AD Smith: Knight-errant of radical democracy

Though few people have heard of A.D. Smith, this nineteenth-century knight-errant made his mark in some of the key events of his times. On a Quixotic trail that began in upstate New York, wound westward to the Ohio and Wisconsin frontier, southward to the federally occupied Sea Islands of South Carolina and finally to a mysterious death aboard a northbound steamer, Smith personified the nineteenth-century impulse to move across the American landscape. In Ohio he became involved with a paramilitary group, the Hunters' Lodge, that elected Smith the "President of the Republic of Canada." In Wisconsin, he achieved fame as the judge who dared to declare the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 unconstitutional, lighting one of many fuses that sparked the Civil War. In South Carolina, he fought passionately for the property rights of freedmen. Not only did he move from state to state, but he also believed in a civic movement on behalf of a Jeffersonian democracy and republican ideals. Civic participation, he believed, was a fundamental part of being a good American. Hence Smith took on public roles as a justice of the peace, councilman, lawyer, judge and tax commissioner for the U.S. government. This civic impulse was also seen in his enthusiastic embrace of the reform movements of the day. The key to unlocking Smith's character, however, lies in his absolute dedication to radicalism. At the centre of this work is an examination of Smith's shifting position at the far left of the Democratic Party and how this affected Smith's actions, frequently putting him out of step with contemporaries and thwarting his ambitions. A detective story set against the backdrop of the volatile antebellum era, this socio-cultural biography pieces together methodological inquiry with a jigsaw puzzle composed of secret documents, probate records, court testimony, speeches, correspondence, newspaper coverage and genealogical research in order to tell the story of a man named Smith, of his vision for the United States, and, more generally, of the value of remembering secondary historical characters. In so doing, this biography also establishes that the viewing of the past through its own optics casts briefly into the limelight actors of transient importance who, while now forgotten, were nonetheless important in their own era.

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