SMITH, SEBA

born Sept. 14, 1792, Buckfield, Maine, U.S. died July 28, 1868, Patchogue, N.Y. American editor and humorist, creator of the fictional Major Jack Downing. A graduate of Bowdoin College, Smith founded (1829) the Portland Courier, in which the Major's fictional letters first appeared in January 1830, continuing later in the National Intelligencer until July 1853. Major Jack was a common man magnified as oracle, a Yankee full of horse sense and wise saws, and a threadbare office seeker exposing follies in a mobocracy. Shameless pirating of Smith's invention led to Smith's collection of the letters in book form, the last volume being published in 1859 under the title My Thirty Years Out of the Senate. Even more than in the Downing letters, Smith in Way Down East (1854) portrays the New England character. Among Smith's followers in satire were James Russell Lowell in his Hosea Biglow, Artemus Ward, and Will Rogers.