Gerrit Smith - Social Activism

Social Activism

After becoming an opponent of land monopoly, he gave numerous farms of 50 acres (200,000 m²) each to indigent families. In 1846, hoping to help black families become self-sufficient and to provide them with the property ownership needed to vote in New York, Smith attempted to colonize approximately 120,000 acres (490 km2) of land in North Elba, New York, near Lake Placid in Essex County with free blacks. The difficulty of farming in the Adirondack region, coupled with the settlers' lack of experience in housebuilding and the bigotry of white neighbors, caused the experiment to fail.

Peterboro became a station on the Underground Railroad. Due to his connections with it, Smith financially supported a planned mass slave escape in Washington, DC in April 1848, organized by William L. Chaplin, another abolitionist, as well as numerous members of the city's large free black community. The Pearl incident attracted widespread national attention after the 77 slaves were intercepted and captured about two days after they sailed from the capital.

After 1850, Smith furnished money for the legal expenses of persons charged with infractions of the Fugitive Slave Law. 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. It was during this movement that he first met and financially supported John Brown. He later became more closely acquainted with John Brown, to whom he sold a farm in North Elba, and from time to time supplied him with funds. In 1859, Smith joined the Secret Six, a group of wealthy northern abolitionists, who supported Brown in his efforts to capture the armory at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia (then Virginia) and arm the slaves. After the failed raid on Harpers Ferry, Senator Jefferson Davis unsuccessfully attempted to have Smith accused, tried, and hanged along with Brown. Upset by the raid, its outcome, and its aftermath, Smith suffered a mental breakdown, and for several weeks was confined to the state asylum in Utica.

When the Chicago Tribune later claimed Smith had full knowledge of Brown's plan at Harper's Ferry, Smith sued the paper for libel, claiming that he lacked any such knowledge and thought only that Brown wanted guns so that slaves who ran away to join him might defend themselves against attackers. Smith's claim was countered by the Tribune, which produced an affidavit, signed by Brown's son, swearing that Smith had full knowledge of all the particulars of the plan, including the plan to instigate a slave uprising. In writing later of these events, Smith said, "That affair excited and shocked me, and a few weeks after I was taken to a lunatic asylum. From that day to this I have had but a hazy view of dear John Brown's great work. Indeed, some of my impressions of it have, as others have told me, been quite erroneous and even wild."

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

Smith was in favor of the 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 1867, Smith, together with Horace Greeley and Cornelius Vanderbilt, helped to underwrite the $100,000 bond needed to free Jefferson Davis, who had, at that time, been imprisoned for nearly two years without being charged with any crime. In doing this, Smith incurred the resentment of Northern Radical Republican leaders.

Smith's passions extended to religion as well as politics. Believing that sectarianism was sinful, he separated from the Presbyterian Church in 1843. He was one of the founders of the Church at Peterboro, a non-sectarian institution open to all Christians of whatever denomination.

His private benefactions were substantial; of his gifts he kept no record, but their value is said to have exceeded $8,000,000. Though a man of great wealth, his life was one of marked simplicity. He died in 1874 while visiting relatives in New York City.

The Gerrit Smith Estate, in Peterboro, New York, was declared a National Historic Landmark in 2001.