Benjamin Smith (January 10, 1756 – January 26, 1826) was the 16th Governor of the U.S. state of North Carolina from 1810 to 1811.
Smith was born in Charles Town, South Carolina into a socially prominent family, later moving to Brunswick County, North Carolina. During the American Revolutionary War, Smith served an aide-de-camp to General George Washington and rose to the rank of colonel in the Continental Army.
In 1784, Smith was elected to the Continental Congress, although it is unclear whether he actually served. He was active in the North Carolina Constitutional Conventions of 1788 and 1789, and served a number of terms in the North Carolina General Assembly, in 1784 (Senate), 1789-1792 (House of Commons), 1792-1800 (Senate), 1801 (House of Commons) 1804-1805 (House of Commons) and 1806-1810 (Senate). From 1795 to 1799, Smith was the Speaker of the North Carolina Senate.
During his political career, Smith also sat on the Board of Trustees of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and donated 20,000 acres (81 km²) of land for the university's endowment; he chaired the trustees during his term as governor.
In 1810, aligned with the Democratic-Republican Party (he had earlier had Federalist leanings), Smith was elected governor by the North Carolina General Assembly. He served only a single one-year term, and emphasized reform of the state's criminal code and penitentiary system. Although Smith did seek re-election to the governor's seat in 1811, he polled behind William Hawkins on the first ballot and withdrew himself from consideration. He later returned to the North Carolina Senate in 1816.
Smith died in Smithville, North Carolina in 1826 and is buried at the St. Philip's Church near Wilmington. Smithville, now known as Southport, is situated a few miles outside of Wilmington along the Cape Fear River.
Famous quotes containing the words benjamin and/or smith:
“Reminiscences, even extensive ones, do not always amount to an autobiography.... For autobiography has to do with time, with sequence and what makes up the continuous flow of life. Here, I am talking of a space, of moments and discontinuities. For even if months and years appear here, it is in the form they have in the moment of recollection. This strange form—it may be called fleeting or eternal—is in neither case the stuff that life is made of.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“Heat, ma’am! It was so dreadful here that I found there was nothing left for it but to take off my flesh and sit in my bones.”
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845)