Edmund Kirby Smith

Edmund Kirby Smith or Edmund Kirby-Smith, 1824-93, American soldier, Confederate general in the Civil War, b. St. Augustine, Fla. A West Point graduate, he was cited for gallantry in the Mexican War. A major when he resigned from the U.S. army (Mar., 1861) to fight for the Confederacy, he served in the Shenandoah under J. E. Johnston , and fought at Bull Run (July). Smith led the Confederate advance into Kentucky and defeated a Union force at Richmond, Ky. (Aug., 1862). He ably commanded the isolated Trans-Mississippi Dept. (1863-65) and was promoted to general in Feb., 1864. The unsuccessful Red River campaign of Nathaniel P. Banks was directed against his forces. Smith was one of the last Confederate generals to surrender (May 26, 1865). After the war he was chancellor of the Univ. of Nashville from 1870 to 1875 and professor at the Univ. of the South, Sewanee, Tenn., from 1875 to 1893.

Bibliography: See biographies by A. H. Noll (1907) and J. H. Parks (1954); R. L. Kerby, Kirby Smith's Confederacy (1972).

Smith, E. Kirby (1824–93) Confederate army officer, born Edmund Kirby Smith in Florida. Smith fought with distinction in the Mexican War (1846–48); after the war he served as botanist to the Mexican Boundary Commission. In the late 1850s he fought the Comanche near the Red River. When Florida seceded from the Union, he was commissioned a lieutenant colonel in the Confederate army; he served in the Shenandoah Valley and was instrumental in securing Confederate victory at the First Battle of Bull Run (1861). In 1862 Smith led an unsuccessful effort to retake the Cumberland Gap from Union forces. The following year he was named to head the Trans-Mississippi Department, giving him command of all Confederate troops west of the Mississippi. The Union victory at Vicksburg in 1863 left him cut off from supply routes and from communication with other Confederate troops, demoralizing his troops. Smith was promoted to full general in 1864; in 1865, as part of the Confederate collapse, he surrendered to Gen. Edward R. S. Canby.

Edmund Kirby-Smith see Smith, Edmund Kirby .