Gerrit Smith

Early life

Forebears

Smith was born in Utica, New York, when it was still an unincorporated village.{{cite book |access-date=2022-07-29 |archive-date=2022-08-18 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220818192527/https://www.google.com/books/edition/Calendar_of_the_Gerrit_Smith_Papers_in_t/u3hUAAAAYAAJ?hl=en |url-status=live |access-date=April 3, 2022 |archive-date=April 24, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220424165448/https://ahmexhibits.omeka.net/exhibits/show/dreaming-of-timbuctoo/dreaming-of-timbuctoo-pdf |url-status=live

The author of the only book on Peter calls him greedy, self-centered, driven by the search for profits, and someone who did not like people who were not like him: white, male, and Dutch. He was not philanthropic. "Other people...[were] objects to be used for his own benefit, especially if they were culturally different than himself. Native Americans, poor people, black people, and non-Christians he viewed with disrespect."{{cite book |author-link=Norman Dann

Peter spent his last years in a religious fanaticism that led him to give up all his worldly goods. He turned over a $400,000 business [] to his son Gerrit in 1819 and bequeathed $800,000 more [] to his children in 1837. Gerrit also inherited 50000 acre of land from his father, and at one point he owned 750000 acre, an area bigger than Rhode Island.{{cite news |access-date=September 30, 2020 |archive-date=April 26, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220426015548/https://www.newspapers.com/clip/60267906/a-visit-to-gerrit-smiths-mansion/ |url-status=live |editor-first1=James S. |editor-last1=Pula |editor-first2=Cheryl A. |editor-last2=Pula}} An 1846 listing of lands he was offering for sale fills 45 pages.{{cite book |author-link=Gerrit Smith

Gerrit had an older brother, Peter Smith Jr., who was a problem drinker that died young, and a younger brother Adolph, who was "clinically insane and confined to a nearby institution."

Smith's maternal aunt, Margaret Livingston, was married to Judge Daniel Cady. Their daughter Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a founder and leader of the women's suffrage movement, was Smith's first cousin. Elizabeth Cady met her future husband, Henry Stanton, also an active abolitionist, at the Smith family home in Peterboro, New York.{{cite book |access-date=October 3, 2023 |author-link=Gerald Sorin |url-access=registration

Gerrit as a young man

Gerrit was described as "tall, magnificently built and magnificently proportioned, his large head superbly set on his shoulders;" he "might have served as a model for a Greek god in the days when man deified beauty and worshipped it." He attended Hamilton Oneida Academy in Clinton, Oneida County, New York, and graduated with honors from its successor Hamilton College in 1818, giving the valedictory address, and describing his stay at the college as "very active with many friends". (His father was one of the trustees.{{cite book |access-date=August 15, 2019 |archive-date=August 16, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190816145103/http://www.nyhistory.com/gerritsmith/smith.htm |url-status=live |author-link=Gunston Hall Plantation |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090115154430/http://www.gunstonhall.org/masonweb/p48.htm |archive-date=2009-01-15}}

In the year of his graduation, the death of his mother plunged his father, Peter, into severe depression. He withdrew from all business and vested in his second son Gerrit, who had to abandon plans for a law career, the entire charge of his estate,{{cite journal |access-date=2022-04-14 |archive-date=2022-04-14 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220414112845/https://www.jstor.org/stable/43554023 |url-status=live

He became an active temperance campaigner, and attended temperance gatherings more than political ones. He claimed to have given in 1824 the first temperance speech ever in the New York State Legislature. In his hometown of Peterboro, he built one of the first temperance hotels in the country, which was not successful commercially, and was disliked by many locals.

Smith wrote of himself:

Gerrit in the 1830s

He attended numerous revival meetings, and taught Sunday school. He thought of establishing a seminary for Black students. In 1834 he began a Peterboro manual labor school for Black students, along the model of nearby Oneida Institute. It had only one instructor, and it lasted only two years.{{cite news |access-date=July 30, 2021 |archive-date=July 30, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210730105443/https://virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=RE18351120.1.2&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-%22Amos+dresser%22------- |url-status=live

Smith was a laggard instead of a leader in changing from supporting colonization to "immediatism", immediate full abolitionism. His financial support for Jefferson Davis after the war would have been unthinkable for Garrison, Douglass, or other abolitionist leaders.

Gerrit's stately house was not only an Underground Railroad stop, it received a constant stream of visitors. (See Peterboro, New York#Gerrit Smith.) His desk was said to have belonged to Napoleon. Besides a library of 1,000 volumes, on the wall was a framed map of the Eastern Seaboard, with his extensive land-holdings marked.

Political career

"It must be admitted that few men in this country have been a candidate for high office so many times and polled so few votes."

In 1840, Smith played a leading part in the organization of the Liberty Party; the name of the party was his.

Birney, but not Smith, is recorded in the commemorative painting of the event. In 1848, Smith was nominated for the Presidency by the remnant of this organization that had not been absorbed by the Free Soil Party. An "Industrial Congress" at Philadelphia also nominated him for the presidency in 1848, and the "Land Reformers" in 1856. In 1840 and again in 1858, he ran for Governor of New York on an anti-slavery platform.

On June 2, 1848, in Rochester, New York, Smith was nominated as the Liberty Party's presidential candidate. At the 1848 Liberty National Convention, held June 14–15 in Buffalo, New York, Smith gave a major address, including in his speech a demand for "universal suffrage in its broadest sense, females as well as males being entitled to vote."

At the request of friends, Smith had 3,000 copies printed of an 1851 speech in Troy in which he set forth his views of government.{{cite book |author-link=Gerrit Smith |access-date=2022-06-30 |archive-date=2022-08-18 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220818192527/https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_True_Office_of_Civil_Government/oZlBAQAAMAAJ?hl=en |url-status=live |access-date=2022-07-24 |archive-date=2022-08-18 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220818192537/https://galeapps.gale.com/apps/auth?userGroupName=wikipedia&da=true&origURL=https%3A%2F%2Fgo.gale.com%2Fps%2Fretrieve.do%3FtabID%3DT002%26resultListType%3DRESULT_LIST%26searchResultsType%3DSingleTab%26hitCount%3D35%26searchType%3DBasicSearchForm%26currentPosition%3D5%26docId%3DGALE%257CA191213519%26docType%3DBiography%26sort%3DRelevance%26contentSegment%3DZONE-Exclude-FT%26prodId%3DAONE%26pageNum%3D1%26contentSet%3DGALE%257CA191213519%26searchId%3DR1%26userGroupName%3Dwikipedia%26inPS%3Dtrue&prodId=AONE |url-status=live

The only political office to which Smith was ever elected, and that by a very large majority,{{cite book |author-link=Gerrit Smith

By 1855, the Liberty Party had dwindled to a small remnant of its former strength. Most of its supporters had joined the Free Soil Party in 1848, and these were absorbed into the new Republican Party during the crisis which followed the repeal of the Missouri Compromise by the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Political abolitionists who still wished to maintain a separate organization met at Syracuse, New York in June and formed the Radical Abolitionist Party as an alternative to the Republicans and the Garrisonian American Anti-Slavery Society. Smith was nominated as the presidential candidate of the new party in 1856. The Radical Abolitionists ran electors in New York and Ohio, where Smith polled 321 votes, finishing far behind the Republican candidate John C. Fremont and the successful Democratic nominee, James Buchanan.

Smith was again the presidential candidate of the Radical Abolitionists in 1860. A convention of one hundred delegates was held in Convention Hall, Syracuse, New York, on August 29, 1860. Delegates were in attendance from New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky, and Massachusetts. Several of the delegates were women. Smith, despite his poor health, fought William Goodell in regard to the nomination for the presidency. In the end, Smith was nominated for president and Samuel McFarland from Pennsylvania was nominated for vice president. Radical Abolitionist electors polled 176 votes in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio.

Smith, along with his friend and ally Lysander Spooner, was a leading advocate of the United States Constitution as an antislavery document, as opposed to abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, who believed it was to be condemned as a pro-slavery document, and was in favor of secession by the North. In 1852, Smith was elected to the United States House of Representatives as a Free-Soiler. In his address, he declared that all men have an equal right to the soil; that wars are brutal and unnecessary; that slavery could be sanctioned by no constitution, state or federal; that free trade is essential to human brotherhood; that women should have full political rights; that the Federal government and the states should prohibit the liquor traffic within their respective jurisdictions; and that government officers, so far as practicable, should be elected by direct vote of the people. Horace Greeley attributed to Smith the view that the state "has no other legitimate business than to keep one man's fingers off another man's throat and out of any pocket but his own." Unhappy with his separation from his home and business, Smith resigned his seat at the end of the first session, ostensibly to allow voters sufficient time to select his successor.

In 1869, Smith served as a delegate to the founding convention of the Prohibition Party. During the 1872 presidential election Smith was considered for the Prohibition Party's presidential nomination.

Support for Black people

According to Black Rev. Henry Highland Garnet, who moved there at Smith's invitation,{{citation |access-date=2022-04-06 |archive-date=2020-10-29 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201029204306/https://library.syr.edu/digital/guides/s/smith_g_pb.htm |url-status=live |access-date=April 26, 2022 |archive-date=April 26, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220426015637/https://www.accessible.com/accessible/docButton?AAWhat=builtPage&AAWhere=THENORTHSTAR.18481208_001.image&AABeanName=toc3&AANextPage=%2FprintBrowseBuiltImagePage.jsp |url-status=live

The failed land redistribution project (Timbuctoo)

After becoming an opponent of land monopoly, he gave numerous farms of 50 acres each to 1,000 "worthy" New York state Blacks.{{cite news |access-date=7 April 2022 |archive-date=7 April 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220407050605/https://www.newspapers.com/clip/99166581/land-garrit-smith-gave-blacks-is-poor/ |url-status=live |author-link=Gerrit Smith |access-date=7 April 2022 |archive-date=7 April 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220407053402/https://www.newspapers.com/clip/99184580/letter-from-gerrit-smith-on-land/ |url-status=live

Most grantees never saw the remote land Smith had given them; many of those who did visit it soon left, and in 1857, it was estimated that less than 10% of the grantees were actually living on their land. The difficulty of farming in the mountains, coupled with the settlers' lack of experience in housebuilding and farming and the bigotry of white neighbors, caused the project to fail. As Smith put it, "I was perhaps a better land-reformer in theory than in practice." The John Brown Farm State Historic Site is all that remains of the settlement, called Timbuctoo, New York.

The Chaplin slave escape

Peterboro became a station on the Underground Railroad. Due to his connections with it, Smith financially supported a planned mass slave escape in Washington, D.C., 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.

The Fugitive Slave Convention

The Fugitive Slave Convention was held in Cazenovia, New York, on August 21 and 22, 1850. It was a fugitive slave meeting, the biggest ever held in the United States. Madison County, New York, was the abolition headquarters of the country, because of philanthropist and activist Gerrit Smith, who lived in neighboring Peterboro, New York, and called the meeting "in behalf of the New York State Vigilance Committee."

Defending Fugitive Slave Law violators

Smith paid the legal expenses of several persons charged with infractions of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.

Helping John Brown in Kansas

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.{{cite book

Harpers Ferry

Smith was a member of what much later was called the Secret Six, a informal group of influential Northern abolitionists, who supported Brown in his efforts to capture the armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (since 1863, West Virginia), and start a slave revolt. After the failed raid on Harpers Ferry, Senator Jefferson Davis unsuccessfully attempted to have Smith accused, tried, and hanged along with Brown. Governor Wise suggested that Smith be brought to him, "by fair or foul means",{{cite news |access-date=4 August 2022 |archive-date=30 October 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201030215814/https://www.newspapers.com/clip/61933822/virginia-governor-wise-on-john-browns/ |url-status=live |access-date=February 3, 2021 |archive-date=August 18, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220818192529/https://www.newspapers.com/clip/69251602/gerrit-smith-and-harpers-ferry-john/ |url-status=live

Upset by the raid, its outcome, and its aftermath, expecting to be indicted, Smith suffered a mental breakdown; he was described in the press as "a raving lunatic", who became "very violent".{{cite news |access-date=2022-05-08 |archive-date=2022-05-08 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220508212252/https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83035487/1859-11-19/ed-1/seq-2/ |url-status=live |access-date=11 May 2022 |archive-date=11 May 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220511015849/https://www.newspapers.com/clip/101635526/gerrit-smiths-madness/ |url-status=live

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.{{cite book |access-date=2022-04-25 |archive-date=2021-12-30 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211230034914/https://www.jstor.org/stable/1838063 |url-status=live |url-access=subscription

While in the New York Lunatic Asylum, now the Utica Psychiatric Center, he was treated with cannabis and morphine.{{cite book

Other social activism

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

Smith supported the American 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 $100,000 (~$ in ) 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-denominational institution open to all non-slave-owning Christians.

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.

Tribute

Frederick Douglass dedicated to Smith My Bondage and My Freedom (1855):

Years before, a student at his Peterboro Manual Labor School, where "Mr. Smith liberally supplies us with stationery, books, board and lodging", stated that "if the man of color has a sincere friend, that friend is Gerrit Smith".{{cite news |access-date=February 2, 2020 |archive-date=February 2, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200202124947/https://www.newspapers.com/clip/43468365/gerrit_smiths_manual_labor_school/ |url-status=live

A visitor to Smith's house in 1870 described it as follows:

Philanthropic activities

Money was for Smith a resource that belonged to others, a divine gift to be used for the common good. Smith provided support for a large number of progressive causes and people and, except for his land grants, did not keep careful records. The dates given are in some cases approximate, either because documents do not provide a definite date, or because there were multiple payments.

• "200000 acre of his land he had divided among various destitute people, and 650 poor women have received money from him to help provide themselves with homes."{{cite book |access-date=August 15, 2019 |archive-date=August 17, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190817162424/http://www.nyhistory.com/gerritsmith/gsauto.htm |url-status=live
• Built and ran unsuccessful temperance hotel on his property in Peterboro, 1827–1833.{{cite journal |access-date=2022-04-10 |archive-date=2022-03-31 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220331194140/https://www.academia.edu/40819431/_For_the_Means_of_Your_Subsistence_Look_Under_God_to_Your_Own_Industry_and_Frugality_Life_and_Labor_in_Gerrit_Smith_s_Peterboro |url-status=live
• Supporter of American Colonization Society, 1820s–early 1830s.
• Support for the Oneida Institute, the first school at which both Blacks and whites were welcomed, 1830s.
• Manual labor school for "colored boys" in Peterboro, 1834–1836 (two years). Benjamin Quarles suggests that Smith may have ended the project because it was duplicating what was available at the nearby Oneida Institute, headed by his friend Beriah Green.{{cite journal |editor-first=Benjamin |editor-last=Quarles |editor-link=Benjamin Quarles
• Created in Peterboro a group home to support economically destitute children.
• Founder of nondenominational Free Church of Peterboro, 1843. (Dissatisfied with existing churches' refusal to insist on abolition.)
• Supported Frederick Douglass' abolitionist newspaper, The North Star, late 1840s. Douglas dedicated the second of his autobiographies to Gerrit.
• Supported planned mass slave escape in Washington, DC, in April 1848, organized by William L. Chaplin.
• Provided land in North Elba, New York, to support Timbuctoo settlement of Black farmers, 1848.
• Sold land in North Elba to John Brown "for a bargain price of $1 an acre".{{cite news |access-date=2019-08-17 |archive-date=2020-08-01 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200801071410/http://www.nyhistory.com/gerritsmith/dream.htm |url-status=live
• Major benefactor of New-York Central College, 1850s.
• Helped with legal expenses of Fugitive Slave Law violators, 1850s. Primary sponsor of the Fugitive Slave Convention, held in neighboring Cazenovia.
• In 1851, he funded the establishment of an educational academy in Peterboro.
• About 1855, gave $25,000 () to build the Oswego City Library, and $5,000 for books.
• Leading figure in the New England Emigrant Aid Society (Kansas Aid Movement), assisting abolitionist settlers and John Brown working to make Kansas a free state, 1850s.
• Between 1856 and 1874, donated money to "interracial colleges": Berea College, Hampton Agricultural Institute, Dartmouth College, and Howard University.
• Paid for printing of James Redpath's The Roving Editor: or, Talks with Slaves in the Southern States, 1859.
• One of Secret Six that helped finance John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, 1859
• With Horace Greeley and Cornelius Vanderbilt, one of guarantors of Jefferson Davis's bond, 1867.{{cite book
• Supported William G. Allen and family financially during their poverty in London, 1870s and 1880s.

After his death, a newspaper reported his philanthropic activities as follows:

|access-date=October 11, 2020 |archive-date=April 26, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220426015548/https://www.newspapers.com/clip/60898114/philanthropy-of-gerrit-smith/ |url-status=live

Honors

In 2005 Smith was inducted into the National Abolition Hall of Fame, in Peterboro, New York.

Writings

Smith paid for the printing of hundreds of broadsides, with his views on a variety of subjects. His own collection of his pamphlets is in the Syracuse University Library. A number of recipients bound those they received into volumes, different contents for each collector.

• {{cite book |author-link=Gerrit Smith |orig-date=March 23, 1829
• {{cite book |author-link=Gerrit Smith
• {{cite book |author-link=Gerrit Smith
• {{cite book |author-link=Gerrit Smith
• {{cite book |author-link=Gerrit Smith
• {{cite book |author-link=Liberty Party (United States, 1840)
• {{cite book |author-link=Gerrit Smith
• {{cite book |author-link=Gerrit Smith
• {{cite book |author-link=Gerrit Smith
• {{cite book |author-link=Gerrit Smith
• {{cite news |author-link=Gerrit Smith |orig-date=October 7, 1850}}
• {{cite book |author-link=Gerrit Smith
• {{cite book |author-link=Gerrit Smith
• {{cite book |author-link=Gerrit Smith |orig-date=December 20, 1853
• {{cite book |author-link=Gerrit Smith
• {{cite book |author-link1=Gerrit Smith |author-link2=New York Tribune
• {{cite journal |author-link=Gerrit Smith
• {{cite book |author-link=Gerrit Smith
• {{cite book |author-link=Gerrit Smith
• {{cite book |author-link=Gerrit Smith
• {{cite book |author-link=Gerrit Smith
• {{cite book |author-link=Gerrit Smith

Archival material

Smith's grandson, Gerrit Smith Miller, was the final resident of the Smith mansion. In 1928, before it burned, he donated Smith's enormous collection of letters, documents, diaries, and daybooks to the Syracuse University Library, along with a pamphlet and broadside collection of over 700 items.{{citation |access-date=18 August 2022 |archive-date=18 August 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220818192532/https://library.syracuse.edu/digital/guides/print/smith_g_pb_prt.htm |url-status=live

• Gerrit Smith Papers, Syracuse University Special Collections Research Center. 10,000 letters,{{cite news |access-date=2021-07-26 |archive-date=2021-07-26 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210726145137/https://nyshistoricnewspapers.org/lccn/sn87070340/1929-01-10/ed-1/seq-8/ |url-status=live |access-date=2022-08-04 |archive-date=2022-08-04 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220804170119/https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/101705951 |url-status=live
• Another important collection of documents related to Gerrit Smith is found in the archives of his alma mater, Hamilton College, in Clinton, Oneida County, New York.{{citation |access-date=July 30, 2022 |archive-date=April 26, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210426075254/http://www.nyhistory.com/gerritsmith/abouthis.htm |url-status=live
• Additional documents are in the collections of the Peterboro and the Madison County Historical Societies.

References

Notes

References

1. (2005). "Back to Africa: Benjamin Coates and the colonization movement in America". Penn State Press.
2. Stauffer, ''The Black Hearts of Men'', p. 265
3. {{rp. xi In the same year, their [[U.S. presidential election, 1840. link. (2018-11-17 , 1840 Anti-Slavery Convention, 1840, Retrieved 2 August 2015)
4. Wellman, 2004, p. 176.
5. link. (2020-06-12 , New York Public Library, 1915, p. 50)
6. "1848 Presidential General Election Results - New York". U.S. Election Atlas.
7. Smith, Gerrit. (1855). "Speeches of Gerrit Smith in Congress". [[Mason Brothers]].
8. Smith, Gerrit. (27 Jun 1854). "Letter of Gerrit Smith". [[Daily National Era]].
9. (November 5, 1859). "Gerrit Smith in Congress". [[Ashtabula Weekly Telegraph]] ([[Ashtabula, Ohio]]).
10. (Winter 1980). "American Abolition Society: A Viable Alternative to the Republican Party?". Journal of Negro History.
11. (1855). "Proceedings of the Convention of Radical Political Abolitionists, Held at Syracuse, N. Y., June 26th, 27th, and 28th, 1855". Central Abolition Board.
12. (June 26, 1856). "National Abolition Convention". The National Era.
13. (1950). ["The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, Volume 2: Pre-Civil War Decade, 1850–1860"](https://archive.org/details/lifewritingsoffr0002doug/page/550/mode/2up?view=theater}} {{isbn). International Publishers.
14. (2002). "United States Presidential Elections, 1788-1860: The Official Results by County and State". McFarland and Company.
15. (1855). "Proceedings of the Convention of Radical Political Abolitionists, held at Syracuse, N. Y., June 26th, 27th, and 28th, 1855". Central Abolition Board.
16. (October 1860). "RADICAL ABOLITION NATIONAL CONVENTION". Douglass' Monthly.
17. [[Horace Greeley]], ''An Overland Journey from New York to San Francisco in the Summer of 1859'', [https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/77293/pg77293-images.html#Page_22 p.22] (New York: C.M. Saxton, Barker & Co, 1860).
18. [https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1854/06/29/76439371.pdf "Resignation of Gerrit Smith,"] {{Webarchive. link. (2022-04-26 ''New York Daily Times,'' vol. 3, whole no. 868 (June 29, 1854), pg. 1.)
19. "Page Six of Brief history of prohibition and of the prohibition reform party".
20. "Page Twenty Three of Brief history of prohibition and of the prohibition reform party".
21. Mary Kay Ricks, ''Escape on the Pearl: The Heroic Bid for Freedom on the Underground Railroad,'' New York: HarperCollins Publishers, January 2007
22. Heidler, David Stephen. (1996) ''Encyclopedia of the American Civil War'' p. 1812
23. (2008-01-17). "Gerrit Smith Estate". National Park Service.
24. LouAnn Wurst. (September 21, 2001). "National Historic Landmark Nomination: Gerrit Smith Estate". National Park Service.