Gerrit smith biography

Gerrit Smith


The Biographies

The "Autobiography of Gerrit Smith"
Gerrit Smith By Octavius Brooks Frothingham
Gerrit Smith - The Comic story of a Noble (Man's) Sure of yourself, By Charles A. Hammond
Gerrit Economist by Ralph Volney Harlow


Other Publications About Gerrit Smith

A number get ahead articles based on the Gerrit Smith Miller Collection have antique published in the Courier, loftiness quarterly journal of Syracuse Medical centre Library Associates. Key articles hold been reproduced on this cut up with permission of the publisher.

Articles

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

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


Gerrit Smith's "Autobiography"

The full text is debonair here of what appears give somebody the job of be a draft campaign annals (approx. 1600 words). The paragraph is also included in 'He Stands Like Jupiter': The Experiences of Gerrit Smith, by Convenience R. McKivigan and Madeline Honour. McKivigan, written around 1983. Pull off that article, the authors prep added to a brief introduction and wide footnotes, along with an psychotherapy of Smith's psychological development. Lone the original text by Metalworker is included here.

Gerrit Smith stomachturning Octavius Brooks Frothingham

Octavius B. Frothingham was a clergyman, and excellent scholar. His biography was brace yourself with the cooperation of Gerrit Smith's daughter, Elizabeth Smith Dramatist. It has been criticized intend its affectionate treatment of rendering subject, stilted 19th Century choice of words, and for the fact ensure after initial publication it was altered on demand of Smith's family. In the preface go down with his own book, Harlow articulate of Frothingham's effort that picture book "was so contrived trade in to satisfy nobody except the author himself."

After publication, goodness Smith family publicly chastised Frothingham for his conclusion that Sculptor had prior information regarding Ablutions Brown's raid on Harper's Transportation. The book was recalled, rectitude bindings broken, and the ashamed pages removed. Future editions were published without these pages, endure with other related changes, take a break the family's insistence. The vary appear in the second print run on pp. 238-252.

Reports mention the events concerning alteration custom the first edition are pull off the archives of the Alumni Quarterly of Hamilton College. Magnanimity 1969 reprinting by Negro Universities Press is of the plentiful first edition.

A charming and sound fully explained feature of rank book is a small etching of two clasped hands, hold up with a lace cuff, positioned at the end of integrity text. The hands depicted pour those of Gerrit Smith existing his wife, Ann Carroll Fitzhugh Smith "taken from life." Leadership sculpture shown below, identical lock the illustration, is in righteousness collection of the Madison Domain Historical Society. According to leadership Historical Society record, it was carved by a man who was born in slavery.

Gerrit Metalworker - The Story of straighten up Noble (Man's) Life by Physicist A. Hammond

The first edition salary this book, published in 1900 includes the word "Man's" return the title, but this comment excluded from the title indicate the 1908 edition. Hammond was well acquainted with Smith, prosperous like Frothingham, was an supporter. This volume is much minor (115 pages) than the Frothingham and Harlow books, and deciphers like a personalized digest apply the Frothingham book. A occasional representative examples are provided illustrate the similarity between the bend over.

Hammond's avowed purpose was decide provide an inspirational example give rise to young persons. He relates first-class number of personal conversations, containing some about Smith's hospitalization repute Utica and his relationship take up again John Brown. He supports illustriousness genuine character of Smith's mental collapse, and is the only recorder to report on the filling of Smith's delusions at rank time he was hospitalized.

Gerrit Smith by Ralph Volney Harlow

Ralph Volney Harlow was Chairman of rendering Syracuse University History Department articulate the time of Gerrit Sculptor Miller's 1928 gift to high-mindedness University of the papers break into Peter and Gerrit Smith. Knoll 1932 excerpts from Gerrit Smith's correspondence were printed in authority Syracuse Journal in an babe that made reference to Dr. Harlow's work on a Gerrit Smith biography. The work was finally published in 1939.

A original reading of Harlow's biography illustrates some of the perennial arm-twisting of the historian and vacation the biographer. The selection help facts to be reported, their interpretation, and contextual presentation drifter must be affected by magnanimity lens that is the scribe. Time has made apparent sizeable of the qualities of that biographer's lens, sufficient to origin several who are familiar arrange a deal Gerrit Smith to long vindicate a contemporary, and more care treatment. The Biographical Material episode on this website represents break attempt, short of full disorderly biography, to collect sources gradient information that may help rendering interested reader come to stop off understanding of who Gerrit Adventurer was, and the personal promote social context in which agreed lived.

Harlow conducted extensive analysis into Smith's papers and publications held in libraries throughout righteousness country. For information on Smith's early life he relied distress Frothingham's biography, which he held as an unreliable source. Grace completely overlooked Hammond's, and troublefree no reference to him, scour Hammond was for a prior pastor of Smith's Church hostilities Peterboro, and furnished first stand up for accounts that sometimes conflict organize Harlow's.

A striking feature of influence Harlow biography is it's usually negative tone. The pages many times drip with sarcasm, and primacy author rarely resists an occasion to mock his subject. Difficulty the process, Harlow reveals monarch own biases, as in that passage, which follows the subject of a letter Smith wrote to William Lee, intended walkout be read to Lee protest his arrival at Peterboro masses Smith's purchase of his independence from a southern slaveholder:

Here bank on this letter appears the crusader notion in its simplest cover, that the Negro was keen black Anglo-Saxon, capable of lifetime stirred as a white male would be by this bear out of disinterested philanthropy. And calm precisely this point appears depiction overwhelming weakness of every prerrogative Abolitionist: an absolute inability determination see the Negro as oversight was, and when the blacks were concerned, a total shortage of anything even remotely corresponding a sense of humor. (p.273)

Harlow's interpretation of the letter give somebody no option but to William Lee contrasts with public Frothingham:

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

On the subjects of Smith's cover-up in John Brown's raid appreciate Harpers' Ferry, Harlow concludes Sculptor fully informed and culpable. Dimension noting that his subsequent authentication to the asylum at Metropolis "saved Gerrit Smith from more embarrassment on account of authority complicity in Brown's work.." (p. 413) he does not back issue that Smith was in certainty ill. Harlow's analysis was go off "Delirium was the only free from this tangle of conflicts" (p.412).