Gerrit Smith
- Biographies
The Biographies
The "Autobiography of Gerrit Smith"
Gerrit Smith By Octavius Brooks Frothingham
Gerrit Smith - The Story of a Noble
(Man's) Life, By Charles A. Hammond
Gerrit
Smith by Ralph Volney Harlow
Other Publications About Gerrit Smith
A number of articles based on the Gerrit Smith Miller Collection have been
published in the Courier, the quarterly journal of Syracuse
University Library Associates. Key articles have been reproduced on this site
with permission of the publisher.
Articles
The Black Dream of Gerrit Smith, New York
Abolitionist
by John R. McKivigan and Madeleine Leveille, Courier,
Fall 1985
Common Cause: The Antislavery
Alliance of Gerrit Smith and Beriah Green
by Milton C. Sernett,
Courier, Fall 1986
The full text is presented here of what appears to be a draft campaign
biography (approx. 1600 words). The text is also included in 'He Stands Like
Jupiter': The Autobiography of Gerrit Smith, by John R. McKivigan and
Madeline L. McKivigan, written around 1983. In that article, the authors added a
brief introduction and extensive footnotes, along with an analysis of Smith's
psychological development. Only the original text by Smith is included here.
Gerrit Smith by Octavius Brooks Frothingham
Octavius B. Frothingham was a clergyman, and a scholar. His biography was
prepared with the cooperation of Gerrit Smith's daughter, Elizabeth
Smith Miller. It has been criticized for its affectionate treatment of the
subject, stilted 19th Century phrasing, and for the fact that after initial
publication it was altered on demand of Smith's family. In the preface to his
own book, Harlow said of Frothingham's effort that the book "was so
contrived as to satisfy nobody except possibly the author himself."
After publication, the Smith family publicly chastised Frothingham for his
conclusion that Smith had prior information regarding John Brown's raid on
Harper's Ferry. The book was recalled, the bindings broken, and the offending
pages removed. Future editions were published without these pages, and with
other related changes, on the family's insistence. The changes appear in the
second edition on pp. 238-252.
Reports of the events concerning alteration of the first edition are in the
archives of the Alumni Quarterly of Hamilton College. The 1969 reprinting by
Negro Universities Press is of the complete first edition.
A charming and not fully explained feature of the book is a small engraving
of two clasped hands, one with a lace cuff, placed at the end of the text. The
hands depicted are those of Gerrit Smith and his wife, Ann Carroll Fitzhugh
Smith "taken from life." The sculpture shown below, identical to the
illustration, is in the collection of the Madison County Historical Society.
According to the Historical Society record, it was carved by a man who was born
in slavery.
Gerrit Smith - The Story of a Noble (Man's) Life
by Charles A. Hammond
The first edition of this book, published in 1900 includes the word "Man's"
in the title, but this is excluded from the title of the 1908 edition. Hammond
was well acquainted with Smith, and like Frothingham, was an admirer. This
volume is much smaller (115 pages) than the Frothingham and Harlow books, and
reads like a personalized digest of the Frothingham book. A few
representative examples are provided of the
similarity between the two.
Hammond's avowed purpose was to provide an inspirational example to young
persons. He relates a number of personal conversations, including some about
Smith's hospitalization at Utica and his relationship with John Brown. He
supports the genuine character of Smith's breakdown, and is the only biographer
to report on the content of Smith's delusions at the time he was hospitalized.
Gerrit Smith by Ralph Volney Harlow
Ralph Volney Harlow was Chairman of the Syracuse University History
Department at the time of Gerrit Smith Miller's 1928 gift to the University of
the papers of Peter and Gerrit Smith. In 1932 excerpts from Gerrit Smith's
correspondence were printed in the
Syracuse Journal in an article that made reference to Dr. Harlow's work
on a Gerrit Smith biography. The work was finally published in 1939.
A contemporary reading of Harlow's biography illustrates some of the
perennial problems of the historian and of the biographer. The selection of
facts to be reported, their interpretation, and contextual presentation all must
be affected by the lens that is the writer. Time has made apparent some of the
qualities of this biographer's lens, sufficient to cause several who are
familiar with Gerrit Smith to long for a contemporary, and more sympathetic
treatment. The Biographical Material page on this
website represents an attempt, short of full blown biography, to collect sources
of information that may help the interested reader come to an understanding of
who Gerrit Smith was, and the personal and social context in which he lived.
Harlow conducted extensive research into Smith's papers and publications
held in libraries throughout the country. For information on Smith's early life
he relied on Frothingham's biography, which he regarded
as an unreliable source. He completely overlooked Hammond's,
and made no reference to him, though Hammond was for a time pastor of Smith's
Church of Peterboro, and furnished first hand accounts that sometimes conflict
with Harlow's.
A striking feature of the Harlow biography is it's often negative tone. The
pages often drip with sarcasm, and the author rarely resists an opportunity to
mock his subject. In the process, Harlow reveals his own biases, as in this
passage, which follows the text of a letter Smith wrote to William Lee, intended
to be read to Lee on his arrival at Peterboro following Smith's purchase of his
freedom from a southern slaveholder:
Here in this letter appears the abolitionist notion in its simplest form,
that the Negro was a black Anglo-Saxon, capable of being stirred as a white man
would be by this evidence of disinterested philanthropy. And at precisely this
point appears the overwhelming weakness of every true Abolitionist: an absolute
inability to see the Negro as he was, and when the blacks were concerned, a
total lack of anything even remotely resembling a sense of humor. (p.273)
Harlow's interpretation of the letter to William Lee contrasts with typical
Frothingham:
The "evangelical" minister who permits the use of this letter
pronounces it worthy to rank with Paul's letter to Philemon. And so it is.
(p.121)
On the subjects of Smith's complicity in John Brown's raid on Harpers'
Ferry, Harlow concludes Smith fully informed and culpable. While noting that
his subsequent admission to the asylum at Utica "saved Gerrit Smith from
further embarrassment on account of his complicity in Brown's work.." (p.
413) he does not question that Smith was in fact ill. Harlow's analysis was
that "Delirium was the only escape from this tangle of conflicts"
(p.412).
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