Samuel Stanhope Smith

Samuel Stanhope Smith

Charles B. Lawrence, Samuel Stanhope Smith (1750–1819), Class of 1769, President (1795–1812), Princeton University Art Museum
1st President of
Hampden–Sydney College
In office
1775–1779
Succeeded by John Blair Smith
7th President of Princeton University
In office
1795–1812
Preceded by John Witherspoon
Succeeded by Ashbel Green
Personal details
Born (1751-03-15)March 15, 1751
Pequea, Province of Pennsylvania
Died August 21, 1819(1819-08-21) (aged 68)
Spouse(s) Ann Witherspoon
Alma mater B.A. Princeton University
D.D. Yale University
LL.D. Harvard University
Religion Presbyterian

Samuel Stanhope Smith (March 15, 1751 – August 21, 1819) was a Presbyterian minister, founding president of Hampden–Sydney College and the seventh president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) from 1795 to 1812. His stormy career ended in his enforced resignation. His words - "If reason and charity cannot promote the cause of truth and piety, I cannot see how it should ever flourish under the withering fires of wrath and strife" - ironically epitomize his career.[1]

Biography

Born in Pequea, Pennsylvania, he had graduated as a valedictorian from the College of New Jersey (name later changed to Princeton University) in 1769, and went on to study theology and philosophy under John Witherspoon, whose daughter, Ann, he married on 28 June 1775. In his mid-twenties, he worked as a missionary in Virginia, and from 1775 to 1779, he served as the founder and rector of Hampden–Sydney College, which he referred to in his advertisement of 1 September 1775 as "an Academy in Prince Edward."[2] The school, not then named, was always intended to be a college-level institution; later in the same advertisement, Smith explicitly likens its curriculum to that of the College of New Jersey. "Academy" was a technical term used for college-level schools not run by the established church.[3] Stanhope Smith held honorary doctorates from Yale and Harvard and was a leading member of the American Philosophical Society.

President of Princeton

Smith studied under president Witherspoon, married Witherspoon's daughter, returned to Princeton as a professor in 1779, and succeeded Witherspoon as president in 1795. The situation during the winter semester of 1806-07 under Smith's presidency was characterized by little or no faculty-student rapport or communication, crowded conditions, and strict school rules - a combination that led to a student riot on 31 March-1 April 1807. College authorities denounced it as a sign of moral decay. Smith was active in the affairs of the Presbyterian Church and served as moderator of the 11th General Assembly in 1799. Smith was an urbane and cultivated man who sought, in the tradition of Witherspoon, to maintain orthodoxy while opposing tendencies toward rigidity and obscurantism. His efforts were unsuccessful, and he was forced to resign from his office in 1812 as a result of criticism from within the church. In his efforts to reconcile reason and revelation Smith left himself vulnerable to charges of rationalism and Arminianism.[4]

Theories

Smith was the first systematic expositor of Scottish Common Sense Realism in America. An empiricist in his anthropology and a Lamarckian before Lamarck, he sought to mediate between science and religious orthodoxy.[5]

In his work, Stanhope Smith expressed progressive views on marriage and egalitarian ideas about race and slavery. The second edition of his Essay on the Causes of Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species (1810) became important as a powerful argument against the increasing racism of 19th-century ethnology.[6] He opposed the racial classifications of naturalists such as Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, and Carl Linnaeus[7] In this text, his attempt to explain the variety of physical appearances among humans involved a strongly environmental outlook. An example he provides involves "the blacks in the southern states." Smith noted that field slaves had darker skin pigmentation and other "African" features than did domestic slaves, and hypothesized that exposure to white, European culture through their "civilized" masters had changed their anatomy as well.

In Smith's essay titled Essay on the Causes of Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species, Smith claimed that Negro pigmentation was nothing more than a huge freckle that covered the whole body as a result of an oversupply of bile, which was caused by tropical climates.[8] In this essay Smith described the basic concept of sexual selection, this was before Charles Darwin later popularized the theory.[9]

Smith is also known for his attempt to refute Thomas Jefferson's claim in Notes on the State of Virginia, that there were no great black writers or artists.[10] In it, he attacked Jefferson's disregard of poetic abilities of Phillis Wheatley, African slave prodigy.

Noah Webster cited Stanhope Smith in Webster's 1828 Dictionary in the definition of philosophy. The citation was from Stanhope Smith's second edition of his Essay on the Causes of Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species (1810). The quote as given,"True religion, and true philosophy must ultimately arrive at the same principle.".[11]

Works

Further reading

Notes

  1. ↑ William H. Hudnut, III. "Samuel Stanhope Smith: Enlightened Conservative" Journal of the History of Ideas 1956 17(4): 540-552
  2. ↑ Virginia Gazette, Williamsburg, Virginia, 1 September 1775
  3. ↑ Brinkley, 5 and Appendix I, 847-50
  4. ↑ Mark A. Noll, Princeton and the Republic, 1768-1822 (1989); M. L. Bradbury, "Samuel Stanhope Smith: Princeton's Accommodation to Reason," Journal of Presbyterian History 1970 48(3): 189-202
  5. ↑ William H. Hudnut, III. "Samuel Stanhope Smith: Enlightened Conservative" Journal of the History of Ideas 1956 17(4): 540-552
  6. ↑ Dain 2002:40-41.
  7. ↑ Dain 2002:66.
  8. ↑ Marvin Harris, The rise of anthropological theory: a history of theories of culture, 2001, p. 87
  9. ↑ Zirkle, Conway (25 April 1941), "Natural Selection before the Origin of Species", Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 84 (1): 71–123, doi:10.2307/984852, retrieved 2 December 2015
  10. ↑ Dain 2002:67.
  11. ↑ Webster, 1828: definition of philosophy

References

Academic offices
Preceded by
New position		 President of Hampden–Sydney College
1775—1779 		Succeeded by
John Blair Smith
Preceded by
John Witherspoon		 President of the College of New Jersey
1795–1812 		Succeeded by
Ashbel Green
Religious titles
Preceded by
Rev. John Blair Smith		 Moderator of the 11th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America
1799–1800 		Succeeded by
Rev. Joseph Clark
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