The many faces of Mr. Smith.(Flashback: to know nothing of what happened before you were born is to remain ever a child--Cicero)(Gerrit Smith)(Obituary)

Gerrit Smith has come down to us through history as the hypochondriacal abolitionist sugar daddy who bought John Brown his guns in 1859 and then avoided prosecution for treason with a well-timed stint in the nuthouse. Smith's posthumous reputation has, of late, taken on a glow: Long disparaged as a fanatic with more money than sense, in recent years he has benefited from the near-canonization of the abolitionists.

A Central New York land speculator whose zeal for human betterment led him to embrace every cause from dress reform to dietary fads, Smith makes easy prey for caricaturists. But he was also a generous man with a genuine sense of civic responsibility.

Smith was so esteemed by his neighbors that he was elected to Congress in 1852 as an independent. He served but one truncated term, quitting partway through for no apparent reason other than that he felt like it. Yet in his brief career, Representative Gerrit Smith compiled a libertarian voting record that might be the envy of such legendary Constitutionalist skinflints as the late H. R. Gross (R-IA) and the great Ron Paul (R-TX).

The voters knew what they were getting in Smith. A year before the election, he published The True Office of Civil Government, a pamphlet in which he denied any government role in education, transportation, mail-carrying, moral regulation, and trade.

Investing in the future? Creating an infrastructure for growth? Nurturing children, our most valuable resource? The Muzak of the modern progressive would not move Smith, who informed voters that "the building of railroads and canals and the care of schools and churches fall entirely outside" the limits of government.

Congressman Smith walked the walk. He proposed to abolish customs houses ("I am an absolute free-trade man"), West Point, and the Post Office. He voted against any and all subsidies to private enterprise and even opposed the federal distribution of seeds, for government's "sole legitimate office is to protect the persons and property of its subjects."

He argued for the immediate abolition of slavery on religious grounds: "Slavery is the ...