The Lost President: A.D. Smith and the Hidden History of Radical Democracy in Civil War America

Abstract

At the very outset of her deceptively titled book, Ruth Dunley admits that the subject of her biography, A.D. Smith, is a person of “secondary historical importance." Even so, she is drawn to him by the mystery involved in attempting to uncover his life story. Her journey of discovery, recounted in The Lost President, is a long and challenging one. Her persistence in pursuit of that story is impressive and unyielding. In the end, Dunley succeeds in uncovering a life dedicated to republicanism as a would-be president of Canada, a judge who declared the Fugitive Slave Law unconstitutional, and a tax commissioner in the Sea Islands of South Carolina who sought to give land to former slaves during the Civil War. Throughout, Smith, argues Dunley, was a representative man of the Jacksonian era. He was moved by its vision of the possible and subject to its many contradictions. But, above all, he was a radical Democrat, committed to the principles of majority rule and opposed to the empowerment of the few.