Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 January 1875 — The Death of Gerrit Smith. [ARTICLE]

The Death of Gerrit Smith.

The death of Gerrit Smith removes est of the historic characters of our land and time. He was a man to whotn politics meant neither honor nor office, but who saw in the struggles of parties twenty years ago a conflict between the opposing forces of right and wrong, and who espoused the right and supported it with his intellect and his purse. He opposed slavery, not because he was a Republican, but because he was a philanthropist; he did noble service for the cause of freedom in Kansas, contributing probably more than any other individual from his private means to give triumph to the good cause. And when the struggle was over, not only in Kansas, but in the Union, he did not forget our neighbor State and her people; it is only a few weeks since we published his letter to Gov. Osborn, inclosing a liberal donation for the relief of the sufferers froih the grasshopper plague. His whole life whs marked by deeds of unselfish benevolence. He was rich, bat a part of his riches was always at the disposal of the deserving among the needy. He was but one of many thousands who were made happy by the wealth which he inherited, and which; in the hands of a selfish man, might have been converted into a fortune compared with which that of Vanderbilt or Stewart might have seemed small. Such men we rarely meet in our busy and greedy American life, and it is unhappily one of the tendencies of the times to leave their places unsupplied when they pass away. — St. Louis Globs.