bitter public controversy with Samuel S. Phelps, Whig senator from Vermont; whom, it was charged, Slade wished to supersede. His political career ended, he became corresponding secretary and general agent of the Board of National Popular Education. Indefatigable in this congenial work, which he continued until a few weeks before his death, he traveled through most of the Northern states, founding local societies and recruiting teachers in the East for service along the Western frontier. Besides many speeches in and out of Congress and his annual reports to the educational board, he published the Vermont State Papers (1823); a volume of documents on the early history of the state, and The Laws of Vermont of a Publick and Permanent Nature (1825). He died in Middlebury.

[T. B. Peck, William Slade of Windsor, Connecticut, and His Descendants (1910); Catalog of the Officers and St1tdcnts of Middlebury College (1928); Lyman Matthews, History of the Town of Cornwall, Vermont (1862); Samuel Swift. History of the Town of Middlebury (1859); M. D. Gilman, The Bibliog. of Vermont (1897); J. M. Comstock, A List of the Principal Civil Officers of Vermont (1918); J. G. Ullery, Men of Vermont (1894); W. H. Crockett, Vermont, volume III (1921); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, volumes VII, IX, X (1876).]

P.D.E.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 547:

SLADE, William, governor of Vermont, born in Cornwall, Vermont, 9 May, 1786; died in Middlebury, Vermont, 18 January, 1859. He was graduated at Middlebury college in 1807, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1810, and began practice at Middlebury. He was a presidential elector in 1812, and in 1814-' 15 published and edited the “Columbian Patriot” in connection with bookselling and job-printing, but was not successful. In 1815 he was elected secretary of state, which office he held eight years, and in 1816-'22 he was judge of the Addison county court. He was afterward state's attorney for the same county. Mr. Slade was clerk in the state department at Washington from 1823 till 1829, when he resumed the practice of law in Middlebury. He was a member of congress in 1831-'43, in 1844 was reporter of the supreme court of Vermont, and in 1844-'6 served as governor of that state. In 1846-'56 he was secretary of the National board of popular education. He published “Vermont State Papers” (Middlebury, 1823); “The Laws of Vermont to 1824” (Windsor, 1825); “Reports of the Supreme Court of Vermont, Volume XV.” (Burlington, 1844); and pamphlets and congressional speeches. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 547.  


SLATON, James, Vermont, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1844-49.


SLAUGHTER, Philip (October 261 1808-June 12, 1890), Episcopal clergyman, historian, he established in 1850 the Virginia Colonizationist, a periodical published in the interests of the colonization of negro slaves in Africa. For five years he edited this periodical with signal ability, and was successful in enlisting the interest of the Virginia legislature and in securing large appropriations for the project.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, pp. 207-208:

SLAUGHTER, PHILIP (October 261 1808-June 12, 1890), Episcopal clergyman, historian, was born at his father's home, "Springfield," in Culpeper County, Virginia, a descendant of a family that had been prominent in Culpeper County since the earlier years of its settlement; his parents were Philip Slaughter, a captain in the American Revolution, and his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Colonel Thomas Towles, of Lancaster County, Virginia, and widow of William Brock. After preliminary training at an academy in Winchester, in 1825 the younger Philip entered the University of Virginia, finishing his course in 1828. For five years he practised law, giving up this profession in order to prepare himself for the ministry of the Protestant Episcopal Church at the Theological Seminary in Virginia, at Alexandria.

Ordained deacon in May 1834 and advanced to the priesthood in July 1835, he was in active pastoral work for about twelve years, serving the Church in Middleburg, Virginia; Christ Church, Georgetown, D. C.; Meade and Johns parishes, Fauquier County; and for the last five years of this period, St. Paul's Church, Petersburg.

He quickly came into prominence as a remarkably effective preacher of the intensely evangelical type, and his services were in constant demand in series of meetings, called "Associations." In connection with the se, he preached in many of the city churches and rural parishes of Virginia. Though brief, writes a biographer, his active ministry was "brilliant and effective. He had all the personal magnetism, the fire and spiritual power of Whitefield. Great crowds attended on his ministry and convers ions were numbered by the hundred" (Brock, post, p. xii).

His health failing, he spent the years 1848 and 1849 in travel in Europe, and was then compelled to give up the hope of further continuous pastoral work. Returning to Richmond, he established in 1850 the Virginia Colonizationist, a periodical published in the interests of the colonization of negro slaves in Africa. For five years he edited this periodical with signal ability, and was successful in enlisting the interest of the Virginia legislature and in securing large appropriations for the project. He then removed to his own home on Slaughter's Mountain in Culpeper County. With the aid of friends he erected a church building upon his father's farm in which he preach ed as his health permitted. The church was destroyed during the Civil War. Driven from his home by invading forces, he found refuge with his family in Petersburg. While sojourning here he published a religious paper, the Army and Navy Messenger, for distribution among the soldiers of the Confederate army. At the close of the war he returned to his home in Culpeper County and devoted the remainder of his life to historical and genealogical studies, in which from early life he had been interested.

In 1846 he published A History of Bristol Parish, and the following year, A History of St. George's Parish, both of which were revised and republished, the former in 1879 by Slaughter himself, and the latter in 1890 by Dr. R. A. Brock. The publication of these doubtless did much to arouse interest in the preservation of the original records of many other parishes and the protection of the historic records of the state. Slaughter had formulated a plan for the preparation of a general history of the old parishes and families of Virginia and for years had been gathering material, but his declining health compelled him to relinquish the task and to turn over the material to Bishop William Meade [q.v.], who after years of research published in 1857 his monumental work, Old Churches, Ministers, and Families of Virginia. Slaughter himself wrote A History of St. Mark's Parish (1877) and had practically completed, at the time of his death, The History of Truro Parish, which was published in 1908 by Reverend Edward L. Goodwin. In addition to his parish histories, Slaughter was the author of many historical books, pamphlets, and addresses, among the most important being: The Virginian History of African Colonization (1855); A Sketch of the Life of Randolph Fairfax (1864); Memoir of Colonel Joshua Fry (1880); Christianity the Key to the Character and Career of Washington (1886). His more significant monographs include his address at the semicentennial celebration of the Theological Seminary in Virginia (1873); a paper on historic churches of Virginia printed in W. S. Perry's The History of the American Episcopal Church (1885); ''The Colonial Church in Virginia," published in Addresses and Historical Papers Before the Centennial Council of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Virginia (1885); and a biography of the Rt. Reverend William Meade, in Memorial Biographies of the New England Historic and Genealogical Society (volume IV, 1885).

The Diocese of Virginia elected him historiographer of the diocese in 1879, and after his death honored him by giving his name to a parish in that part of Culpeper County in which he lived. On June 20, 1834, he married Anne Sophia, daughter of Dr. Thomas Semmes, of Alexandria, Virginia, who with one daughter survived him.

[Biographical sketch by R. A. Brock in Slaughter's History of St. George's Parish (2nd ed., 1890); Southern Churchman, June 19, 26, July 10, 1890; Richmond Dispatch, June 15, 1890; reports of the historiographer and other records in the council journals of the Diocese of Virginia]

G. M. B.


SLEEPER, Reuben, Mount Morris, New York, abolitionist leader.  Manager of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), 1839-1840. 

(Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971)


SLOAN(E), William, Harrison County, Ohio, Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1835-38.


SLOAN, Ithamar C., Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)


SLOANE, James Renwick Wilson, 1833-1886, clergyman, educator.  President of Richmond College, Ohio, and Geneva College, Ohio. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 550)

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 550:

SLOANE, James Renwick Wilson, educator, born in Topsham, Orange county, Vermont, 29 May, 1833; died in Alleghany City, Pennsylvania, 6 March, 1886. He was graduated at Jefferson college, Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1847, and studied theology at the Reformed Presbyterian seminary in northwestern Ohio, where he was graduated in 1853. In 1854 he became pastor at Rushsylvania, Ohio; and in 1856-'68 he held a charge in New York city. He was president of Richmond college, Ohio, in 1848-'50, of Geneva college, in the same state, in 1851-'6, and professor of systematic theology and homiletics in Alleghany theological seminary from 1868 till his death. He was also pastor of the 1st Reformed Presbyterian church in Alleghany. He published numerous sermons and literary addresses. See his “Life and Work,” edited by his son, William (New York, 1888). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 550.    


SLOANE, James, Member of Congress from New Jersey, opposed slavery as Member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

(Locke, Mary Stoughton. Anti-Slavery in America from the Introduction of African Slaves to the Prohibition of the Slave Trade (1619-1808). Boston: Ginn & Co., 1901, pp. 93, 145f, 149, 152f; Annals of Congress)


SLOANE, Richard Rush, born 1828, lawyer, jurist, opponent of slavery.  Helped in escape of slaves. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 550)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 550:

SLOANE, Rush Richard, lawyer, born in Sandusky, Erie county, Ohio; 18 September, 1828. He was educated at Wesleyan academy, Norwalk, Ohio, studied law, and was admitted to the bar. He was city clerk of Sandusky, Ohio, in 1855-'7, was elected judge of the probate court for Erie county in 1857, and re-elected in 1860, was appointed by President Lincoln to the general agency of the post-office department, serving from 1861 till 1866, and was mayor of Sandusky in 1870, 1880, and 1881. Mr. Sloane was an ardent anti-slavery man, and was instrumental in the escape of seven slaves in Sandusky, on 20 October, 1850, where they had been arrested by their masters. He was prosecuted, and paid over $4,000 damages and costs, being the first victim of the fugitive-slave law of 1850. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 550.


SLOCUM, Henry Warner, 1827-1894, New York, West Point graduate lawyer, entrepreneur, U.S. Congressman, Major General, United States Army, Commander, Twelfth, Fourteenth and Twentieth Corps, Sherman’s Army of Georgia, 1864-1865.  Slocum was an abolitionist before the Civil War. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 551-552; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, p. 216; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 20, p. 104; Cullum, 1891; U.S. Congress, Biographical Directory of The United States Congress, 1774–2005. Washington, DC: GPO, 2005; U.S. War Department. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. 128 volumes Washington, DC: GPO, 1881-1901. Series 1; Warner, 1964).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, p. 216:

SLOCUM, HENRY WARNER (September 24, 1827-April 14, 1894), Union general, was born at Delphi, Onondaga County, New York, the son of Matthew Barnard and Mary (Ostrander) Slocum. He was of the eighth generation in descent from Anthony Slocombe, who came from Taunton in England to Taunton, Massachusetts, in 1637. His early education was in the local district school and in Cazenovia Seminary. For several years he taught school, attending the state normal school during some of his vacations. An early interest in military reading was stimulated by the Mexican War, and he sought an appointment to the United States Military Academy. He secured it in 1848 and was graduated in 1852, number seven in a cl ass of forty-three, being commissioned second lieutenant in the 1st Artillery. He went first to Florida, then, in 1853, to Fort Moultrie. On March 3, 1855, he was promoted first lieutenant, but resigned on October 31, 1856, to engage in the practice of law, for which he had been preparing himself while at Moultrie. He was admitted to the bar in 1858 and established himself at Syracuse, New York. He soon gained local prominence; in 1859 he was a member of the New York assembly, and, in 1860, treasurer of Onondaga County. He also served as colonel and artillery instructor in the New York militia. On May 21, 1861, he became colonel of the 27th New York Infantry. At the battle of Bull Run on July 21, he was severely wounded, but won promotion as brigadier-general of volunteers, on August 9, 1861. Reporting for duty again in September he was assigned to the command of a brigade in Franklin's division, and went with it to the Peninsula. This division became part of the VI Corps; Franklin was assigned to command the corps, and Slocum succeeded him in the division, which he commanded through the rest of the campaign. On July 4, 1862, he was promoted major-general of volunteers. Upon the withdrawal of McClellan's army from the Peninsula, Slocum's division was transported to Alexandria. From there it moved forward to assist in covering Pope's withdrawal. Slocum remained in command during the ensuing campaign in Maryland, and was engaged at South Mountain and Antietam. In October he assumed command of the XII Army Corps, which took part in th e Fredericksburg campaign, but was not engaged in the battle. In the following spring it bore a very active part in the campaign and battle of Chancellorsville.

At Gettysburg Slocum had command of the extreme right of the Union line-the "point of the fish-hook," from Culp's Hill southward. Until Meade's arrival early in the morning of July 2, Slocum exercised command, as senior officer present, of all the troops as they arrived, and supervised the formation of the lines. In the autumn of 1863, after the battle of Chickamauga, it became necessary to reenforce Rosecrans by troops from the east. On September 24, Howard's XI Corps and Slocum's XII were designated to move by rail to Tennessee. General Hooker was assigned to command the two corps. Slocum had been hostile to Hooker ever since the battle of Chancellorsville, and now, rather than serve under him, tendered his resignation. This was not accepted, but dispositions were made so as to avoid in so far as possible personal contact between the two officers. This transfer of troops was the largest ever made by rail up to that time. It involved the transportation of 24,000 men, with artillery and trains, for a distance of 1200 miles, with three changes of trains, and was completed in nine days. Slocum with half his corps was stationed on the Nashville Chattanooga Railway; the rest of the corps served directly under Hooker. In April 1864, he was assigned to command the district of Vicksburg. The XI and XII Corps were consolidated into the XX Corps under Hooker. In July, after McPherson's death, Howard was assigned to command the Army of the Tennessee in his place. Hooker, being senior to Howard, asked to be relieved, and Slocum returned to his old command as now enlarged. He joined it before Atlanta on August 26, and his troops were the first to enter the city on September 2. On the march to the sea and up through the Carolinas, Slocum commanded the left wing of Sherman's army, consisting of the XIV and XX Corps. Toward the end of the campaign the two wings became separate armies, Howard's resuming its old title as the Army of the Tennessee, and Slocum's, taking that of the Army of Georgia. At the end of the war Slocum was assigned to command the department of the Mississippi with headquarters at Vicksburg. He resigned on September 28; 1865, and returned to Syracuse. He was nominated as Democratic candidate for secretary of state of New York, but was defeated by Francis Channing Barlow [q.v.]. In the spring of 1866 he moved to Brooklyn, and began the practice of law in that city. He was a Democratic presidential elector in 1868. He was elected to Congress in 1868, and again in 1870. In 1876 he was commissioner of public works in Brooklyn. In 1882 he was returned to Congress, and served until March 1885. He was active in the case of Fitz-John Porter [q.v.], and in that officer's interest delivered one of his strongest speeches in Congress on January 18, 1884. Slocum maintained an active interest in military matters, and was a member of the Board of Gettysburg Monument Commissioners. His wife, Clara Rice, of Woodstock, New York, to whom he had been married on February 9, 1854, survived him, with three of their four children, when he died in New York City.

[Charles E. Slocum, A Short History of the Slocums, Slocumbs and Slocombs of America, vol I (1882), volume II (1908), The Life and Services of Major-General Henry Warner Slocum (1913); In Memoriam, Henry Warner Slocum 1826-1894 (1904); G. W. Cullum, Biographical Register U.S. Military Academy (1891); Biographical Directory American Cong; (1928); War of the Rebellion: Official Records (Army), see index; Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 14, 16, 1894.]

O. L. S., Jr.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 551-552:

SLOCUM, Henry Warner, soldier, born in Delphi, Onondaga county, New York, 24 September, 1827. He was graduated at the U. S. military academy in 1852, appointed 2d lieutenant in the 1st artillery, and ordered to Florida the same year. He was promoted 1st lieutenant in 1855, but resigned in October, 1856, and, returning to New York, engaged in the practice of law at Syracuse, and was a member of the legislature in 1859. At the opening of the civil war he tendered his services, and on 21 May, 1861, was appointed colonel of the 27th New York volunteers. He commanded this regiment at the battle of Bull Run on 21 July, where he was severely wounded, on 9 August was commissioned brigadier-general of volunteers, and was assigned to the command of a brigade in General William B. Franklin's division of the Army of the Potomac. In the Virginia peninsula campaign of 1862 he was engaged in the siege of Yorktown and the action at West Point, Virginia, and succeeded to the command of the division on 15 May, on Franklin's assignment to the 6th corps. At the battle of Gaines's Mills, 27 June, he was sent with his division to re-enforce General Fitz-John Porter, who was then severely pressed by the enemy, and rendered important service, as he did also at the battles of Glendale and Malvern Hill, his division occupying the right of the main line at both engagements. He was promoted to the rank of major-general of volunteers, 4 July, 1862, engaged in the second battle of Bull Run, at South Mountain, and at Antietam, and in October was assigned to the command of the 12th army corps. In the battles of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg he took an active part. At Gettysburg he commanded the right wing of the army, and contributed largely to the National victory. Having been transferred with his corps to the west, he served in the Department of the Cumberland till April, 1864, when, his corps being consolidated with the 11th, he was assigned to a division and the command of the district of Vicksburg. In August, 1864, he succeeded General Joseph Hooker in the command of the 20th corps, which was the first body of troops to occupy Atlanta, Georgia, on 2 September In Sherman's march to the sea and invasion of the Carolinas, he held command of the left wing of the army, and participated in all its engagements from the departure from Atlanta till the surrender of General Joseph E. Johnston at Durham station, North Carolina. In September, 1865, General Slocum resigned from the army and resumed the practice of law in Brooklyn, New York. In 1866 he declined the appointment of colonel of infantry in the regular army. In 1865 he was the unsuccessful candidate of the Democrats for secretary of state of New York, in 1868 he was chosen a presidential elector, and he was elected to congress the same year, and reelected in 1870. In 1876 he was elected president of the board of city works, Brooklyn, which post he afterward resigned, and in 1884 he was again elected to congress. He was one of the commissioners of the Brooklyn bridge, and was in favor of making it free to the public.”  Source: Wilson, James Grant, & Fiske, John (Eds.). Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography. New York: Appleton, 1888, 1915.


SMALLEY, George Washburn (June 2, 1833-April 4, 1916), journalist. In Boston he became closely associated with abolitionist leader Wendell Phillips [q.v.], with whom he several times shared the danger of mob violence.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, pp. 223-224:

SMALLEY, GEORGE WASHBURN (June 2, 1833-April 4, 1916), journalist, was born at Franklin, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, "of good Old Colony stock," and grew up there and at Worcester, Massachusetts, whither he went with his parents, the Reverend Elam and Louisa Jane (Washburn) Smalley, in 1840. In 1849 he entered Yale University, where he won his chief laurels as an athlete, rowing stroke in the first Yale-Harvard race on Lake Winnepesaukee. He received the A.M. degree in 18 53, and read law for a year at Worcester in the office of George Frisbie Hoar [q.v.]. He studied at the Harvard Law School, 1854-55, was admitted to the bar in 1856, and practised law in Boston until 1861. In Boston he became closely associated with Wendell Phillips [q.v.], with whom he several times shared the danger of mob violence. When Smalley wished to go South in the autumn of 1861, partly for his health and partly to see something of the war, Phillips obtained for him an assignment from the New York Tribune to do a series of papers on South Carolina negro life. From November 1861 to October 1862 he served as war correspondent at the front, notably with Fremont in the Shenandoah Valley and with th e Army of the Potomac. On the field of Antietam, September 17, 1862, he acted as impromptu aide to "Fighting Joe" Hooker, carrying orders for him under fire. After the battle Smalley commandeered a horse (his own had two bullets in it), rode in the night thirty miles to the nearest telegraph, and wired in a summary of the engagement. The operator, on his own initiative, sent the dispatch to Washington instead of to New York. Smalley then took a night train to New York and wrote his longer story standing under a dim oil lamp. This earliest account of Antietam, which appeared on September 19, was a notable triumph for the Tribune, and Smalley's feat was, in the opinion of Henry Villard [q. v.], the greatest single journalistic exploit of the war (Memoirs of Henry Villard, 1904, I, 335). Smalley was married to Phoebe Garnaut, adopted daughter of Wendell Phillips, on December 25, 1862. She was the "only child of an estimable friend of Welsh birth who had married a native of France and come to Boston, where her husband soon died" (Lorenzo Sears, Wendell Phillips, Orator and Agitator, 1909, p. 87n). They had five children, two boys and three girls. In October 1862 Smalley took a regular place on the Tribune staff in New York, and when the Tribune building was attacked by the draft rioters in 1863 he was prominent among the armed defenders.

The beginning of Smalley's distinguished career as a foreign correspondent came in 1866, when he was sent to Europe on two days' notice to report the Austro-Prussian War. Although the fighting was practically over when he arrived, he made use of the newly-laid transatlantic cable to send from Berlin what was probably the first of all cabled news dispatches. In 1867 he was again sent abroad to organize a London bureau which should receive and coordinate all European news. This move marked a revolution in journalism. At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 Smalley formed the first international newspaper alliance, with the London Daily News, and organized his bureau on the basis of a free use of both telegraph and cable hitherto unknown on either side the Atlantic. Combining this policy with an adaptation of his own procedure at Antietam, he scored, through the exploits of his correspondents with both armies, triumph after triumph, notably the famous "scoop" of Sedan. Smalley remained in charge of the Tribune's European correspondence until 1895, when he returned to America to act as American correspondent of the London Times. This position he held for ten years (1895-1905), living either in New York City or in Washington, D. C. Then, retiring from active journalism except for weekly letters to the Tribune and occasional contributions to reviews, he made his home in London until his death in 1916.

Smalley's letters to the Tribune, both before and after the Times interlude, added greatly to the reputation he had gained by his revolutionary handling of war news. The initialed signatures G. W. S. became widely familiar, and without doubt Smalley did excellent service to the cause nearest his heart, the cementing of Anglo-American friendship and under standing. His style is vigorous and lucid. Moving freely in the upper strata of English society, he knew everybody of importance in both England and America, and was, perhaps, even too eager to let his high connections be known. He is at his best in his brief portrait sketches, always chatty and anecdotal but invariably discreet. Indeed, many readers have been distinctly annoyed by his rather ostentatious discretion, his attitude of "I could an I would." This somewhat superior air, his violent likes and dislikes, his "cold irony," and his toryism, made him numerous enemies on both sides of the ocean. Yet he won the respect of people as diverse as Gladstone, Lowell, Whistler, and Arnold. The best of the Tribune letters, with some other material, were collected in a series of books which still hold considerable interest: A Review of Mr. Bright's Speeches (1868); London Letters (2 volumes, 1891); Studies of Men (1895); and Anglo-American Memories (19u, second series, 1912). He also published in 1909 The Life of Sir Sydney H. Waterlow, Bart.

[There is incidental autobiographical material in most of Smalley's books, notably Anglo-American Memories, in particular the first series. Other sources include: Who's Who in America, 1906-07; Who Was Who, 1916-28 (London, 1929); Worcester Births, Marriages and Deaths (1894); obituaries in the London Times, the New York Tribune, New York Herald, Evening Post, Sun,, and World, April 5, 1916; New York Tribune, April 6, 1916; New York Journal, May 29, 1900; New York Herald, October 1, 1895; Mail and Express (New York), April 20, 1898; F. L. Bullard, Famous War Correspondents (1914); Obituary Record of Graduates of Yale University, July 1, 1916.]

E.M.S.


SMALLS, Robert (April 5, 1839-February 27, 1915), Civil War hero and symbol, African American  congressman from South Carolina. From 1868 to 1870 he served in the state House of Representatives and in the latter year was elected to the state Senate, where he served through the session of 1874. From 1875 to 1887, except during 1880 and 1881, he served in the U. S. Congress.

(Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Who's Who in America, 1912-13; J. H. Brown, The Cyclopedia of American Biographies, VII (1903), 103-04; and the Union Herald (Columbia, South Carolina.), November 1, 1873. War of the Rebellion: Official Records (Army), 1 series XIV, 13-14, and in Report of the Secretary of the Navy, 1862, pp. 227-28; F. B. Simkins and R. H. Woody, South Carolina. during Reconstruction (1932).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, pp. 224-225:

SMALLS, ROBERT (April 5, 1839-February n, 1915), negro congressman from South Carolina, was born at Beaufort, South Carolina., the son of Robert and Lydia Smalls and a slave of the McKee family. He was kindly treated by his master and allowed to acquire a limited education. In 1851 he moved with his master to Charleston and became successively a hotel waiter, a hack driver, and a rigger. In 1856 he married his first wife, Hannah, who died in 1883. In 1861 the Confederate authorities impressed him into service and made him a member of the crew of The Planter, a dispatch and transportation steamer doing service in Charleston Harbor. In the early morning of May 13, 1862, taking advantage of the absence of the white officers, with his wife, two children, and twelve others aboard, he carried The Planter beyond the Charleston forts into the lines of the blockading Federal squadron outside the harbor. This daring exploit gave him national fame. He was made a pilot in the United States Navy and given a share of the prize-money. His knowledge of Charleston Harbor and its fortifications was of great service to the Federals. On December 1, 1863, when the commander of The Planter deserted his post under Confederate fire, Smalls took command of the steamer and led it out of danger. For this act he was promoted to the rank of captain and placed in command of The Planter, holding this post until September 1866, when his craft was put out of commission.

His rise to political importance in South Carolina during Reconstruction was inevitable. He was good-humored, intelligent, fluent, and self-possessed. His moderate views and kindness toward the family of his former master made him to the whites the least objectionable of the freed" men with political aspirations. The fact that he was the pet of their liberators led the freedmen to believe that he was "the smartest cullud man in South Carolina" (The Trip of the Steamer Oceanus to Fort Sumter and Charleston, 1865, p. 86). His modesty and lack of education were the only circumstances which prevented him from becoming preeminent among the directors of the state during Reconstruction. As early as May 1864, a meeting of negroes and northerners at Port Royal elected him a delegate to the National Union Convention. He was one of the less prominent delegates to the state constitutional convention of 1868. From 1868 to 1870 he served in the state House of Representatives and in the latter year was elected to the state Senate, where he served through the session of 1874. From 1875 to 1887, except during 1880 and 1881, he served in Congress.

His congressional career was not notable. His most important speeches were attacks on the election tactics of the South Carolina Democrats and in support of a bill to provide equal accommodations for the races on interstate conveyances. A thorough partisan, he opposed civil service reform and favored pens ion bills. He made an unsuccessful attempt to have $30,000 voted him as additional compensation for his part in The Planter escapade. He was a conspicuous figure in the Republican national conventions of 1872 and 1876. From 1865 to 1877 he served in the state militia, rising to the rank of major-general. In December 1889 he was appointed collector of the port of Beaufort, holding this position until 1913 except during Cleveland's second term. In 1877 he was convicted of accepting a bribe of $5,000 while state senator and was sentenced to three years in prison, but while his case was under appeal he was pardoned by Governor William Dunlap Simpson [q.v.] as part of the policy of amnesty which the state Democratic administration deemed wise. His last conspicuous service was as one of the six negro members of the state constitutional convention of 1895. Before that body he made a vain but gallant attempt to prevent the practical disfranchisement of his race. The last twenty years of his life were spent quietly at Beaufort, where he enjoyed the confidence of both races, cooperating with white leaders in efforts to advance the material interests of the community. On April 9, 1890, he was married a second time, to Annie E. Wigg.

[The best sketches of Smalls are in Who's Who in America, 1912-13; J. H. Brown, The Cyclopedia of American Biographies, VII (1903), 103-04; and the Union Herald (Columbia, South Carolina.), November 1, 1873. The episode of The Planter is described in War of the Rebellion: Official Records (Army), 1 series XIV, 13-14, and in Report of the Secretary of the Navy, 1862, pp. 227-28. His political career is traced in F. B. Simkins and R. H. Woody, South Carolina. during Reconstruction (1932); S. D. Smith, "The Negro in Congress, 1870-1901" (MS.), the library of the University of North Carolina; A. A. Taylor, The Negro in South Carolina. during the Reconstruction (copyright 1924); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928). An obituary appeared in News and Courier (Charleston, South Carolina.), February 25, 1915. Sir George Campbell, White and Black; the Outcome of a Visit to the U.S. (1879), pp. 346-47, 356-57, and Letters and Diary of La1tra M. Towne (1912), ed. by S. Holland, pp. 240-41, give personal impressions. Mr. William Elliott of Columbia, South Carolina., and Mr. and Mrs. Niels Christensen of Beaufort, South Carolina., have furnished information concerning Smalls's relations with the whites.]

F. B. S.


SMART, Hugh, Greenville, Ohio, Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1835-36.


SMILIE, John, 1741-1812, soldier.  Democratic Member of U.S. Congress from Pennsylvania, opposed slavery in U.S. Congress. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 554; Locke, Mary Stoughton. Anti-Slavery in America from the Introduction of African Slaves to the Prohibition of the Slave Trade (1619-1808). Boston: Ginn & Co., 1901, pp. 93, 151, 153; Mason, 2006, p. 144; Annals of Congress).

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 554:   

SMILIE, John, member of congress, born in Ireland in 1741; died in Washington, D. C., 30 December, 1812. He came to Pennsylvania in 1760, settled in Lancaster county, and served during the war of the Revolution in both military and civil capacities. He was a member of the legislature of Pennsylvania, served in congress, as a Democrat, in 1793-'5 and in 1799-1813, and was chairman of the committee on foreign relations. He was a presidential elector in 1796. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 554.   


SMITH, Abby Hadassah (June 1, 1797~ July 23, 1878), and her sister, Julia Evelina (May 27, 1792-March 6, 1886), advocates of woman's rights. Their father, Zephaniah Hollister Smith, was an abolitionist.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, p. 233:


SMITH, ABBY HADASSAH (June 1, 1797~ July 23, 1878), and her sister, Julia Evelina (May 27, 1792-March 6, 1886), advocates of woman's rights, were born in Glastonbury, Connecticut, where their earliest American ancestor, Benjamin Smith, had settled about 1693. Their father, Zephaniah Hollister Smith, a graduate of Yale, was at first a Congregationalist minister, but, becoming a Sandemanian, he soon decided it was wrong to preach for hire and turned to the law, which he practised the rest of his life. He was an abolitionist. Their mother, Hannah Hadassah (Hickock) Smith, was acquainted with Latin, Italian, mathematics, and astronomy, and wrote verse. The sisters were well educated. Julia, like her mother, had a scholarly bent. She knew Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and made a translation of the Bible from the original, which was published in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1876. For a time she taught in the Emma Willard school in Troy, New York, but spent most of her life with her sister on the family homestead at Glastonbury. After the death of their parents and three other sisters, Abby, practical, spirited, and energetic, became manager of the home and farm, while Julia, who was rather dependent and retiring, devoted more time to scholarly pursuits. They lived simply, did their own housework, made butter and cheese, and in speech and manner reflected rural New England. Locally they were noted for their geniality, kindliness, and honesty, their hatred of slavery, and their many deeds of charity.

Their interest in woman's suffrage began about 1869 when, indignant at having to pay a highway tax twice, they went to a suffrage meeting in Hartford. In 1872-73 they were again aroused by having their taxes and those of some other women increased, while men's were not, and in October 1873 Abby, then seventy-six, attended the Woman's Congress fo New York. The next month she spoke at the Glastonbury town-meeting against taxing unenfranchised women; later, denied another hearing by that body, she mounted an ox-cart outside and addressed the crowd. From 1873 until her death she refused to pay local taxes without a vote in town-meeting, and Julia joined her in resisting. A tract of their land worth $2,000 was once disposed of at public sale for a $50 assessment, and repeatedly their cows were sold at the sign-post for delinquent taxes. In 1877 Julia published Abby Smith and Her Cows, with a Report of the Law Case Decided Contrary to Law. The sisters became active also in general work for woman's suffrage. They wrote letters to the press, and spoke at local meetings and at suffrage conventions; almost annually they petitioned the Connecticut legislature for the vote, and in January 1878 they attended a hearing on the equal suffrage amendment before a committee of the United States Senate, at which Julia spoke. The Smith sisters and their cows soon became known in foreign lands as well as throughout the United States, and gave new publicity and added impetus to the cause of woman's rights. After the death of Abby, Julia, who had leaned on her in many ways, on April 9, 1879, married Amos A. Parker, aged eighty-six (with whom she had become acquainted when he wrote to sympathize with her over her sister's death), and soon thereafter went to Hartford to live.

[F. B. Dexter, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College, volume IV (1907), for Zephaniah Smith's life and family background; L. W. Case, The Hollister  Family of America (1886); History of Women’s Suffrage, volume III (1887), ed. by Elizabeth C. Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda J. Gage; journal of the Connecticut State House of Representatives and of the Connecticut State Senate, 1874-79; Woman's Journal, January 26, March 2, April 20, August 3, 1878, and March 13, 1886; Hartford Daily Courant, December 11, 1873, July 25, 1878, March 8, 1886; Boston Daily Advertiser, July 27, 1878; private information.]

M.W.W.


SMITH, Asa Dodge (September 21, 1804-August 16, 1877), Presbyterian clergyman, college president. In 1863 he became seventh president of Dartmouth College. At that time the institution was at a low ebb both with respect to student attendance and to finances. It was also in some disrepute on account of the pro-slavery attitude of its retiring president, Nathan Lord [q.v.].

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, p. 239:

SMITH, ASA DODGE (September 21, 1804-August r6, 1877), Presbyterian clergyman, college president, was born in Amherst, New Hampshire, the son of Dr. Rogers and Sally (Dodge) Smith. Most of his childhood was spent at Weston, Vermont, but at sixteen he was apprenticed to a printer in Windsor. During his apprenticeship his religious interests were aroused and he began to look forward to a career in the ministry. At the age of twenty he entered Kimball Union Academy; in 1830 he graduated from Dartmouth College; and in 1834, from the Andover Theological Seminary. At once he accepted a call to the only pastorate he ever held, that of the newly formed Brainerd Presbyterian Church in New York City. During his leadership of twenty-nine years this church came to be one of the important organizations of the city, building successively two edifices and receiving fourteen hundred new members. In addition to his pastoral work, Smith was active in the affairs of his denomination, serving as a trustee of the Union Theological Seminary and as a member of the controlling boards of several Presbyterian societies.

In 1863 he became seventh president of Dartmouth College. At that time the institution was at a low ebb both with respect to student attendance and to finances. It was also in some disrepute on account of the pro-slavery attitude of its retiring president, Nathan Lord [q.v.]. In meeting these conditions Smith was in many respects successful. Feeling against the institution was assuaged by his tact, the student attendance more than doubled, and the Thayer School of Engineering and the New Hampshire College of Agriculture were established in accord with the president's policy of making the institution a university-a policy which was abandoned by his successors. Financially, however, the administration was less fruitful. The scholarship funds were substantially increased and large donations were received for other purposes, but many of the gifts were restricted to special uses and were in the form of accumulating funds not immediately available; consequently, the institution had the utmost difficulty in meeting current obligations. The burden on the president increased from year to year, and finally, March 1, 1877, his health having given way, he resigned his office.

Tall, erect, of great dignity and urbanity of manner, he looked the part of the college president. He was remarkably fluent of speech, self-possessed, and n ever at a loss for a telling phrase. He was genuinely solicitous for the students and sincerely charitable, his personal donations being large in proportion to his income. Withal, he was not soft as an administrator and there was no relaxation of discipline during his term of office. Most striking was his tact, which tided over many difficult situations, but was thought by some to be overdone, and brought upon him the reproach of insincerity. His point of view was ultra-conservative, and no innovations from established practice marked his administration. while he was a student at Andover he published Letters to a Young Student (1832), many of his sermons and addresses appeared in pamphlet form, and he was a frequent contributor to th e periodical press. On November 9, 1836, he married Sarah Ann Adams of North Andover, Massachusetts. His death occurred at Hanover, New Hampshire.

[For biographical information, see E. B. Coe, An Address in Commemoration of Asa Dodge Smith (1882); J. K. Lord, History of Dartmouth College (1913); L. B. Richardson, History of Dartmouth College (1931); Concord Daily Monitor (Concord, New Hampshire), August 18, 1877. The greater part of Smith's correspondence during his presidency is deposited in the library of Dartmouth College.]

L.B. R.


SMITH, Caleb Blood (April 16, 1808- January 7, 1864), lawyer, congressman, cabinet officer.  As a U.S. congressman he participated in debates on the Oregon question, slavery in the Territories and the District of Columbia, the tariff, and the Dorr rebellion, but his principal efforts were directed against the annexation of Texas and the war with Mexico. Lincoln appointed him Secretary of the Interior.

Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, pp. :

SMITH, CALEB BLOOD (April 16, 1808- January 7, 1864), lawyer, congressman, cabinet officer, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, but when six years old was taken by his parents to Cincinnati, Ohio. He was enrolled as a student at the College of Cincinnati, 1823-25, and at Miami University, 1825-26, but did not graduate. Commencing the study of law in Cincinnati, he soon removed to Connersville, Indiana, where he continued his law studies in the office of Oliver H. Smith [q. v .]. He was admitted to the bar, and commenced practice in the fall of 1828. His eloquence before juries contributed no little to his advancement in his profession.

Entering politics, he was an unsuccessful candidate for a seat in the Indiana House of Representatives in 1831, but the following year he purchased an interest in the Political Clarion, changed its name to the Indiana Sentinel, used it as a medium the publication of his Whig policies, and was elected. He was reelected each year until 1837 and was again elected in 1840. In the sessions of 1835-36 and 1836-37 he was speaker of the house and in 1840-41, chairman of the committee on canals. During his legislative career he was one of those who took the lead in procuring an order for the survey, by the federal government, of routes in Indiana for canals and railroads, and in otherwise promoting projects for internal improvements. When those projects were more or less wrecked by the panic of 1837, Smith was appointed a commissioner to collect assets and adjust debts. He accepted and served, but not without a temporary loss of popularity. In a triangular election in 1840 he was defeated as a candidate for a seat in Congress, but he won in a clear field in 1842, was reelected in 1844; and again in 1846. In the Twenty-ninth Congress (1845-47) he was a member of the committee on foreign affairs, and in the Thirtieth (1847-49), chairman of the Committee on the Territories. At a Whig caucus preceding the opening of the Thirtieth Congress he was proposed for nomination as speaker of the House, but failed of nomination by fifteen votes. His first speech in the House was made February 8, 1844, in favor of excluding from membership the men who, in four states, had been elected by general ticket. He participated in debates on the Oregon question, the independent treasury bill, slavery in the Territories and the District of Columbia, the tariff, and the Dorr rebellion, but his principal efforts were directed against the annexation of Texas and the war with Mexico. He supported Taylor in the presidential campaign of 1848, and was proposed for the position,   postmaster general in Taylor's cabinet, but was given, instead, a seat on the board of commissioners to adjust claims against Mexico, serving in that capacity until 1851, when he removed to Cincinnati and resumed the practice of law. Three years later he was made president of the Cincinnati & Chicago Railroad Company, which was soon in financial difficulties, and in 1859 he removed to Indianapolis, Indiana.

Smith was one of the leaders of the Indiana delegation to the Republican National Convention in Chicago in 1860, and when, in behalf of that delegation, he had seconded the nomination of Lincoln, the convention broke into its greatest demonstration. In the campaign that followed, he was one of the most effective speakers, especially in Indiana, a doubtful state. In recognition of his services or in fulfillment of a promise, Lincoln appointed him Secretary of the Interior, but when failing health would no longer permit his administration of that office, the President accepted his resignation, December 1862, and immediately appointed him judge of the United States district court for Indiana. A little more than a year later he was fatally stricken while in the court house in Indianapolis, and died the same day. On July 8, 1831, he married Elizabeth B. Walton, daughter of William Walton, a pioneer from Ohio; they had three children. [L. J. Bailey, "Caleb Blood Smith," in Ind. Magazine of History, September 1933; Charles Roll, "Indiana's Part in the Nomination of Abraham Lincoln for President" Ibid. March 1929; G. J. Clarke, "The Burnt District:" Ibid.' June 1931;

[Journal and Genealogical History of Wayne, Fayette. Union and franklin Counties, Ind. (1899), volume I; C. W. Taylor, Biographical Sketches and Review of the Bench and Bar of Ind. (1895); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); American Whig Review, December 1850; Indianapolis Daily Journal, January 9, 1864; Caleb Blood Smith Papers (8 - volumes), MSS. Div., Library of Congress]

N. D. M.


SMITH, Charles Perrin (January 5, 1819- January 27, 1883), New Jersey Republican politician, newspaper editor, genealogist, supporter of the Union.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, pp. 250-251:

SMITH, CHARLES PERRIN (January 5, 1819- January 27, 1883), New Jersey politician, editor, genealogist, was born in Philadelphia. His father was George Wishart Smith, of distinguished Virginia ancestry, and his mother, Hannah Carpenter (Ellet) of Salem County, New Jersey. The former died shortly after Charles was born and the child was taken by his mother to her home in Salem. Here, in the common schools, he received a rudimentary education, richly supplemented later by his own efforts. At the age of fifteen he entered the printing office of the Freeman's Banner, where he learned the practical work of newspaper publishing. In 1840, having reached his majority and inherited some property, he bought the Banner and renamed it the National Standard. This paper he edited for eleven years in the interests of the Whig party. Later, he also edited the Harrisonian, a campaign periodical. In 1843 he married Hester A. Driver of Caroline County, Maryland. He held several local offices, was active in advocating the construction of a railway in West Jersey for the development of that section of the state, and was interested in improving the lifesaving stations on the Jersey coast, toward which end he was instrumental in securing action by Congress. In 1851 he retired permanently from regular newspaper work and thenceforth devoted his time to travel, political activities, and literary and antiquarian pursuits.

Elected to the state Senate from Salem County in 1855, he served two years, and then was appointed clerk of the supreme court of New Jersey, which office he held for three terms of five years each, meanwhile making his home in Trenton. His political activities during this period were strenuous and, according to his own estimate, important. In 1856 he was appointed a member of the National American state committee and also the same year was a delegate to the Fusion Convention and a member of the committee to select permanent officers. He nominated William L. Dayton [q.v.] as president of the convention and secured his election, thus bringing him into national prominence and so preparing the way for his subsequent nomination by the Republican party for the vice-presidency of the United States. In 1859 Smith was appointed a member of the "Opposition" state executive committee and was successively reappointed for ten years with the exception of one year, when he declined the position. For part of the time he was chairman, and he was active in securing the election as governor of Charles S. Olden [q.v.]. He was opposed to the candidacy of William H. Seward for the presidency in 1860 and through his efforts induced the state convention to indorse Dayton with a view to blocking Seward's nomination at the national convention, by withholding the New Jersey vote until it could be thrown to a more eligible candidate. During the Civil War period he was active in bringing New Jersey into line with the policies of the Federal government. He advocated the nomination of General Grant for president in 1867 and arranged for a great mass meeting in Trenton, at which Grant was enthusiastically indorsed.

Retiring from office in 1872, Smith continued to live in Trenton until his death eleven years later, devoting much of his time to travel and writing. He prepared "The Personal Reminiscences of Charles Perrin Smith, 1857-1875;'' a large folio volume in manuscript, which was given to the New Jersey state library after his death by his daughter, Elizabeth A. Smith. This work includes his autobiography, with full genealogical records of his ancestry, and comments on political events in the state and nation with which he was actively concerned or personally familiar. Based apparently upon a carefully kept diary, it is notable for its accuracy, urbanity, and fair-mindedness. Besides narratives of his travels, political writings, and speeches, his publications include Lineage of the Lloyd and Carpenter Family (1870, 1873), privately printed; and Memoranda of a Visit to the Site of Mathraval Castle, Powys Castle, Valle Crucis Abbey, Pilar of Elisig, with a Genealogical Chart of the Descent of Thomas Lloyd (1875). He died at Trenton, New Jersey, survived by his wife and two daughters.

[Report of the Proceedings of the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia for ... 1883 (1884); Thomas Cushing and C. E. Sheppard, History of the Comities of Gloucester, Salem, and Cumberland, New Jersey (1883); E. M. Woodward and J. F. Hageman, History of Burlington and Mercer Counties, New Jersey (1883); C. M. Knapp, New Jersey Politics During the Period of the Civil War and Reconstruction (1924); Hamilton Schuyler, A History of St. Michael's Church, Trenton  1703 to 1926 (1926); Daily True American, January 29, 1883.]

H. Sc-r.


SMITH, Emma, Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS), Boston, Massachusetts.

(Yellin, Jean Fagan and John C. Van Horne (Eds). The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994, p. 61)


SMITH, Ezra C., New York, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1841-1845.


SMITH, Franklin Webster, 1826-1911, Boston, Massachusetts, businessman, anti-slavery.  Early member of the Republican Party.  Supported election of Abraham Lincoln.


SMITH, George H., Salem, Massachusetts, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1837-38.


SMITH, George, 1747-1820, born in Virginia, clergyman, anti-slavery activist in Kentucky. Baptist minister.

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 90-91; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, p. 427)


SMITH, Gerrit, 1797-1874, Peterboro, New York, large landowner, reformer, philanthropist, radical abolitionist.  Smith was one of the most important leaders of the abolitionist movement.  Originally, he supported the American Colonization Society (ACS) and served as a Vice President, 1833-1836.  Smith later came to reject the idea of sending freed slaves back to Africa.  Smith became a leader and important supporter of William Lloyd Garrison and the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS).  He served as a Vice President of the AASS, 1836-1840, 1840-1841.  Smith also served as Vice President of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1840.  He was the founding President of  the New York State Anti-Slavery Society, October 1836, in Utica, New York.  Smith came to believe that slavery could be abolished by political means and he was instrumental in the founding of the Liberty Party in 1840.  He was the President and co-founder of the Liberty League in 1848 and was its presidential candidate in 1848.  He was active in supporting the Underground Railroad.  Smith was a member of the Pennsylvania Free Produce Association.  He supported the New England Emigrant Aid Company of Massachusetts, which sent anti-slavery settlers to the Kansas Territory.  He was one of six abolitionists (known as the “Secret Six”) who secretly supported radical abolitionist John Brown.  Supported women’s rights and suffrage.  He served as an anti-slavery member of Congress, 1853-1854.  After the Civil War, he supported the right to vote for Blacks. 

(Blue, Frederick J. No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005, pp. 19, 20, 25, 26, 32-36, 50, 53, 54, 68, 101, 102, 105, 112, 132, 170; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 200, 221, 231, 295, 301, 339, 352; Friedman, 1982; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 37, 47, 55, 56, 71, 72, 104, 106, 131, 135, 150, 154, 156, 187-189, 195, 202, 204, 219, 220, 226, 227, 237, 239, 246, 252, 253, 258, 307, 308, 315, 320, 321, 327, 342, 346; Mitchell, Thomas G. Antislavery Politics in Antebellum and Civil War America. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007, pp. 5, 8, 13, 16, 22, 29, 31, 36, 112, 117-121, 137, 163, 167, 199, 224-225, 243; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 46, 50, 51, 56, 138, 163, 206, 207, 327, 338, 452-454; Sernett, Milton C. North Star Country: Upstate New York and the Crusade for African American Freedom. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002, pp. 22, 36, 49-55, 122-126, 129-132, 143-146, 169, 171, 173-174, 205-206, 208-217, 219-230; Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971, pp. 25-38, 47, 49, 52, 66, 95, 96, 102, 126, 130; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 583-584; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, p. 270; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 20; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume II. New York: James T. White, 1892, pp. 322-323; Harlow, Ralph Volney. Gerrit Smith: Philanthropist and Reformer, New York: Holt, 1939.)  Family papers in Library of Syracuse University; O. B. Frothingham, Gerrit Smith (1878); 2nd ed. (1879).

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 583-584:

SMITH, Gerrit, philanthropist, born in Utica, New York, 6 March, 1797; died in New York City, 28 December, 1874, was graduated at Hamilton College in 1818, and devoted himself to the care of his father's estate, a large part of which was given to him when he attained his majority. At the age of fifty-six he studied law, and was admitted to the bar. He was elected to Congress as an independent candidate in 1852, but resigned after serving through one session. During his boyhood slavery still existed in the state of New York, and his father was a slave-holder. One of the earliest forms of the philanthropy that marked his long life appeared in his opposition to the institution of slavery, and his friendship for the oppressed race. He acted for ten years with the American Colonization Society, contributing largely to its funds, until he became convinced that it was merely a scheme of the slave-holders for getting the free colored people out of the country. Thenceforth he gave his support to the Anti-Slavery Society, not only writing for the cause and contributing money, but taking part in conventions, and personally assisting fugitives. He was temperate in all the discussion, holding that the north was a partner in the guilt, and in the event of emancipation without war should bear a portion of the expense; but the attempt to force slavery upon Kansas convinced him that the day for peaceful emancipation was past, and he then advocated whatever measure of force might be necessary. He gave large sums of money to send free-soil settlers to Kansas, and was a personal friend of John Brown, to whom he had given a farm in Essex County, New York, that he might instruct a colony of colored people, to whom Mr. Smith had given farms in the same neighborhood. He was supposed to be implicated in the Harper's Ferry affair, but it was shown that he had only given pecuniary aid to Brown as he had to scores of other men, and so far as he knew Brown's plans had tried to dissuade him from them. Mr. Smith was deeply interested in the cause of temperance, and organized an anti-dram shop party in February, 1842. In the village of Peterboro, Madison County, where he had his home, he built a good hotel, and gave it rent-free to a tenant who agreed that no liquor should be sold there. This is believed to have been the first temperance hotel ever established. But it was not pecuniarily successful. He had been nominated for president by an industrial congress at Philadelphia in 1848, and by the land-reformers in 1856, but declined. In 1840, and again in 1858, he was nominated for governor of New York. The last nomination, on a platform of abolition and prohibition, he accepted, and canvassed the state. In the election he received 5,446 votes. Among the other reforms in which he was interested were those relating to the property-rights of married women and female suffrage and abstention from tobacco. In religion he was originally a Presbyterian, but became very liberal in his views, and built a non-sectarian church in Peterboro, in which he often occupied the pulpit himself. He could not conceive of religion as anything apart from the affairs of daily life, and in one of his published letters he wrote: “No man's religion is better than his politics; his religion is pure whose politics are pure; whilst his religion is rascally whose politics are rascally.” He disbelieved in the right of men to monopolize land, and gave away thousands of acres of that which he had inherited, some of it to colleges and charitable institutions, and some in the form of small farms to men who would settle upon them. He also gave away by far the greater part of his income, for charitable purposes, to institutions and individuals. In the financial crisis of 1837 he borrowed of John Jacob Astor a quarter of a million dollars, on his verbal agreement to give Mr. Astor mortgages to that amount on real estate. The mortgages were executed as soon as Mr. Smith reached his home, but through the carelessness of a clerk were not delivered, and Mr. Astor waited six months before inquiring for them. Mr. Smith had for many years anticipated that the system of slavery would be brought to an end only through violence, and when the Civil War began he hastened to the support of the government with his money and his influence. At a war-meeting in April, 1861, he made a speech in which he said: “The end of American slavery is at hand. The first gun fired at Fort Sumter announced the fact that the last fugitive slave had been returned. . . . The armed men who go south should go more in sorrow than in anger. The sad necessity should be their only excuse for going. They must still love the south; we must all still love her. As her chiefs shall, one after another, fall into our hands, let us be restrained from dealing revengefully, and moved to deal tenderly with them, by our remembrance of the large share which the north has had in blinding them.” In accordance with this sentiment, two years after the war, he united with Horace Greeley and Cornelius Vanderbilt in signing the bail-bond of Jefferson Davis. At the outset he offered to equip a regiment of colored men, if the government would accept them. Mr. Smith left an estate of about $1,000,000, having given away eight times that amount during his life. He wrote a great deal for print, most of which appeared in the form of pamphlets and broadsides, printed on his own press in Peterboro. His publications in book-form were “Speeches in Congress” (1855); “Sermons and Speeches” (1861); “The Religion of Reason” (1864); “Speeches and Letters” (1865); “The Theologies” (2d ed., 1866); “Nature the Base of a Free Theology” (1867); and “Correspondence with Albert Barnes” (1868). His authorized biography has been written by Octavius BORN Frothingham (New York, 1878).  Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 583-584.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, p. 270:

SMITH, GERRIT (March 6, 1797-December 28, 1874), philanthropist and reformer, was born at Utica, New York, the grandson of James Livingston [q.v.] and the son of Elizabeth (Livingston) and Peter Smith [q.v.]. In 1806 the family moved to Peterboro, Madison County, New York, where Smith spent the greater part of his adult life. He graduated from Hamilton College in 1818 and helped his father manage the substantial fortune, the product of shrewd land purchases. On January 11, 1819, he married Wealthy Ann Backus, the daughter of Azel Backus [q.v.]. She died the next August, and on January 3, 1822, he married Ann Carroll Fitzhugh. Of their four children, only two lived to maturity. In 1826 he became a member of the Presbyterian Church.

He succeeded to the entire control of his father's property, which, real and personal, was valued at about $400,000, and was able to increase it in amount and in value. His father, melancholy and later estranged from his second wife who had gone back to Charleston, South Carolina, to live, withdrew into himself more and more. Smith used his wealth, in so far as he could find guidance on the subject from prayer and from his own conscience, for what he considered the good of mankind. For a time he helped to build churches, and he gave generously to several theological schools and to various colleges. He experimented with systematic charity on a large scale, giving both land and money to needy men and women throughout his own state (see sketch of James McCune Smith); but his carefully selected "indigent females" made poor farmers, and the blacks whom he tried to colonize in the Adirondack wilderness found the environment unsuited to their needs. Much of the property he disposed of in this work was subsequently sold for non-payment of taxes.

His greatest reputation was made in the field of reform. He labored in the cause of the Sunday School and of Sunday observance; he was an anti-Mason; he advocated vegetarianism; and he opposed the use of tobacco and alcoholic beverages; he joined the national dress reform association and the woman's suffrage cause; he believed in prison reform and in the abolition of capital punishment. He contributed to home and foreign missions and to the causes of the op. pressed Greeks, the Italians, and the Irish. Through his influence his cousin, Elizabeth Cady Stanton [q.v.], was interested in temperance and abolition movements. He was vice-president of the American Peace Society and advocated compensated emancipation of slaves. He joined the anti-slavery crusade in 1835 with his customary enthusiasm, and he became one of the be st-known abolitionists in the United States. Although on terms of intimate friendship with William Lloyd Garrison, he never went to the extremes of the Garrison group; but he was always ready to help escaped slaves to Canada and in 1851 participated in the "Jerry rescue" in Syracuse. After the enactment of the Kansas Nebraska law he joined the Kansas Aid Societies in New York, and he helped Eli Thayer's New England Emigrant Aid Company in Massachusetts. This work cost him at least fourteen thousand dollars; how much more it is difficult to determine. In spite of his advocacy of peace, he urged the use of force against the pro-slavery contingent in Kansas, and forcible resistance to the federal authorities there, because, as he said, the federal government upheld the pro-slavery cause. In February 1858 John Brown went to Smith's home in Peterboro, not to plan his campaign in Virginia but to obtain Smith's moral and financial support for plans already made. On this occasion, at a second vi sit in April 1859, and in several letters, Smith gave Brown assurance of his approval and some money. After the raid at Harpers Ferry, Smith became temporarily insane. He made a quick recovery, however, and six months later he was in his usual good health. From then on to the end of his life he denied complicity in Brown's plot, but the available evidence bears out newspaper charges made at the time, that he was an accessory before the fact.
Unlike the Garrisonians, he believed in political action as a means of reform, and for a full fifty years, from 1824 to 1874, he took an active part in politics. He was one of the leaders in forming the Liberty party; in 1840 he was its candidate for governor. In 1848 the "true" Liberty party m en, those who refused to indorse the Free Soil "heresy," nominated him for the presidency, though he declined. In 1852 he was elected a member of Congress on an independent ticket and served from March 4, 1853, to August 7, 1854, when he resigned. In 1858 he ran for governor on the "People's State Ticket," advocating temperance, anti-slavery, and land reform. During the Civil War he wrote and spoke often in support of the Union cause. This work led him gradually into the Republican party, so that he campaigned for Lincoln's reelection in 1864 and for Grant in 1868. In reconstruction he advocated a policy of moderation toward the Southern whites with suffrage for the blacks. In 1867 he was one of the signers of the bail bond to release Jefferson Davis from captivity. He published many of his speeches and letters on important subjects. Of his published books the more important are Religion of Reason (1864), an exposition of his later religion of Nature or Rationalism; Speeches of Gerrit Smith in Congress (1856); and the two volumes (1864-65) of his Speeches and Letters of Gerrit Smith on the Rebellion. He died in New York City.

[Family papers in Library of Syracuse University; O. B. Frothingham, Gerrit Smith (1878); 2nd ed. (1879) "corrected" by Smith's daughter in order to bring it into harmony with the family belief that Smith was not an accomplice of John Brown; C. A. Hammond, Gerrit Smith (1900); K. W. Porter, John Jacob Astor (2 volumes, 1931); Appletons' Annual Cyclopedia, 1874; R. V. Hadow, "Gerrit Smith and the John Brown Raid" and " Rise and Fall of the Kansas Aid Movement," Annual Historical Review, October 1932, October 1935; New York Tribune, December 29-30, 1874.]

R. V. H.


SMITH, Green C., Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe).


SMITH, Horace E., New York, abolitionist leader, member of the Free Soil Party.  Co-editor of the Free Soiler newspaper with Francis W. Bird and John B. Alley.

(Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971; Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Volume 2.  Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872). 


SMITH, Hugh C., American Colonization Society, Manager, 1833-1834. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961)


SMITH, Humphrey “Yankee,” 1774-1857, New Jersey, abolitionist, anti-slavery advocate in Clay County, Missouri. 

(Smith, Calvin, 1907; Encyclopedia of the History of Missouri, 1901)


SMITH, Israel, Bainbridge, New York, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1835-1836.


SMITH, Ithamer, Waitsfield, Vermont, American Abolition Society, Vice-President, 1858-59.


SMITH, James McCune (Communipaw), 1813-1865, African American, abolitionist leader, community leader, activist.  James McCune Smith was the first African American to receive a medical degree.  He was also the first African American to operate a pharmacy in the U.S.  He was a leader in the abolitionist American Anti-Slavery Society.  In 1853, he helped organize the National Council of Colored People, with Frederick Douglass.  In addition, he co-organized the Committee of Thirteen, in New York City, to aid escaped slaves through the Underground Railroad after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act.  Recording Secretary, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1852-1855. 

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 268, 333; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, p. 134; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, p. 454; Smith, James McCune, The Destiny of the People of Color, 1841; Smith, James McCune, A Lecture on the Haitian Revolution, 1841; Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971, p. 82; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, p. 288; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 20, p. 216; Congressional Globe; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 10, p. 345). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, pp. 288-289:

SMITH, JAMES McCUNE (April 18, 1813- November 17, 1865), negro physician and writer, was born in New York City, the "son of a slave, owing his liberty to the Emancipation Act of the State of New York and of a self-emancipated bondswoman" (Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom, 1855, see the introduction by Smith). Both were of mixed blood. In the Matriculation Albums of the University of Glasgow (1913) is the notation in his own hand, "Filius natu maximus Samuelis, Mercatoris apud New York." He was educated in the African Free School on Mulberry St., between Grand and Hester. Here, on September 10, 1824, Lafayette addressed the pupils and young Smith, aged eleven, was chosen to make the reply. He entered the University of Glasgow in 1832, receiving the degrees of B.A. in 1835, M.A. in 1836 and M.D. in 1837. Following a short period in the clinics of Paris, he returned to New York City to practise medicine, and shortly thereafter opened a pharmacy on West Broadway, said to be the first in the country to be operated by a negro.

For twenty-five years he was a skilful and successful practitioner of medicine and surgery but his claims to remembrance rest upon his writings and his public service in the interest of his race. For twenty years he was on the medical staff of the Free Negro Orphan Asylum. In 1846 Gerrit Smith [q.v.], of Peterboro, New York, donated 120,000 acres of land in that state for distribution among the negroes of New York City. Smith, with two prominent negro clergymen, was chosen to select the names of about 2,000 heads of families to receive plots of land. The committee issued an address in pamphlet form (1846) extolling the project and the generosity of the donor. For a variety of reasons the venture was not a success. He was a consistent opponent of the American Colonization Society, formed for the purpose of repatriating negroes  in Africa. In 1852 at a meeting of colored people in Albany, New York, he induced the assembly to adopt a resolution of protest against Governor Hunt's proposal to the state legislature for an appropriation in support of the colonization project. Interested in every phase of negro welfare, he was prominent in New York activities of the Underground Railroad. As early as 1833 Smith was a contributor to Emancipator and from January to May 1839, he was an editor of the Colored American. To this journal he contributed "Abolition of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the French and British Colonies," June 9, 1838. In 1841 he issued in pamphlet form A Lecture on the Haytien Revolutions; with a Sketch of the Character of Toussaint L'0werture, and in 1844, "Freedom and Slavery for Africans" in the New York Tribune (reprinted in the Liberator, February 16, 23, 1844). During the short life of the Anglo-African Magazine (1859-60) he contributed: "Civilization: Its Dependence on Physical Circumstances," January 1859; "The German Invasion," an article on waves of immigration and their effects upon American life, February 1859; "Citizenship," a discussion of the Dred Scott decision, May 1859; and "On The Fourteenth Query of Thomas Jefferson's Notes on Virginia," a discourse upon the comparative anatomy of the white and black races, August 1859. Throughout his career he was engaged in controversy in support of the physical and moral equality of the black race. He contributed to Hunt's Merchants' Magazine, April and May 1846, an article on "The Influence of Climate upon Longevity" in reply to an attack upon the race by John C. Calhoun. He wrote one essay for each of the two volumes of the collection, Autographs for Freedom (1853, 1854). His writings show high scholarship, with a knowledge of the sciences, of history, and of foreign languages and literature. He was thought to be the most scholarly negro writer of his day by Henry Highland Garnet [q.v.]. At the request of the congregation of the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church of Washington, D. C., he wrote the introduction on the "Life and Labors of Reverend Henry Highland Garnet" for Garnet's A Memorial Discourse (1865). In 1863 he accepted an appointment as professor of anthropology at Wilberforce University, but failing health prevented his teaching, and he died after a prolonged illness from heart disease at his home in Williamsburg, Long Island, whither he had moved in 1864. He left a widow and five children.

[Medical Register of the City of New York, 1866; Journal of Negro History, April 1916, April 1921; G. W. Williams, History of the Negro Race in America (2 volumes, 1882); C. G. Woodson, The Negro in Our History (5th ed., 1928); D. A. Payne, Recollection of Seventy Years (1888); Vernon Loggins, The Negro Author (1931); New York Tribune, November 18, 1865.]

J.M. P.


SMITH, James W., New York, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1834-1835.


SMITH, John, Andover, Massachusetts, abolitionist, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1840-1841.


SMITH, John C., Sharon, Connecticut, American Colonization Society, Vice-President, 1833-1841. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961)


SMITH, Joshua Bowen, 1813-1879, Boston, Massachusetts, African American, abolitionist, community leader.  Abolition leader and supporter of William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Parker and George Luther Stearns.  Aided fugitive slaves in Boston area.  Founded the New England Freedom Association, which aided runaway slaves. Active member of the Boston Vigilance Committee.

(Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 10, p. 349, Volume 11, p. 489)


SMITH, Judith Winsor, 1821-1921, abolitionist, women’s rights and suffrage activist.


SMITH, Junius (October 2, 1780-January 22, 1853), lawyer, merchant, promoter, has been called the "father of the Atlantic liner." Supported the Colonization movement.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, pp. 315-316:

SMITH, JUNIUS (October 2, 1780-January 22, 1853), lawyer, merchant, promoter, has been called the "father of the Atlantic liner." He was born in Plymouth, then part of Watertown, Connecticut, third of the four sons of David and Ruth (Hitchcock) Smith. His father, a major in the R evolution and a general in the Connecticut militia, was a prosperous storekeeper. Junius was prepared for college at Bethlehem near by, and went as a sophomore
to Yale. After graduating in 1802, he became a fellow student of John C. Calhoun at Tapping Reeve's law school, Litchfield, and in 1804 opened a law office in New Haven. Sent to London in 1805 by his brother's firm, he secured from the Court of Admiralty Appeal the award of liberal damages for the seizure of the New Haven ship Mohawk. He settled in London as a merchant, making his home there, except for a brief sojourn in Liverpool, until 1843. On April 9, 1812, he married Sarah, daughter of Thom as Allen of Huddersfield, Yorkshire. She died in 1836, leaving one daughter. Smith dealt chiefly with New York, corresponding with his nephew Henry Smith, and constantly suggesting additional articles of export, clover seed being a favorite. In spite of reverses during the War of 1812, he became quite prosperous.

Smith's principal distinction arises from his share in establishing regular steamship service across the ocean. The single voyage of the Savannah in 1819, sponsor ed by Moses Rogers and William Scarborough [qq.v.], had been premature. In 1829, the Curaçao had made several trips from Holland to the Dutch West Indies, and in 1833 the Royal William went from Quebec to England, but none of these ventures developed into regular permanent service. The "liners" of the clay were the highly efficient New York sailing packets. Smith seems to have conceived the idea of a line of transatlantic steamers about the time of his fifty-four-day voyage to New York in a British sailing vessel in 1832. He actively devoted the next few years to creating public opinion and raising capital for the support of his project. Kind, generous, and very hospitable, the little man, barely five feet six, went at the task with great energy of purpose and perseverance. Rebuffed in New York, he returned to London and in February 1833 proposed his idea to the directors of the London & Edinburgh Steam Packet Company without success. He issued several prospectuses, with no immediate response. In 1836, however, having secured a powerful ally in Macgregor Laird [see Dictionary of National Biography] of the great Birkenhead shipbuilding family, he organized the British & American Steam Navigation Company.

Great Britain's conversion to ocean steamships, once Smith had overcome the prevailing skepticism, was rapid, and in quick succession a number of rival companies were formed. Smith and Laird, in fact, had only a few hours to spare in being the first to reach New York. Isambard K. Brunel [Ibid.], engineer of the Great Western Railway, persuaded its Bristol backers in 1836 to form a transatlantic steamship company. Their 1340-ton steamship, Great Western, was launched July 19, 1837. Smith and Laird, in the meantime, were encountering disheartening delays. They had ordered a 1700-ton steamship in October 1836, but the failure of the contractor postponed even the laying of the keel until April 1, 1837. Eager to be the first across the Atlantic, they decided not to wait for this vessel to be completed, so chartered from the Cork Steamship Company the little 700-ton Sirius, which left Cork on April 4, 1838, and reached New York, on the voyage that marked the start of permanent transatlantic steam service, on the evening of April 22, a few hours ahead of the Great Western, which had left Bristol on April 7. Smith's vessel, the British Queen, was finally launched on May 24, 1838, and first reached New York July 27, 1839. Smith was the hero of the hour. It was declared in Hunt's Merchants' Magazine (October 1840, p. 298) that to him "more than to any other individual, is the final and successful accomplishment of this great enterprise doubtless to be attributed." Yale gave him the degree of LLD. in 1840 and he had visions of knighthood (Pond, post, p. 187).

Then came reverses. Under Laird's supervision, his company, in December 1839, launched the President, the "largest ship in the world." She sailed on a return voyage from New York March II, 1841, and disappeared without a trace. This disaster, coupled with the successful competition of the line established by Samuel Cunard, who received the lucrative British mail subsidy in 1839, soon brought the British & American Steam Navigation Company to a close, and Smith in 1843 ended his long London residence. Back in America, he purchased a plantation near Greenville, South Carolina., and tried to relieve the country from dependence upon China for tea by growing; it in the Southern states. The idea apparently came to him through his daughter, who was married to an army chaplain in India. He wrote numerous articles on the domestic growing of tea, celery, and broccoli, and made experiments which, according to later reports of the Department of Agriculture, indicated promise of a successful American supply of tea. This work, however, came to a tragic close. Smith's anti-slavery sentiments aroused his neighbors, and on December 23, 1851, he sustained a fractured skull from a beating at the hands of "patrollers." These injuries hastened his death, which occurred at Bloomingdale Asylum, after some months of illness in his nephew's home, Astoria, L. I.

Smith's publications included: An Oration, Pronounced at Hartford, before the Society of the Cincinnati, for the State of Connecticut (1804); Letters upon Atlantic Steam Navigation (1841); Essays on the Cultivation of the Tea Plant, in the United States of America (1848); agricultural papers in the reports of the commissioner of patents; articles in the Merchants' Magazine, notably "Origin of Atlantic Ocean Steam Navigation" (February 1847); "Letters on Atlantic Steam Navigation" and "Steam Ships, and Steam Navigation," in American Journal of Science and Arts (January, July 1839).

[E. L. Pond, Junius Smith, A Biography of the Father of the Atlantic Liner (1927), utilizing source material and reproducing much correspondence between Smith and his nephew; F. B. Dexter, Biographical Sketches Graduates Yale College, volume V (1911); Hunt's Merchants' Magazine, October 1840; W. S. Lindsay, History of Merchant Shipping and Ancient Commerce, volume IV (1876); Brief Memoirs of the Class of r 802 (1863); article by Henry Smith in Evening Post (New York), June 24, 1882; Evening Post (New York), January 24, 1853; Journal of Commerce (New York), January 25, 1853.]

R.G.A.


SMITH, Oliver (January 20, 1766--December 22, 1845), philanthropist, supporter of the American Colonization Society.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, pp. 329-330:

SMITH, OLIVER (January 20, 1766--December 22, 1845), philanthropist, was born at Hatfield, Massachusetts, the son of Samuel and Mary (Morton) Smith. On his father's side, he was a descendant of Samuel Smith who emigrated from England on the ship Elizabeth in 1634, settled in Wethersfield, Connecticut, and later moved to Hatfield. Mary Morton's ancestry went back to George Morton [q.v.], one of the organizers of the voyage of the Anne and the Little James to Plymouth. The year after Oliver, the youngest of six sons, was born, his father died of an "apoplectic fit," occasioned by overwork in the hay field on a hot July day. The boys were brought up by their mother, a woman noted in the community for her frugality, vigor, and piety. One of them was Joseph, father of Sophia Smith [q.v.], founder of Smith College.

Oliver began life with a capital of $500; when he was middle aged, the boys of Hatfield expressed their ambition for wealth by saying they wished they could be as rich as Oliver Smith; at his death he left what for the place and time was a large fortune-almost $400,000. He engaged in farming, fattened cattle for market, and in his later years made profitable investments in Wall Street securities. He wasted nothing, spent little, and rarely gave anything away. A contemporary wrote regarding him: "During the thirty years or more of my recollection of him, he wore the same overgarments; but by reason of a certain trimness and neatness, he always appeared respectably dressed" (S. D. Partridge, in Wells, post, p. 263). When stoves were put in the meeting house, he was leader of a protesting group who withdrew from the ecclesiastical society. He was strictly honest in his dealings with others, but managed to avoid paying taxes on all his property, probably feeling that the money would be wasted. He was opposed to liberal education, believing it a hindrance rather than a help to success in life, and carried about in his pocket statistics to support his conviction. In politics he was originally a Jeffersonian Democrat, but later became a National Republican. He was a member of the Massachusetts constitutional convention in 1820, a presidential elector in 1824, voting for John Quincy Adams, and twice represented his town in the state legislature (1827-28). For many years he was a director of the bank in Northampton. He never married.

Penurious in the extreme throughout his life, he nevertheless provided that the greater part of his wealth should be devoted to charitable and educational purposes after his death. By his will a remarkable document-he established an accumulating fund, which, when it had reached a certain amount, was to be used for three objects. Brought up by a widowed mother and mindful of the straitened circumstances of his early days, he directed that the major portion of the fund should be utilized to provide grants for indigent young people and widows. Boys selected by the trustees were to be bound out in good families, taught husbandry or a trade, and when twenty-one, if worthy, receive a grant of $500; similarly, girls were to be bound out, instructed in domestic duties, and given $300 as a marriage portion. Smaller amounts were to be given under certain conditions to young women about to be married, for household equipment, and to needy widows with dependent child or children. Smith's interest in agriculture led him to stipulate that another portion of the fund be used to establish an agricultural school in Northampton. The remainder, $10,000, was to go to the American Colonization Society. The will was contested by the heirs-at-law and a notable legal battle in the supreme judicial court of Massachusetts followed, opening July 6, 1847, with Rufus Choate counsel for the contestants, and Daniel Webster for the executor; but the will was sustained (54 Massachusetts, 34). The amount expended by the trustees in carrying out the terms of the will reaches into the millions, and on March 15, 1907, the Smith's Agricultural School and Northampton School of Technology was established.

[D. W. and R. F. Wells, A History of Hatfield, Massachusetts (copyright 1910), appendix containing portion of Smith's will; C. A. Wight, The Hatfield Book (copyright 1908); E. D. Hanscom and H. F. Green, Sophia Smith and the Beginnings of Smith College (1926); Massachusetts Board of Education, Seventy-Third Annual Report (1910).]

H. E. S.


SMITH, Oliver Hampton (October 23, 1794-March 19, 1859), lawyer, representative and senator, was of Quaker descent.  In December 1836, the Indiana General Assembly elected him as a Whig to a seat in the United States Senate. His principal speeches in the Senate were on measures relative to the public lands, banking, bankruptcy, the Cumberland road, and the abolition of slavery in the Territories.

(W. W. Woollen, Biographical and Historical Sketches of Early Indiana (1883); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, pp. 330-331:

SMITH, OLIVER HAMPTON (October 23, 1794-March 19, 1859), lawyer, representative and senator, was of Quaker descent. His ancestors accompanied William Penn to America; his grandparents occupied Smith's Island in the Delaware River about twelve miles above Trenton; and here, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Oliver, the son of Thomas and Letitia Smith, was born. He had six brothers and two sisters. He obtained an elementary education at a neighboring country school. When he was in his nineteenth year his father died, and Oliver soon lost the small fortune which he had inherited. In 1816 he set out for the West, and at Pittsburgh engaged to take two coal boats to Louisville. He struck a snag and lost one of them, but succeeded, in the spring of 1817, in reaching Rising Sun, Ind., where he engaged in a small business with seventy-five dollars as his capital. A year later he was in Lawrenceburg, studying law, and in March 1820 he was admitted to the bar.

He commenced practice at Versailles, but soon removed to Connersville, where he rapidly rose to prominence. In August 1822 he was elected to the Indiana House of Representatives. He was made chairman of the judiciary committee and served until 1824, when the governor appointed him prosecuting attorney for the third judicial district. During two years of service in this capacity he successfully prosecuted four notorious frontiersmen charged with the murder of Indians. In 1826 he was elected to Congress as a Jackson Democrat. He rode to Washington on horseback and took his seat at the opening of the Twentieth Congress, December 3, 1827. He was a member of the committee on Indian affairs, and on February 19, 1828, made a vigorous plea for an Indian policy " marked with justice, humanity, and a magnanimity of purpose, that will atone, as far as possible, for the great injustice which we have done them." In another address, January 28, 1829, he presented cogent arguments in favor of appropriations for the construction of the Cumberland road. Defeated for reelection to Congress, he was engaged in the practice of law and in farming when, in December 1836, the General Assembly elected him as a Whig to a seat in the United States Senate. He was a member of the committee on the militia in 1837, and of the committee on the judiciary in 1839, and was made chairman of the important committee on public lands in 1841. His principal speeches in the Senate were on measures relative to the public lands, banking, bankruptcy, the Cumberland road, and the abolition of slavery in the Territories. He rose to leadership in evolving a federal land policy in the interest of the actual settlers (Congressional Globe, 27 Congress, I Session, App., p. 456), and supported the Whig plan for the federal assumption of state debts to the extent of the proceeds of the sales of the public lands within the states.

Failing of reelection to the Senate, Smith retired to private life in Indianapolis, projected the Indianapolis & Bellefontaine Railroad, became its first president, and subsequently participated in a project for a line from Indianapolis to Evansville. In July 1857 he commenced writing for the Indianapolis Daily Journal a series of sketches and reminiscences of frontier life in Indiana which in the following year was published in book form under the title, Early Indiana Trials and Sketches (1858). Although crude in style, the volume is a vivid presentation of various phases of early Indiana history.

Smith was a rough-hewn frontiersman, five feet ten inches in height, with standing black hair, shaggy eyebrows and a strong voice; he was diffuse but convincing in speech, and one of the most respected of Indiana pioneers. He married Mary Bramfield, a Quaker, in 1821, and they had three children. He died in Indianapolis and was buried in Crown Hill Cemetery.

[W. W. Woollen, Biographical and Historical Sketches of Early Indiana (1883); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); A Biographical History of Eminent and Self-Made Men of the State of Indiana (1880), volume II; Indianapolis Daily Journal, March 21, 1859; Lafayette Daily Journal, March 22, 1859.]

N.D.M.


SMITH, Richard H, American Colonization Society, Treasurer, 1833-1834. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 189-190)


SMITH, Samuel, Delaware, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1837-1838.


SMITH, Samuel Harrison, Washington, Maryland, soldier, general.  Vice-President, American Colonization Society (ACS), 1833-41.  Original co-founding member of the ACS in Washington, DC, in December 1816.  Vice President of the Maryland Society of the ACS. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 15, 30, 111, 208)


SMITH, Samuel Stanhope, 1750-1819, President of Princeton College, New Jersey.  Declared slavery was “a moral wrong and a political evil.”  Called for voluntary manumission. 

(Birney, 1890, p. 26-27; Locke, Mary Stoughton. Anti-Slavery in America from the Introduction of African Slaves to the Prohibition of the Slave Trade (1619-1808). Boston: Ginn & Co., 1901, p. 90; Mason, 2006, p. 149; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, pp. 344-345; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 20, p. 283; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 15, 30, 111, 208). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, pp. 344-345:

SMITH, SAMUEL STANHOPE (March 16, 1750-August 21, 1819), Presbyterian clergyman, college president, was born at Pequea, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, the son of the Reverend Robert and Elizabeth (Blair) Smith; one of his younger brothers was John Blair Smith [q.v.]. At the age of six Samuel commenced the study of Latin and Greek at the academy conducted by his father at Pequea and was so well grounded in these essentials that he was admitted when sixteen to the junior class of the College of New Jersey, at Princeton. There mathematics awakened in him a life-long interest in natural science; there, also, he began to manifest the spirit of free inquiry that characterized ever afterward his intellectual activities. He had become infected "with the fanciful doctrines of bishop Berkeley" and it required the blandishments of a Witherspoon to wean him from th e cloudy speculations of immaterialism to the clear light of common sense (Sermons, post, I, 7-16).

After graduating in 1769 he assisted his father at the academy for a time, but the following year was recalled to Princeton to teach the classics and to cultivate among the students a taste for belles-lettres. In 1773 he was licensed to preach by the New Castle Presbytery, and, partly because of ill health, he abandoned his books for the missionary field. In the western counties of Virginia, among his own Scotch-Irish people, he supplemented the work of his predecessor, Samuel Davies [q.v.], in strengthening the Presbyterian allegiance. So great was his influence that his humble adherents raised the sizable sum of $50,000 to found, in 1776, under his guidance, the Academy of Hampden-Sidney, rechartered in 1783 as the College of Hampden-Sidney. Meanwhile he married Ann, daughter of John Withers poon [q.v.]; nine children were born to them. After serving as president of the Academy in addition to his pastoral work for two or three years, ill health compelled him to turn over the work to his brother John.

In 1779 he returned to the College of New Jersey as teacher of moral philosophy. Here for thirty-three years he labored, first a professor and after 1795 as president. In the absence of President Witherspoon, who was engaged in public affairs, much of the administrative work fell on Smith. Th e task that confronted him was herculean. Money had to be raised to repair the ravages of the Revolution; in 1802, after Smith had succeeded to the presidency, the work had to be done again, for Nassau Hall was practically destroyed by fire. Suspicion that wanton students were responsible for the damage led to the strengthening of discipline; and while the elders talked of irreligion and false notions of liberty, the students with Gallic fervor charged restraints upon their liberties. In 1807, just after the enrollment had reached 200 students, insubordination broke out. More than half the undergraduates were suspended. Smith never recovered from the strain of those days and from that time on his health waned; in 1812 he resigned. To the intellectual advancement of the college, however, he had contributed much. He raised funds for scientific apparatus and called to the college, in 1795, John Maclean [q.v.], the first undergraduate teacher of chemistry and natural science in the United States. For ten years a unique course that combined training in the sciences and the humanities was offered. All such innovations were bitterly opposed, however. Smith himself was subjected to hostile criticism because of his views. His position upon the subject of divine grace was not approved, and he was constrained to discontinue his original lectures upon the evidence of religion and moral philosophy.

He was a popular preacher, compounding "the sound sense and masterly argument of the English preachers," and "the spirit, fire, and vehemence of the French" (Sermons, I, 55). Though the three volumes of his sermons were widely read, his Lectures on the Evidences of the Christian Religion (1809) and his Lectures ... on the Subjects of Moral and Political Philosophy (2 volumes, 1812) have had a lasting influence. These works aided in perpetuating the commonsense realism of Witherspoon, which became so popular and so widely spread as to bear the legitimate claim of being distinctive American philosophy. Smith showed a willingness to liberalize many of the old and more strict data of moral philosophy. Discarding the theory of catastrophe in the affairs of men, he put forth the view, far in advance of that of his time, that "The minutest causes, acting constantly, and long continued, will necessarily create great and conspicuous differences among mankind" (An Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species, 1787, p. 3). In the same essay he flatly contradicted the theory of the separate creation of the different races. Independently of revelation, he arrived at a belief in the genetic unity of mankind, ascribing the existence of racial types to the influences of climate and "the state of society." He gave much thought to the problem of slavery and devised a plan whereby, he believed, freedmen might become economically independent.

[A. J. Morrison, College of Hampden Sidney Directory of Biographical, 1776-1825 (1921); Sermons of S. S. Smith (1821); W. B. Sprague, Annals American Pulpit, volume III (1858); John Maclean, History of the College of New Jersey, volume II (1877); V. L. Collins, Princeton (1914); Gladys Bryson, "Philosophy and Modern Social Sciences," Social Forces, October 1932.]

J.E.P.


SMITH, Stephen, 1795-1873, African American, former slave, businessman, clergyman, abolitionist, conductor on the Underground Railroad, temperance activist.

(Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 10, p. 383)


SMITH, William


SMITH, William Henry (December 1, 1833- July 27, 1896), journalist.  He early joined a group of young free soilers-that included Rutherford B. Hayes and John Brough.

Whitelaw Reid, A Political History of Slavery; M. E. Stone, Fifty Years a Journalist (1921);

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 9, Pt. 1, pp. 364-365:

SMITH, WILLIAM HENRY (December 1, 1833- July 27, 1896), journalist, was born at Austerlitz, Columbia County, New York, the son of William DeForest Smith. His father is said to have come from Litchfield County, Connecticut, where his ancestors settled about 1640, and his mother is said to have been a member of a family named Gott, which settled in Columbia County, New York, at the close of the Revolutionary War. He was taken by his parents as an infant to Homer, Ohio. After serving as a school teacher and a tutor, he began his journalistic career by acting as correspondent for Cincinnati newspapers. He early joined a group of young men-free soilers-that included Rutherford B. Hayes and John Brough [qq.v.]. In 1855 he was married to Emma Reynolds, who died in 1891. He became a member of the staff of the Cincinnati Gazette, but he gave up newspaper work for a time to act as private secretary to Governor Brough and from 1864 to 1866 to be secretary of the state of Ohio. After his second term as secretary of state, he edited the Cincinnati Evening Chronicle. In 1870 he took charge of the Western Associated Press, then a struggling organization with headquarters at Chicago. President Hayes, his old friend, appointed him collector of the port of Chicago, but he also continued his press association work. As collector he was instrumental in correcting certain abuses in the New York customs office that worked to the disadvantage of Chicago importers. In 1882 he effected a combination of the New York Associated Press and the Western Associated Press and was chosen general manager of the joint organization, a position he held until he was succeeded by Melville E. Stone [q.v.]. During his twenty-two years as head of these two press associations, a system of leased wires was established, and typewriters were used in receiving the telegraphic news reports. He also aided Whitelaw Reid [q.v.] in organizing and developing the Mergenthaler Linotype Company.

He was keenly interested in the history of the Middle West. He took an active part in the preservation of historical material pertaining to the Northwest Territory and was requested by the Ohio state legislature to edit the papers of Arthur St. Clair, the first governor of the territory. These were published in two volumes in 1882 under the title The St. Clair Papers. After 1892 he devoted his time to preparing a history of slavery in this country, particularly with reference to the anti-slavery movement in the Middle West, with which he had been identified. This work, practically completed at the time of his death, was finally published in two volumes in 1903 as A Political History of Slavery. He also collected some material for a volume on the life and times of President Hayes, which was to be a continuation of his history oi slavery. This material was incorporated in the Life of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (2 volumes, 1914) written by Smith's son-in-law, Charles Richard Williams [q.v.]. He died at his home in Lake Forest, Illinois, survived by one son.

[Biographical sketch by Whitelaw Reid in A Political History of Slavery, ante; some details of his friendship with Hayes in Williams, ante; M. E. Stone, Fifty Years a Journalist (1921); Ohio Arch. and History Pubs., volume IV (1895); Chicago Daily Tribune, July 28, 1896; New York Tribune, July 28, August 28, 1896. ]

W.G.B-r.


SMITH, William R., New York, abolitionist leader.

(Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971)


SMITHERS, Nathaniel, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Congressional Globe; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928)


SMYTH, William, Brunswick, Maine, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1835-1837.



Sources:
Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-X, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volumes I-VI, Edited by James Grant Wilson & John Fiske, New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1888-1889.