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podcast transcript
In 1829, a British scientist who had never visited the United States left a fortune abroad across the ocean.
His instructions were simple, vague, and incredibly ambitious. The idea was to create an institution for the increase and spread of knowledge.
From that legacy grew the Smithsonian Institution, a collection of museums, research centers, priceless artifacts, scientific discoveries, and national memories unrivaled anywhere in the world.
Learn more about the Smithsonian Museum and its amazing history in this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
The history of the Smithsonian Institution, not the Smithsonian Institution, dates back to 1765 in Paris and the ugly birth of James Smithson.
His mother, Elizabeth Hungerford, a wealthy widow, had an affair with Hugh Smithson. Hugh Smithson married his cousin, Elizabeth Seymour, a wealthy noblewoman, in 1740. Seymour’s marriage gave Hugh Smithson the title of 2nd Earl of Northumberland.
Elizabeth Hungerford secretly took James Smithson with her to France, away from the prying eyes of the English nobility.
Despite his wealthy upbringing, James Smithson remained unnoticed in British society. As an illegitimate son, he was considered “nobody’s son.” In fact, James Smithson was not able to take his father’s name until his father’s death in 1786.
Due to his illegal status and invisible social status, Smithson chose a path in which his birth did not hinder his development: the world of science.
Smithson devoted himself to chemistry while at Oxford, and his hard work paid off when he became a Fellow of the Royal Society at the age of 22. By comparison, Isaac Newton did not secure membership until he was 29 years old.
His social status motivated him deeply, especially as his father’s legitimate children rose through the ranks of British high society.
The chip on Smithson’s shoulder is expressed in one of the key passages in his will, in which he wrote: I have the best British blood flowing in my veins. On my father’s side I am a Percy, and on my mother’s side I am royal, but they are of no use to me. When the titles of Northumberland and Percy are lost and forgotten, my name will remain in the memory of man.
Smithson actually planned to donate his considerable fortune, worth more than £100,000, or over $11 million today, to his nephew, Henry Hungerford.
The money will go to his nephew, but only during his lifetime. When Henry died childless in 1839, the second clause of the will came into play. If my nephew dies leaving no children, or if he dies under the age of 21 or if his child(ren) dies intestate, I leave my entire estate to the United States. An institution for the increase and spread of human knowledge will be established in Washington under the name of the Smithsonian Institution.
In this way, an illegal British chemist donated almost 2% of the entire U.S. federal budget at the time, and a vast fortune to a government he had never worked with and a country he had never even seen.
Since receiving the gift in 1835, historians have debated why Smithson made such a donation.
Of course, there is a clear interpretation. He simply wanted to increase human knowledge and it was a noble and noble gesture of enlightenment. As a post-Newtonian British scientist, Smithson was undoubtedly motivated by the high ideals of the Enlightenment.
So why are you in America? He had never been there. By all accounts, he didn’t know any Americans personally.
Our best guess takes us through how James Hungerford, the illegitimate son of an indifferent father, grew up in a strict social system that gave Smithson no legitimate place. The very fact that America lacked aristocracy and archaic social traditions may have inspired him.
The American social world was much closer to the ideals by which he lived. A world where he fought his way to the top of his field and earned a place in the Royal Society based purely on brains and merit rather than bloodline. In America, people like Benjamin Franklin rose to the top of the social hierarchy as truly self-made men.
In July 1835, news of the donation reached the U.S. government. America’s top diplomat in London received a surprise letter from a British law firm announcing the bequest.
The letter basically said, ‘A wealthy man you’ve never heard of has just died, his chosen heir has died, and as a last resort he has left a vast fortune to all of your country.
Even President Andrew Jackson was surprised to learn of this. At the most basic level, there was confusion about how the government would accept such donations.
Surprisingly, although Jackson was often criticized by his political enemies for acting more like a king than a president, he readily acknowledged that he lacked the constitutional authority to receive funds.
Distrustful of banks and wary of federal overreach, Jackson wanted nothing to do with handling money. He quickly committed the whole case to Congress in December 1835.
As soon as it arrived in Congress, it immediately caused political divisions. Former President and current Representative John Quincy Adams said the gift ““The spirit of the times.”
John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, always a miser, objected vehemently and declared: Accepting this type of gift from anyone is an insult to American dignity.
The battle lines were drawn, but the state had to get the money before Congress could act. By all accounts, this was going to be a huge challenge. Because now the infamous English Court of Probability has held the fortune captive.
To secure funds, Jackson sent Pennsylvania attorney Richard Rush, the son of America’s founding father Benjamin Rush. Rush was an ambassador to England and understood the British court system and all Americans.
Rush used his connections with the British government to settle the case in America’s favor, and surprisingly, the process took only two years. According to Smithsonian Magazine, Rush solved his next challenge: how to physically secure that much money across the Atlantic.
Rush immediately converted the estate proceeds into 104,960 new British gold sovereigns on behalf of the U.S. government. That July, Rush departed for New York aboard the USS Mediator with 11 boxes of gold coins. Since British currency was not legal tender in the United States, the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia was ordered to melt down the sovereigns and commemorate them with Lady Liberty ten dollar gold coins. At that time, the recovery of the estate was worth exactly $508,318.46.
Now that Rush had the money, Congress could resume debate about how to spend the money in a way that reflected Smithson’s mission to increase and spread knowledge.
The two-party system at the time consisted of the Whig Party and the Democratic Party. The Whigs believed in a strong central government, and their vision called for funding the institutions that would support the central government.
The Democratic Party is divided. On the one hand, there were the Jacksonians who feared a strong central government. Southern powers argued that if Congress could suddenly receive foreign money to build museums, it would have the power to abolish slavery.
The controversy lasted an astonishing eight years after Rush got his hands on the money. Even when they did not debate the legality and constitutional authority of the funds, they had deep convictions about how to use the money to achieve Smithson’s vision.
The first proposal called for the establishment of a national university to rival Oxford. This was a popular idea, but collapsed amid confusion about what type of university it would be. Should it be a scientific institution? Is it theological? Someone who specializes in law or medicine? Should it be a school that trains teachers for upper-level schools across the country?
There were calls to build a large national library to collect the history of the republic. John Quincy Adams made a compelling case for building a great observatory to study the skies, a skill America lacked compared to the great nations of Europe.
Building a public museum received the most support in Congress. Joseph Henry, one of America’s leading scientists, believed that the United States needed research institutions.
Henry lobbied Parliament for the exact language of the will, emphasizing the need to increase and spread knowledge. Henry believed that to increase and disseminate knowledge, one had to produce it, and that only research institutions could do this.
Henry also reminded anyone who would listen that simply building a museum in Washington, D.C., will not spread knowledge across the country or the world. Only research can do that.
After eight years of debate, Congress reached a compromise in 1846 with James K. Polk, the third president, carrying out the terms of Smithson’s will.
Congress finally realized that it didn’t have to choose just one option. They chose all of the above. They decided that the Smithsonian should be a great library, museum, and research facility. John Quincy Adams was delighted when his research facilities finally included an observatory.
On August 10, 1846, President James K. Polk signed the Smithsonian Institution Act.
The statute Polk signed contained a complex structure that attempted to do everything Congress had claimed. The Board of Regency shall… erect a suitable building of sufficient size and with suitable rooms or halls for the free reception and placement of natural history artifacts, including geological and mineralogical cabinets. It also has a chemistry laboratory, library, art gallery and necessary classrooms.
The incredibly difficult task was entrusted to none other than Joseph Henry, who was appointed by the Board of Trustees to become the Smithsonian’s first secretary. Henry reluctantly oversaw the completion of the institution’s first building, a medieval red sandstone castle on the National Mall, which later became a global icon.
Although Henry personally disliked the building as an expensive distraction from pure science, it became an anchor on an ever-changing campus.
The Smithsonian’s mission moved from Henry’s dream of an elite laboratory to the expansive public museum system we know today.
The Civil War and America’s rapid westward expansion gave the Smithsonian an incredible storehouse of new oddities, curiosities, and treasures.
American railroads began transporting exhibits to the Smithsonian, including fossilized dinosaur bones, rare mineral specimens, and taxidermied wildlife never before seen in the East.
While Henry was interested in research and development, his assistant Spencer Baird knew that this large influx of new material was in the public interest and could be used to secure the institution’s future. With this vision in mind, Baird began cataloging the United States.
Eventually, we had so much stuff that we had to build another building, and we just kept building. There are currently 19 museums (two in development) and the National Zoo, all operated by the Smithsonian.
Over nearly 200 years, Henry Smithson’s vision has become a reality. The Smithsonian has become one of the world’s leading institutions for human knowledge.
Smithsonian accomplishments include breakthroughs in meteorology, advances in rocketry, pioneering research on black holes, and mapping of the ocean floor.
The Smithsonian began with a phrase so broad that people have debated it for generations: the increase and spread of mystery and knowledge, the legacy of a man who had never set foot in America.
From those unusual beginnings grew an institution that collected fossils, spaceships, portraits, stamps and even Fonzie’s leather jacket.
That’s why it got the nickname America’s Attic.
