Robert Smith

Born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania on November 3, 1757, Robert Smith was the son of prominent merchant John Smith. During the American Revolutionary War, while an undergraduate at the College of New Jersey (Princeton), Smith volunteered for the Continental Army, fighting in the historic Battle of Brandywine in 1777. Graduating from Princeton in 1781, he established a lucrative maritime admiralty law practice in Baltimore and was elected to the Maryland State Senate and House of Delegates. In 1801, President Thomas Jefferson appointed Smith the 2nd Secretary of the Navy. Over eight crucial years, Smith modernized naval logistics and oversaw the American naval operations in the First Barbary War (1801–1805), directing commodores Edward Preble and Stephen Decatur against the Barbary corsairs of Tripoli. In 1809, President James Madison appointed Smith the 6th U.S. Secretary of State during escalating tensions with Great Britain and Napoleonic France, negotiating the Erskine Agreement before ideological disputes led to his resignation in 1811. Smith subsequently served as Provost of the University of Maryland and president of the Maryland Agricultural Society until his death in Baltimore in 1842.