Samuel Stanhope Smith

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.

Born in Pequea, Pennsylvania, he had graduated as a valedictorian from the College of New Jersey in 1769, and went on to study theology and philosophy under John Witherspoon, whose daughter 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 first president of Hampden-Sydney College. Stanhope Smith held honorary doctorates from Yale and Harvard and was a leading member of the American Philosophical Society.

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 powerful argument against the increasing racism of nineteenth-century ethnology [Dain 2002:40-41.] . Stanhope Smith was a staunch monogenist. He opposed the racial classifications of natural historians such as Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, and Carolus Linnaeus [Dain 2002:66.] , and attempted to refute Thomas Jefferson's claim in "Notes on the State of Virginia" that there were no great black writers or artists [Dain 2002:67.] .

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." [Webster, 1828: definition of philosophy] .

Works

*"Essay on the Causes of Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species." (1787, 2nd ed. 1810)
*"Lectures on the Evidences of the Christian Religion." (1809)
*"Lectures on Moral and Political Philosophy." (1812)

External links

* [http://www.princeton.edu/pr/facts/presidents/10.htm Short Biography of Samuel Stanhope Smith] at the Princeton University web site.
*Longer [http://etcweb1.princeton.edu/CampusWWW/Companion/smith_stanhope.html Biography of Samuel Stanhope Smith from the Princeton Companion]
* [http://www.richardsibbes.com/Princeton.Cemetery.Presidents.htm Photographic tour of Samuel S. Smith's grave at Princeton Cemetery.]
* [http://www.hsc.edu/pres/presidents/samuel_smith.html Biography of Samuel Stanhope Smith at the Hampden-Sydney College web site] .

Notes

References

*Dain, Bruce R. "A Hideous Monster of the Mind: American Race Theory in the Early Republic." Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-674-00946-0 (Stanhope Smith and 18th century race theory 40-49, 55-58, 64-70).
*Webster, Noah. An American Dictionary of the English Language. New York: S. Converse, 1828. Definition of philosophy