Edmund Kirby "Seminole" Smith (16 May 1824-28 March 1893) was a full General of the Confederate States Army who commanded the Trans-Mississippi Department during the American Civil War.
Biography[]
Born in St. Augustine, Florida, Smith graduated from West Point in 1841 25th of 41 cadets; he was the cousin of Union general Edmund Kirby. He was nicknamed "Seminole" for the indigenous people of Florida, a nickname that stuck. In the Mexican-American War he fought in the Battle of Palo Alto and the Battle of Resaca de la Palma under Zachary Taylor, and his brother Ephraim was killed in the Battle of Molino del Rey. On 13 May 1859 he suffered a thigh wound defending Nectusunga Valley from Indians while he was stationed in Texas, and remained loyal to the Union after Texas seceded from the Union. He refused to surrender Camp Coleman to Benjamin McCulloch, and on 31 January he was made a Major. On 6 April, however, he deserted the Union for the Confederacy and became a Major in the Artillery.
Given command of a brigade of the Army of the Shenandoah, he fought in the First Battle of Bull Run and was severely wounded in the neck and shoulder. Later, he commanded the Department of Middle and East Florida. On 11 October he was made a Major-General and division in the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, but in February 1862 was sent to command the Army of East Tennessee. He won a major victory in the Battle of Richmond against the Union army. He continued to fight the Union along the Mississippi River and in early 1864 defeated Nathaniel P. Banks's invasion of Texas in the Red River Campaign. On 19 February he was promoted to full general and became one of only seven such men to hold that rank. An invasion of Missouri that he had ordered Sterling Price to carry out ended in the battle of Westport, resulting in a defeat for the Confederacy and the end of the major actions of the Western Theater, and most of the rest of the war was guerrilla warfare. On 26 May 1865 Edmund Kirby Smith surrendered the Confederate army in Texas and he fled to Mexico and then Cuba. On November 14 he took an oath of amnesty and returned to the USA.
After the war he became involved in telegraphy and teaching. From 1866 to 1868 he was President of the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company. From 1870 he was President of the University of Nashville, up until 1875, when he taught at the University of the South (also in Tennessee) and he taught until his death of pneumonia in 1893.
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