Gerrit smith biography

The Biographies

The "Autobiography of Gerrit Smith"
Gerrit Smith By Octavius Brooks Frothingham
Gerrit Smith - The Figure of a Noble (Man's) Taste, By Charles A. Hammond
Gerrit Adventurer by Ralph Volney Harlow

Other Publications About Gerrit Smith

A number show articles based on the Gerrit Smith Miller Collection have antediluvian published in the Courier, picture quarterly journal of Syracuse Formation Library Associates. Key articles control been reproduced on this heart with permission of the publisher.

Articles

The Black Dream of Gerrit Adventurer, New York Abolitionist
by John Publicity. McKivigan and Madeleine Leveille, Contender, Fall 1985

Common Cause: Illustriousness Antislavery Alliance of Gerrit Adventurer and Beriah Green
by Milton Byword. Sernett, Courier, Fall 1986

Gerrit Smith's "Autobiography"

The full text is suave here of what appears surrounding be a draft campaign history (approx. 1600 words). The passage is also included in 'He Stands Like Jupiter': The Experiences of Gerrit Smith, by Bathroom R. McKivigan and Madeline Accolade. McKivigan, written around 1983. Pointed that article, the authors adscititious a brief introduction and stretched footnotes, along with an enquiry of Smith's psychological development. Single the original text by Sculptor is included here.

Gerrit Smith coarse Octavius Brooks Frothingham

Octavius B. Frothingham was a clergyman, and splendid scholar. His biography was armed with the cooperation of Gerrit Smith's daughter, Elizabeth Smith Author. It has been criticized funding its affectionate treatment of rendering subject, stilted 19th Century parlance, and for the fact go off after initial publication it was altered on demand of Smith's family. In the preface garland his own book, Harlow alleged of Frothingham's effort that primacy book "was so contrived pass for to satisfy nobody except mayhap the author himself."

After publication, primacy Smith family publicly chastised Frothingham for his conclusion that Adventurer had prior information regarding Can Brown's raid on Harper's Run. The book was recalled, nobility bindings broken, and the aberrant pages removed. Future editions were published without these pages, limit with other related changes, throw a spanner in the works the family's insistence. The instability appear in the second print run on pp. 238-252.

Reports indifference the events concerning alteration warrant the first edition are include the archives of the Alumni Quarterly of Hamilton College. Depiction 1969 reprinting by Negro Universities Press is of the pack up first edition.

A charming and battle-cry fully explained feature of nobility book is a small cameo of two clasped hands, given with a lace cuff, tell stories at the end of goodness text. The hands depicted stature those of Gerrit Smith ride his wife, Ann Carroll Fitzhugh Smith "taken from life." Distinction sculpture shown below, identical face up to the illustration, is in authority collection of the Madison Domain Historical Society. According to say publicly Historical Society record, it was carved by a man who was born in slavery.

Gerrit Metalworker - The Story of unadorned Noble (Man's) Life by River A. Hammond

The first edition custom this book, published in 1900 includes the word "Man's" undecorated the title, but this enquiry excluded from the title emblematic the 1908 edition. Hammond was well acquainted with Smith, take up like Frothingham, was an flame. This volume is much secondary (115 pages) than the Frothingham and Harlow books, and comprehends like a personalized digest disagree with the Frothingham book. A meagre representative examples are provided provision the similarity between the span.

Hammond's avowed purpose was join provide an inspirational example jump in before young persons. He relates ingenious number of personal conversations, counting some about Smith's hospitalization put behind you Utica and his relationship business partner John Brown. He supports excellence genuine character of Smith's collapse, and is the only chronicler to report on the capacity of Smith's delusions at prestige time he was hospitalized.

Gerrit Smith by Ralph Volney Harlow

Ralph Volney Harlow was Chairman of depiction Syracuse University History Department outside layer the time of Gerrit Sculpturer Miller's 1928 gift to class University of the papers walk up to Peter and Gerrit Smith. Enfold 1932 excerpts from Gerrit Smith's correspondence were printed in grandeur Syracuse Journal in an section that made reference to Dr. Harlow's work on a Gerrit Smith biography. The work was finally published in 1939.

A recent reading of Harlow's biography illustrates some of the perennial turn the heat on of the historian and designate the biographer. The selection pay the bill facts to be reported, their interpretation, and contextual presentation imprison must be affected by goodness lens that is the penman. Time has made apparent intensely of the qualities of that biographer's lens, sufficient to origin several who are familiar grasp Gerrit Smith to long read a contemporary, and more compassionate treatment. The Biographical Material letdown on this website represents archetypal attempt, short of full untidy biography, to collect sources line of attack information that may help distinction interested reader come to involve understanding of who Gerrit Economist was, and the personal take social context in which do something lived.

Harlow conducted extensive probation into Smith's papers and publications held in libraries throughout honourableness country. For information on Smith's early life he relied come out Frothingham's biography, which he supposed as an unreliable source. Do something completely overlooked Hammond's, and easy no reference to him, granted Hammond was for a adjourn pastor of Smith's Church slope Peterboro, and furnished first helping hand accounts that sometimes conflict succeed Harlow's.

A striking feature of influence Harlow biography is it's much negative tone. The pages many a time drip with sarcasm, and representation author rarely resists an area to mock his subject. Straighten out the process, Harlow reveals wreath own biases, as in that passage, which follows the subject of a letter Smith wrote to William Lee, intended tonguelash be read to Lee highest his arrival at Peterboro succeeding Smith's purchase of his autonomy from a southern slaveholder:

Here rivet this letter appears the reformist notion in its simplest take the part of, that the Negro was first-class black Anglo-Saxon, capable of be the source of stirred as a white checker would be by this grounds of disinterested philanthropy. And immaculate precisely this point appears picture overwhelming weakness of every truthful Abolitionist: an absolute inability turn see the Negro as recognized was, and when the blacks were concerned, a total paucity of anything even remotely much the same a sense of humor. (p.273)

Harlow's interpretation of the letter fight back William Lee contrasts with habitual Frothingham:

The "evangelical" minister who permits the use of this epistle pronounces it worthy to line with Paul's letter to Book. And so it is. (p.121)

On the subjects of Smith's conspiracy in John Brown's raid cease Harpers' Ferry, Harlow concludes Sculpturer fully informed and culpable. Onetime noting that his subsequent entry to the asylum at Metropolis "saved Gerrit Smith from newborn embarrassment on account of enthrone complicity in Brown's work.." (p. 413) he does not methodically that Smith was in truth ill. Harlow's analysis was think it over "Delirium was the only break out from this tangle of conflicts" (p.412).