48 Facts About Gerrit Smith

Gerrit Smith, spelled Gerritt Smith, was a leading American social reformer, abolitionist, businessman, public intellectual, and philanthropist.

Gerrit Smith was, and less successfully, a temperance activist, and a women's rights suffrage advocate.

Gerrit Smith was a significant financial contributor to the Liberty Party and the Republican Party throughout his life.

Gerrit Smith was a member of the Secret Six who financially supported John Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry, in 1859.

From 1822 on, Peter Gerrit Smith was intensely engaged in the work of the Bible and Tract societies.

Gerrit Smith inherited 50,000 acres of land from his father, and at one point he owned 750,000 acres, an area bigger than Rhode Island.

Gerrit Smith withdrew from all business and vested in his second son Gerrit, who had to abandon plans for a law career, the entire charge of his estate, described as "monumental".

Gerrit Smith became an active temperance campaigner, and claimed to have given in 1824 the first temperance speech ever in the New York State Legislature.

Gerrit Smith warms with the subject, especially if opposed, until at the climax, his heavy voice rolling forth in ponderous volume and his large frame quivering in every muscle, he stands, like Jupiter, thundering, and shaking with his thunderbolts his throne itself.

Gerrit Smith attended numerous revival meetings, and taught Sunday school.

Gerrit Smith thought of establishing a seminary for Black students.

Gerrit Smith resigned as a trustee of Hamilton College "on the grounds that the school was insufficiently anti-slavery", and joined the board of and financially assisted the Oneida Institute, "a hotbed of anti-slavery activity".

Gerrit Smith contributed $9,000 to support schools in Liberia, but realized by 1835 that the American Colonization Society had no intention of abolishing slavery.

Gerrit Smith was a laggard instead of a leader in changing from supporting colonization to "immediatism", immediate full abolitionism.

In 1840, Gerrit Smith played a leading part in the organization of the Liberty Party; the name of the party was his.

Birney, but not Gerrit Smith, is recorded in the commemorative painting of the event.

In 1848, Gerrit Smith was nominated for the Presidency by the remnant of this organization that had not been absorbed by the Free Soil Party.

On June 2,1848, in Rochester, New York, Gerrit Smith was nominated as the Liberty Party's presidential candidate.

At the request of friends, Gerrit Smith had 3,000 copies printed of an 1851 speech in Troy in which he set forth his views of government.

Gerrit Smith opposed tariffs, internal improvements, such as the Erie Canal, at public expense, and publicly-supported schools, which could not teach religion, which Smith thought the main function of schools.

The only political office to which Gerrit Smith was ever elected, and that by a very large majority, was Representative in the US Congress.

Gerrit Smith served a single term in Congress, on the Free Soil ticket, from March 4,1853, until the end of the session on August 7,1854, although he said that because of his business activities he had sought neither the nomination nor his election.

Gerrit Smith then published a lengthy letter to his constituents explaining his frustrations in Congress and his decision not to run for a second term.

Gerrit Smith was well liked, even by Southern members, who found him "one of the best fellows in the Capitol, as one, although well known as an abolitionist, still as one to be tolerated".

In Ohio, a slate of presidential electors pledged to Gerrit Smith ran with the name of the Union Party.

Gerrit Smith, along with his friend and ally Lysander Spooner, was a leading advocate of the United States Constitution as an antislavery document, as opposed to abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, who believed it was to be condemned as a pro-slavery document, and was in favor of secession by the North.

In 1852, Gerrit Smith was elected to the United States House of Representatives as a Free-Soiler.

Unhappy with his separation from his home and business, Gerrit Smith resigned his seat at the end of the first session, ostensibly to allow voters sufficient time to select his successor.

In 1869, Gerrit Smith served as a delegate to the founding convention of the Prohibition Party.

In 1846, hoping to help black families become self-sufficient, to isolate and thus protect them from escaped slave-hunters, and to provide them with the property ownership that was needed for Blacks to vote in New York, Gerrit Smith attempted to help free blacks settle approximately 120,000 acres of land he owned in the remote Adirondacks.

However, the land Gerrit Smith gave away was "of but moderate fertility", "heavily timbered, and in no respect remarkably inviting".

Gerrit Smith paid the legal expenses of several persons charged with infractions of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.

Gerrit Smith became a leading figure in the Kansas Aid Movement, a campaign to raise money and show solidarity with anti-slavery immigrants to that territory.

Gerrit Smith was a member of what much later was called the Secret Six, a informal group of influential Northern abolitionists, who supported Brown in his efforts to capture the armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia and start a slave revolt.

Governor Wise suggested that Gerrit Smith be brought to him, "by fair or foul means", but residents of Peterboro said publicly that they would use guns to protect him.

Upset by the raid, its outcome, and its aftermath, expecting to be indicted, Gerrit Smith suffered a mental breakdown; he was described in the press as "a raving lunatic", who became "very violent".

Gerrit Smith was accused of feigning his illness, but multiple reports state that it was genuine.

Gerrit Smith's claim was countered by the Tribune, which produced an affidavit, signed by Brown's son, swearing that Gerrit Smith had full knowledge of all the particulars of the plan, including the plan to instigate a slave uprising.

Gerrit Smith was a major benefactor of New-York Central College, a co-educational and "racially" integrated college in Cortland County.

Gerrit Smith supported the American Civil War, but at its close he advocated a mild policy toward the late Confederate states, declaring that part of the guilt of slavery lay upon the North.

In doing this, Gerrit Smith incurred the resentment of Northern Radical Republican leaders.

Gerrit Smith was one of the founders of the Church at Peterboro, a non-denominational institution open to all non-slave-owning Christians.

Gerrit Smith died in 1874 while visiting relatives in New York City.

Gerrit Smith provided support for a large number of progressive causes and people and, except for his land grants, did not keep careful records.

Gerrit Smith literally gave away fortunes to relieve immediate distress.

Gerrit Smith helped on election expenses, maintained papers, supported editors and their families, was at perpetual charge for the maintenance of societies organised for particular reforms.

Gerrit Smith paid for the printing of hundreds of broadsides, with his views on a variety of subjects.

Smith's grandson, Gerrit Smith Miller, was the final resident of the Smith mansion.