Samuel S. Smith (446)

Samuel Stanhope Smith (1750–1819) was a minister, educator, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1785. Born in Pennsylvania to a Presbyterian family, Smith attended Princeton College, graduating in 1769. He became a Presbyterian minister while remaining at Princeton to work as a tutor but moved to Virginia in 1773 to work as a missionary. While there, his talents for preaching led to his becoming the first President of the newly-founded Hampden-Sydney College in 1775. He spoke and wrote on theological, philosophical, scientific, and even anthropologic matters. Speaking before the American Philosophical Society in 1787, Smith demonstrated his proto-Lamarkian theory on human diversity: that physical as well as psychological variation in humans is a result of environment, and that if the environment changes, so too will its inhabitant. Smith argued that “race” was not an innate characteristic, but an accrued one. Returning to Princeton as a professor in 1779, he witnessed his theory tested when a Delaware Indian man enrolled at the university. Smith saw this as an “experiment”, and cited success over George Morgan White Eyes’ academic performance. Smith’s patronizing approach extended to enslaved people as well: advocating for abolition but also mandatory re-education to instill “good morals and industrious habits” prior to giving any enslaved person their freedom. Serving as President of the orthodoxly Presbyterian Princeton from 1795 to 1812, Smith was revolutionary in his introduction of science courses and his ideological synthesis of theology and natural philosophy, two fields that were hitherto considered incompatible. He retired in 1812 and died some years later.