Ashbel Smith

Ashbel Smith (August 13, 1805 – January 21, 1886) was a slave owner, key anti-abolitionist, pioneer physician, diplomat, and official of the Republic of Texas, Confederate officer and first President of the Board of Regents of the University of Texas. Smith helped lead efforts to keep Texas a Republic and slave state.

Early life

Smith was born on August 13, 1805, in Hartford, Connecticut, United States, and attended Hartford public schools. He graduated from Yale University at the age of 19 where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa Honor society. Smith taught briefly in a private school in Salisbury, North Carolina, and then attended medical school at Yale graduating as medical doctor in 1828.

Smith later lived in France and during the Paris cholera epidemic of 1832, Smith helped to treat the sick and wrote a pamphlet on the disease. Returning to the United States, Smith began his medical practice in Salisbury, North Carolina. He became active politically and part owner of the newspaper the Western Carolinian. In the fall of 1836, Smith was persuaded to move to Texas by J. Pinckney Henderson, whom Smith had become friends with in Salisbury and was already in Texas. As President of the Republic of Texas, Sam Houston called on Smith to negotiate a treaty with the Comanches in 1838. The Texas Congress failed to ratify the treaty, which would have recognized a Comanche homeland, the Comancheria, thus leading to the Council House Fight and Great Raid of 1840.

A supporter of public education, Smith was a charter member and first vice president of the Philosophical Society of Texas. The society immediately set about to request that the Texas Congress establish a system of public education in Texas.

Texas diplomat and secretary of state

In President Sam Houston's second term (1841–1844), Dr. Smith was Minister Plenipotentiary from the Republic of Texas to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and France, residing in London and Paris, respectively. He also traveled to Rome on a diplomatic mission to Pope Gregory XVI.

Smith served the Republic of Texas as chargé d'affaires to Britain and France from 1842 through 1844.

While British foreign policy generally encouraged abolition in other countries, Lord Aberdeen pledged that his government would not interfere with Texan slavery, even while he admitted publicly that abolition of slavery in the region would be desirable. Furthermore, Aberdeen was in communication with abolitionists in Texas, such as Stephen Pearl Andrews. Texas abolitionists were optimistic about their cause and reported that Texas would remain an independent republic, but one which would abolish slavery. Aberdeen, however, dispatched the British consul in Galveston, William Kennedy, to investigate this claim. Kennedy pointed out that the enslaved population of Texas was growing and manumission was rare, concluding that there was no broad abolitionist sentiment in Texas. Smith carefully tracked these communications between British diplomats and Texas abolitionists, and made defense of slavery and the cotton trade as his two preoccupations. Meanwhile, Lord Aberdeen continued his reassurances to Smith that Britain would not meddle in Texas' domestic affairs, which satisfied his concerns.

Soldier, physician, and proponent of slavery

The Mexican War is part of the mission of the destiny allotted to the Anglo-Saxon race on this continent. It is our destiny, our mission to Americanize this continent... The sword is the great civilizer."—Ashbel Smith

Smith served as a surgeon in the U.S. Army during the Mexican–American War (1846–1848) on active duty with General Zachary Taylor in the field. He also served as president of the board of visitors to the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1848. to President of the Republic of Texas, Anson Jones, to update him on his efforts to gain London's support to keep Texas a Republic and to make clear their position on slavery. Smith updated Jones on European affairs concerning Texas after a Mr. Andrews, an anti-slavery Texan, was in England gathering support for abolition, which would further Britain's goal of global emancipation. Smith met with Lord Aberdeen and stated emphatically that Texas would not surrender its slaves because to do so would be dishonorable. He outlined all of the proposed plans for Texas abolition and how each would never work, especially since most potential emigrants were more worried about war than slavery. On the continent, news was brighter because France was backing away from demanding abolition, peace between Texas and Mexico increased Texas's standing in Europe, and Britain's influence in Spain was declining. The following year he accepted the role as manager of the first Lone Star Fair in Corpus Christi, lending a measure of credibility to that event.

On this occasion I expressed my utter dissent from and opposition to all operations then carrying on in London, having for their object the abolition of Slavery in Texas. - Ashebel Smith

In the early 1850s, Dr. Smith worked with Gail Borden to develop and promote a dried beef biscuit. After the surrender of the Confederates at Vicksburg on July 4, 1863, Smith was in charge of defenses in the vicinity of the Matagorda Peninsula on the Texas Gulf Coast and finally at the end of the war, the remnants of Second Texas was charged with defending the port of Galveston from Union control. Smith was also elected again as a Democratic Party state representative from Houston to the Eleventh Texas Legislature, serving for one term in 1866.

The Texas Historical Society was organized in Houston in 1870 with Ashbel Smith as its president.

According to the Handbook of Texas Online in the 1870s, "[Smith] championed public education for blacks and women and was one of three commissioners appointed by Governor Richard Coke to establish an 'Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, for the benefit of the Colored Youths.' This school, located five miles east of Hempstead, is now Prairie View A&M University.

Smith was appointed by the United States Centennial Commission in 1876 to act as a judge on the Jury of Awards at the Great International Exhibition in Philadelphia. In 1878 President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed him one of the two honorary commissioners from Texas to the Paris International Exposition.

Elected to a final two-year term in the Texas House of Representatives in 1878, Smith again represented his home county in the Sixteenth Texas Legislature. His primary focus was the establishment of a liberal arts public university with a first-class medical department. Smith was made President of the newly established University of Texas Board of Regents in 1881. Smith's goals were to recruit the best professors available for the faculty and to establish a curriculum that would make the university, which in the 1880s was still on the western frontier, a distinctive national institution of higher learning. He also saw to it that the medical branch was established in Galveston, near his home. In 1886, in a special meeting of the regents immediately after Ashbel's death, the regents passed resolutions affirming the school was the "living monument to the high and noble aims of Ashbel Smith," adding: "It may be said of him that he was insofar as the practical inauguration of the University is concerned the "Father of the University of Texas." He is buried in the State Cemetery in Austin. The Ashbel Smith Distinguished Alumnus Award of the University of Texas-Medical Branch School of Medicine Alumni Association. Ashbel Smith Hall of the University of Texas System administration in Downtown Austin, demolished in 2018. Ashbel Street and Ashbel Smith Elementary School in Baytown, Texas, where there is a statue of Ashbel Smith, M.D.