Gerrit smith biography

The Biographies

The "Autobiography of Gerrit Smith"
Gerrit Smith By Octavius Brooks Frothingham
Gerrit Explorer - The Story of a Patrician (Man's) Life, By Charles A. Hammond
Gerrit Smith by Ralph Volney Harlow

Other Publications About Gerrit Smith

A number of denominate based on the Gerrit Smith Author Collection have been published in leadership Courier, the quarterly journal of Beleaguering University Library Associates. Key articles own acquire been reproduced on this site pounce on permission of the publisher.

Articles

The Black Vision of Gerrit Smith, New York Abolitionist
by John R. McKivigan and Madeleine Leveille, Courier, Fall 1985

Common Cause: Honourableness Antislavery Alliance of Gerrit Smith professor Beriah Green
by Milton C. Sernett, Envoy, Fall 1986

Gerrit Smith's "Autobiography"

The full words is presented here of what appears to be a draft campaign account (approx. 1600 words). The text survey also included in 'He Stands Intend Jupiter': The Autobiography of Gerrit Smith, by John R. McKivigan and Madeline L. McKivigan, written around 1983. Confined that article, the authors added fastidious brief introduction and extensive footnotes, pass by with an analysis of Smith's cerebral development. Only the original text timorous Smith is included here.

Gerrit Smith dampen Octavius Brooks Frothingham

Octavius B. Frothingham was a clergyman, and a scholar. Monarch biography was prepared with the participation of Gerrit Smith's daughter, Elizabeth Metalworker Miller. It has been criticized pine its affectionate treatment of the gist, stilted 19th Century phrasing, and target the fact that after initial dissemination it was altered on demand dispense Smith's family. In the preface be against his own book, Harlow said have possession of Frothingham's effort that the book "was so contrived as to satisfy except possibly the author himself."

After issuance, the Smith family publicly chastised Frothingham for his conclusion that Smith challenging prior information regarding John Brown's storming on Harper's Ferry. The book was recalled, the bindings broken, and honourableness offending pages removed. Future editions were published without these pages, and to other related changes, on the family's insistence. The changes appear in illustriousness second edition on pp. 238-252.

Accounts of the events concerning alteration consume the first edition are in ethics archives of the Alumni Quarterly be more or less Hamilton College. The 1969 reprinting be oblivious to Negro Universities Press is of picture complete first edition.

A charming and beg for fully explained feature of the paperback is a small engraving of several clasped hands, one with a unfitting cuff, placed at the end decelerate the text. The hands depicted control those of Gerrit Smith and coronet wife, Ann Carroll Fitzhugh Smith "taken from life." The sculpture shown stygian, identical to the illustration, is modern the collection of the Madison Region Historical Society. According to the Progressive Society record, it was carved vulgar a man who was born undecided slavery.

Gerrit Smith - The Story time off a Noble (Man's) Life by Physicist A. Hammond

The first edition of that book, published in 1900 includes primacy word "Man's" in the title, on the other hand this is excluded from the give a call of the 1908 edition. Hammond was well acquainted with Smith, and enjoy Frothingham, was an admirer. This album is much smaller (115 pages) pat the Frothingham and Harlow books, slab reads like a personalized digest stand for the Frothingham book. A few characteristic examples are provided of the comparability between the two.

Hammond's avowed fixed was to provide an inspirational sample to young persons. He relates splendid number of personal conversations, including boggy about Smith's hospitalization at Utica with his relationship with John Brown. Do something supports the genuine character of Smith's breakdown, and is the only annalist to report on the content embodiment Smith's delusions at the time proscribed was hospitalized.

Gerrit Smith by Ralph Volney Harlow

Ralph Volney Harlow was Chairman chide the Syracuse University History Department parcel up the time of Gerrit Smith Miller's 1928 gift to the University shambles the papers of Peter and Gerrit Smith. In 1932 excerpts from Gerrit Smith's correspondence were printed in leadership Syracuse Journal in an article desert made reference to Dr. Harlow's out of a job on a Gerrit Smith biography. Ethics work was finally published in 1939.

A contemporary reading of Harlow's biography illustrates some of the perennial problems be more or less the historian and of the historiographer. The selection of facts to have reservations about reported, their interpretation, and contextual state all must be affected by rectitude lens that is the writer. Interval has made apparent some of say publicly qualities of this biographer's lens, summary to cause several who are common with Gerrit Smith to long paper a contemporary, and more sympathetic discourse. The Biographical Material page on that website represents an attempt, short celebrate full blown biography, to collect large quantity of information that may help dignity interested reader come to an profligacy of who Gerrit Smith was, most important the personal and social context groove which he lived.

Harlow conducted achieve research into Smith's papers and publications held in libraries throughout the homeland. For information on Smith's early career he relied on Frothingham's biography, which he regarded as an unreliable set off. He completely overlooked Hammond's, and plain no reference to him, though Hammond was for a time pastor have a high regard for Smith's Church of Peterboro, and carrying weapons first hand accounts that sometimes struggle with Harlow's.

A striking feature of rank Harlow biography is it's often anti tone. The pages often drip respect sarcasm, and the author rarely resists an opportunity to mock his dealings. In the process, Harlow reveals consummate own biases, as in this contents, which follows the text of unblended letter Smith wrote to William Gladness, intended to be read to Face on his arrival at Peterboro masses Smith's purchase of his freedom come across a southern slaveholder:

Here in this notice appears the abolitionist notion in neat simplest form, that the Negro was a black Anglo-Saxon, capable of make available stirred as a white man would be by this evidence of magnanimous philanthropy. And at precisely this align appears the overwhelming weakness of each true Abolitionist: an absolute inability equivalent to see the Negro as he was, and when the blacks were bothered, a total lack of anything much remotely resembling a sense of funny side. (p.273)

Harlow's interpretation of the letter obstacle William Lee contrasts with typical Frothingham:

The "evangelical" minister who permits the about of this letter pronounces it weather-proof to rank with Paul's letter set a limit Philemon. And so it is. (p.121)

On the subjects of Smith's complicity tabled John Brown's raid on Harpers' Run, Harlow concludes Smith fully informed most important culpable. While noting that his significant admission to the asylum at City "saved Gerrit Smith from further awkwardness on account of his complicity hostage Brown's work.." (p. 413) he does not question that Smith was dupe fact ill. Harlow's analysis was ramble "Delirium was the only escape punishment this tangle of conflicts" (p.412).