Henry More Smith: The Mysterious StrangerBates, Walter
History
Henry More Smith: The Mysterious Stranger
Bates, Walter
Criminals -- Canada -- Biography; Smith, Henry More, active 1812-1836
After his arrival in the Southern States, we are again able to glean
something of his life and history. While he was yet in the gaol at
King’s county, it will be remembered that he said he had been a
preacher, and that he should preach again, and would gain proselytes;
and now his prediction is brought about, for under a new name, that of
Henry Hopkins, he appeared in the character of a preacher in the
Southern States! And what wonder? For Satan himself is transformed into
an angel of light. Here, even in this character he was not without
success, for he got many to follow and admire him; yet deep as his
hypocrisy was, he seemed to be fully sensible of it, although his
conscience had become seared, and was proof against any proper sense of
wrong. He acknowledged that he had been shocked to see so many follow
him to hear him preach, and even to be affected under his preaching.
Our source of information does not furnish us with any of the
particulars which marked his conduct while itinerating through the South
in his newly assumed character; yet general accounts went on to say that
he had, for a length of time, so conducted himself that he gained much
popularity in his ministerial calling, and had a considerable number of
adherents. However, this may have been the case for a length of time,
yet as the assumption of this new character could not be attributable to
any supernatural impulse, but was merely another feature of a character
already so singularly diversified, intended as a cloak under which he
might, with less liability to suspicion, indulge the prevailing and all
controlling propensities of his vitiated mind, it was not to be
expected, with all the ingenuity he was capable of exercising, that he
would long be able to conceal his real character. Accordingly, some
misdemeanor, which we have not been able to trace, at length disclosed
the hypocrisy of his character, and placed him before his deluded
followers in his true light.
It would appear, whatever might have been the nature of his crime, that
legal means were adopted for his apprehension, and that in order to
expedite his escape from the hands of justice, he had seized upon a
certain gentleman’s coach and horses and was travelling in the character
of a gentleman in state, when he was overtaken and apprehended in the
State of Maryland. Here he was tried and convicted, and sentenced to
seven years imprisonment in the state prison in Baltimore, which, from
the nature of the climate, was generally believed would terminate his
career. The particulars of this adventure I received in the city of New
York in 1827, where I took much pains to obtain all possible information
concerning his proceedings in the Southern States while passing under
the character of a preacher.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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