Benjamin Smith (North Carolina politician)
Benjamin Smith was the 16th governor of North Carolina from 1810 to 1811.
Early life
Smith was born in Charles Town, South Carolina into a socially prominent family, later moving to Brunswick County, North Carolina. His parents were Thomas Smith and Sarah Moore Smith. 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.Political career
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 1783, 1789–1792, 1792–1800, 1801 1804–1805 and 1806–1810. From 1795 to 1799, Smith was the Speaker of the North Carolina Senate, and in 1798 he was the Federalist nominee for the U.S. Senate, losing to Jesse Franklin. 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 of land for the university's endowment; he chaired the trustees during his term as governor. As of 1789, he owned 221 slaves.In 1810, aligned with the Democratic-Republican Party, 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.