Gerrit Smith: Humanitarian

Gerrit Smith: Humanitarian. .

”An Indian and a fugitive slave spent last night with us. The Indian has gone on, but Tommy McElligott (very drunk) has come to fill his place” , - Diary of Gerrit Smith as Recorded in Gerrit Smith by Octavius Brooks Frothingham 1878

, Smith was “up close and personal” to people in need. The oppressed were not solely classes and races of faceless people; the oppressed had faces and names: , . “A man calling himself George Brown, of Corning, comes here to-night with very heavy pack on his back. He is accompanied by his wife and child. The child is deaf.” . “Mrs. Crampton, a beggar woman, spent last night with us.” , . “Mr. William Corning, a wandering pilgrim, as he styles himself, dines with us. He is peddling his own productions.” , . “Dr. Winmer of Washington City, with five deaf mutes and a blind child take supper and spend the evening with us.” , . “We find Brother Swift and wife and daughter at our house, where they will remain until they get lodgings.” , - Diary of Gerrit Smith as Recorded in Gerrit Smith by Octavius Brooks Frothingham 1878 , ”Mrs.Phiak of Port Byron, a poor old Dutch woman, arrives. She leaves after breakfast. A begging blind man, and a begging woman and her son from Cazenovia breakfast at our house.” , - Diary of Gerrit Smith as Recorded in Gerrit Smith by Octavius Brooks Frothingham 1878 , - Smith championed just and humane rights - even when the beliefs or behaviors of others were in opposition to his own: , . He visited Ku Klux Klan prisoners in an Albany jail. , . When Henry Devan of Peterboro was accused by his neighbors of fornication and was pulled from his house by a local mob and physically abused. Smith protested the mob’s behavior on the grounds that it ignored Devan’s equal rights as a citizen. Gerrit Smith’s fundamental motivating factor for becoming involved in a reform movement was the breach of human rights. Smith further believed that when a person mistreated another it was him/herself that was being defamed. , Smith supported Civil War soldiers: , . In 1862 Smith won Lincoln’s original draft of the President’s hand-written Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in a lottery to raise funds for the “Sanitary Commission for the Benefit of our Sick and Wounded Soldiers.” Smith donated the document back to the Commission for further fund raising. The NYS Legislature purchased the document which is now in the NY State Library. , Smith championed the need for the country’s healing after the Civil War: , . Smith spoke out for benevolence to the southern states and to the shareholders. He paid $25,00 of Jefferson Davis $100,000 bail bond in order to release the former President of the Confederate States of America from jail. , . In an effect to reduce post-war sectional hostilities Smith forgave a debt to a Yorkville, South Carolina, woman whose husband had died owing Smith $1,000 ($75,000).