Thomas Kilby Smith (September 23, 1820 – December 14, 1887) was a lawyer, soldier, and diplomat from the state of Ohio who served as a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War and then in the postbellum United States Army. He led a brigade and then a division in the Army of the Tennessee in several of the most significant campaigns of the Western Theater of operations before failing health forced him to a series of desk jobs.
Smith...
more
Thomas Kilby Smith (September 23, 1820 – December 14, 1887) was a lawyer, soldier, and diplomat from the state of Ohio who served as a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War and then in the postbellum United States Army. He led a brigade and then a division in the Army of the Tennessee in several of the most significant campaigns of the Western Theater of operations before failing health forced him to a series of desk jobs.
Smith was born in Boston, Massachusetts on September 23, 1820. He was the eldest son of Captain George Smith and Eliza Bicker Walter. Both his paternal and maternal forefathers were active and prominent in the professional life and in the government of New England.
His parents moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, in his early childhood, where he was educated in a military school under Ormsby M. Mitchel, the astronomer, and studied law in the office of Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase. In 1853 he was appointed by President Franklin Pierce as the special agent in...
less
