In Cleveland, Smith was a prominent leader of the Hunters' Lodge, a paramilitary organization which aligned itself with Canadian anti-royalist rebellions taking place in 1837 and 1838. After the rebels declared a new Republic of Canada, Smith was elected its president at a convention of Hunters' Lodges in Cleveland in September 1838. The Lodges were organized much like the Freemasons, of which Smith was also a member. In sympathy with the Canadian rebellion, the Hunters' Lodges launched the Patriot War against Canada in 1838, but it was ultimately unsuccessful due to the combined efforts of both the American and British governments.
In 1853, he was elected to the newly established Wisconsin Supreme Court. One of his most famous decisions was the case In Re: Booth, in 1854, in which abolitionistSherman Booth was charged with assisting the escape of former slave Joshua Glover in violation of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Booth's attorney, Byron Paine, sought relief from the Wisconsin Supreme Court and obtained an order from Judge Smith freeing booth and ruling that the Fugitive Slave Act was an unconstitutional usurpation of state authority. His decision was challenged before the full Wisconsin Supreme Court by United States AttorneyJohn Sharpstein, but the full court unanimously concurred that the arrest order for Booth was defective, and, in a 2-1 decision, concurred that the Fugitive Slave Act was unconstitutional. Wisconsin was the first state to declare the Fugitive Slave Act to be unconstitutional, and the case was an important precedent in state attempts at nullification of federal law in the years leading up to the American Civil War. The decision, however, did not stand, as it was then challenged in federal court. It eventually reached the Supreme Court of the United States in the 1859 case of Ableman v. Booth. The Supreme Court overturned the Wisconsin decision and asserted the Supremacy Clause required that state courts could not be allowed to invalidate the decisions of federal courts. Booth was ultimately pardoned by President James Buchanan at the request of United States district judgeAndrew G. Miller. Smith was not renominated for another term on the Court, though he was replaced by ideological ally Byron Paine, who had been the attorney for Sherman Booth.
Later years
He continued to reside in Milwaukee and practiced law until 1861, when, at the outbreak of the American Civil War, he was appointed to the federal revenue service in South Carolina, where he worked until his death. He became ill in the summer of 1865 and traveled to New York City by steam boat from Hilton Head, South Carolina. He arrived in an exhausted and deteriorating condition and died in New York on June 3, 1865; his remains were returned to Milwaukee for interment.
