She longed to build a college for women, even when learned doctors wrote books to show that girls would be ruined in health by study, and that they were mentally inferior to the other sex. It was said that women would not care for higher education; that if they went to college they would not marry, and would cease to be attractive to men; that in any event the intellectual standard would be lowered if women were admitted to any college.
Miss Smith said, "There is no justice in denying women equal educational advantages with men. Women are the natural educators and physicians of the race, and they ought to be fitted for their work." When the foolish and untrue argument was used, that educated women do not make good wives and mothers, Miss Smith would say, "Then they are wrongly educated—some law is violated in the process."
Miss Smith had read history, and she knew that the Aspasias and the De Maintenons are the women who have had the strongest power with men. She knew that an educated woman is the companion of her children and their intellectual guide. She knew that women ought to be interested in the welfare of the state, rather than in a round of parties and amusements. She had no love for display, though she had taste in dress and in her home; and she longed to see all women have a purpose in life other than frivolity and pleasure-seeking. But Miss Smith feared that $200,000 would not be sufficient to found a college for women, and gave up the idea. Two months after her brother died she made her will, giving $75,000 for an Academy at Hatfield, $100,000 to a Deaf Mute Institution in Hatfield, and $50,000 to a Scientific School in connection with Amherst College. Six years later Mr. John Clarke provided a deaf mute institution for the Commonwealth, and Miss Smith was at liberty to turn her fortune into another channel.
The old idea of a real college for women, a project as dear to Dr. Greene as to herself, was again upon her mind. She read all she could find upon the subject. She loved and believed in her own sex, and knew the low intellectual standard of the ordinary boarding-school. She said, "We should educate the whole woman, physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual." She insisted that the education given in the college which she hoped to found should be equal to that obtained in a college for men.
"There is a good deal that is heroic," says a writer in Scribner's Monthly, May, 1877, "in the spectacle of this lonely woman, shut out in a great measure by her infirmity and secluded life from so many human interests and pleasures, quietly elaborating a plan by which she could broaden and enrich the lives of multitudes of her sex, and give increased dignity and power to woman in the generations to come."
In July, 1868, Miss Smith made her last will, stating the object for which she wished her money to be used: "The establishment and maintenance of an institution for the higher education of young women, with the design to furnish them means and facilities for education equal to those which are afforded in our colleges for young men."
"The formal wording," says M. A. Jordan in the New England Magazine for January, 1887, "hardly tells the story of self-denial, painful industry, commonplace restriction and isolation, that lies behind it in the lives of this brother and sister."
Miss Smith wished the college to be Christian, "not Congregational," she said, "or Baptist, or Methodist, or Episcopalian, but Christian." She hoped the Bible would be studied in the Hebrew and Greek in her college, so that the students could know for themselves the truth of the translations which we have to-day.
Miss Smith gave about $400,000 for the founding of Smith College,—the fortune left by her brother had increased,—with the express condition that not more than half the amount should be used in buildings and grounds. It required much urging to allow the college to bear her name. After counselling with friends, Miss Smith decided that the college should be built at Northampton, which George Bancroft thought "the most beautiful town in New England, where no one can live without imbibing love for the place," with the provision that the town should raise $25,000, which was done. Northampton seemed preferable to Hatfield, because more easy of access, and possessed of a public library and other intellectual attractions. After her brother's money came into her hands, Miss Smith continued to economize for herself, but gave generously to others. Often in her journal she wrote, "I feel the responsibility of this great property."
She subscribed $5,000 to the Massachusetts Agricultural College if it should be located at Northampton, $300 for a library for the young people's Literary Association in Hatfield, $1,000 towards the organ in the church, $30,000 for the endowment of a professorship in Andover Theological Seminary, and to many other objects. "She gave to them all," says Dr. Greene, "Home Missions and Foreign Missions, the Bible Society and Tract Society, the Seamen and Freedmen,—to all the objects presented. In her journal she writes: 'I desire to give where duty calls.' ... Before her death she had great satisfaction and comfort in her Andover donation.... When she was considering whether or not to make her donation to Andover Theological Seminary, Professor Park asked her if he might consult a mutual friend, an eminent lawyer and business man, about it. With uplifted hands and almost a rebuking gesture she replied, 'No, no; I'll make up my mind myself.' One of her most intimate friends, a graduate of Mount Holyoke Seminary, remarked, 'I never was acquainted with a person who felt more deeply than Miss Smith her accountability to God.'"