Gustavus Woodson Smith (30 November 1821 – 24 June 1896) was a Major-General of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.
Biography[]
Gustavus Woodson Smith was born in Georgetown, Kentucky in 1821, and he graduated from West Point in 1842, 8th of 56 cadets. Smith served in the US Army, fighting at the Battle of Cerro Gordo and the Battle of Contreras during the Mexican-American War before becoming a Captain in the US Army. Smith was Streets Commissioner of New York City from 1858 to 1861 before the American Civil War broke out, and he decidd to join the Confederacy when the war broke out, rising to the rank of Major-General on 19 September 1861. He served in the Army of Northern Virginia as a division commander, briefly leading the army after Joseph E. Johnston was wounded at Seven Pines and before Robert E. Lee assumed command of it. He later took command of the Department of North Carolina & Southern Virginia, and he resigned his commission as a general on 17 February 1863 to become an aide to P.G.T. Beauregard. He later served as superintendent of the Etowah Iron Works from 1863 to 1 June 1864 and as a commander of a Georgia militia division from 1864 to 1865, and he worked as an iron manufacturer in Tennessee after the war's end. He died in New York in 1896 at the age of 74.