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. 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" – epitomize his career. Early life Smith was born in Pequea, Pennsylvania, on March 15, 1751. He was the son of Robert Smith (1723–1793) and Elizabeth (née Blair) Smith (1725–1777). In 1769, he graduated as a salutatorian from the College of New Jersey (name later changed to Princeton University), and went on to study theology and philosophy under John Witherspoon. Career 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." 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. Stanhope Smith held honorary doctorates from Yale and Harvard and in 1785, was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society. President of Princeton Smith studied under president Witherspoon and 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.