General Kirby-Smith

Front matter

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Preface

The purpose of this book is to set forth the life of its subject more as a man than as a military leader; and with that object in view, letters written by him at West Point, on the battlefields of the War with Mexico, on the Southwestern Frontier, in Virginia while recruiting the Armies of the Confederacy and while recovering from the wound received at Manassas, and from Mexico and Cuba after the fall of the Confederacy, have been freely drawn upon. In editing these letters for this purpose, the present writer has omitted only such portions as were of local, temporary or personal interest, denoting such omissions where they occur in the midst of paragraphs. The military operations of the Kentucky Campaign and of the Trans-Mississippi Department are related in the words of papers carefully prepared by General Kirby- Smith for publication shortly after the close of the Civil War. The work is therefore chiefly autobiographical, though neither the letters nor the papers were written with any thought that they would be used for such a purpose. In his extended use of these materials the present writer frankly acknowledges that his true relation to the volume is that of editor rather than author, and as such he here expresses

Preface

his obligations to Mr. Sanderson Smith, of New York; to Major E. K. Webster, U. S. A., and other members of the family; and to the Hon. John T. Beard, of Florida, for valuable assistance rendered in the preparation of the book and in seeing it through the press.

One who took the deepest interest in every detail of the preparation of this volume, was in the Providence of God, not permitted to see its publication. Very early on Sunday morning, November 3rd, 1907, at Sewanee, Tennessee, Mrs. Cassie Selden Kirby- Smith passed from the Church Militant to the rest of Paradise. The following day she was laid to rest by the side of her distinguished husband in the Sewanee cemetery.

A. H. N.

The University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee, November, 1907.

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Contents

PAGE

Introduction i

I. The Kirbys, the Smiths and the Kirby-Smiths 4

Introduction

In April, 1865, when the news of the surrender of General Lee reached a small town in New Jersey, a boy of ten years, who participated in the rejoicing with which the news was received, was prompted to ask if all the Confederate Generals had surrendered, and if the war were actually ended. He was informed that there were several general officers who had not surrendered, and among them was mentioned General Kirby-Smith. This name fixed itself upon the mind of the boy. Listening attentively to the discussions he heard among his elders at the time, he learned something more about the Confederate General, the oddity of whose name had the effect of making him a hero in the boy's mind. He learned that this Confederate General had been, since early in 1863, in supreme command of what was known as the Trans- Mississippi Department of the Confederate Army; that the Department included Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and the Indian Territory; that he had organized a government there and had made that government self-supporting, so that after the collapse of the Confederate Government at Richmond and the surrender of General Lee, fears were entertained among the Federal leaders, that if the person of Jefferson Davis were not secured, he might escape to this Trans-Mississippi region and there cooperate with the military commander in maintaining a Confederacy, rather more contracted than the other, yet likely to hold out for some time longer. And secretly the boy hoped that this might be; — not from any feeling of disloyalty to the Union, but probably because he thought it would add interest to the history that was then making itself. This hope was indulged in secret, although in all the discussions of public affairs to which the boy listened at the time, he was much impressed by the moderation with which the leaders of the then crumbling Confederacy were always referred to, and the absence of all personal bitterness, even in the midst of the rejoicing over the surrender which brought the war to a close.

Twenty years later, the New Jersey boy came to the University of the South, at Sewanee, Tennessee, and among the first persons he met there, was General Kirby-Smith, looking very much like the wartime engraved portraits of him, save that his long beard was snowy white instead of jet black; his head more bald ; and instead of the gray uniform of a Confederate General, he was most frequently seen in scholastic cap and gown. In the personal acquaintance which followed the first meeting, the New Jersey boy learned to know General Kirby-Smith, not only as the Confederate General who was the last to surrender, but also as one who had borne a distinguished part in the war with Mexico and had subsequently had a long and interesting career on the Southwestern frontier in a region with which the New Jersey boy had become familiar. But most of all he came to know him as a scholar and a Christian gentleman — a representative of a class of which the Confederate Army was largely composed; and the acquaintance became sufficiently close to justify the Yankee boy's undertaking, at the close of another twenty years, to write a life of this hero of his boyhood and to show the world who he really was.

To this task he has been drawn by coming into close touch with the General's life and by having his character more deeply impressed upon him in two previous literary ventures, notably in editing the Memoirs of the Right Reverend Dr. Quintard, Second Bishop of Tennessee. In those Memoirs,' General Kirby-Smith appears in a light which confirms the opinion already formed that his life is of interest not only to the survivors of the late Confederacy and to Southern people generally, but to all Americans, as of the highest type of American citizen.

Chapter I The Kirbys, The Smiths And The Kirby-smiths

It was by one of the accidents of history that Edmund Kirby Smith was by birth a Southerner and not a native of the State of Connecticut. All his forbears for several generations were from that New England State or from Massachusetts, and most of them were prominent in the history of New England. Notable among them was Ephraim Kirby, a native of Litchfield, Connecticut, who joined the Revolutionary Army at the age of eighteen, before the battle of Bunker Hill, and served throughout the war of the Revolution, participating in nineteen engagements, receiving eighteen wounds and surviving after being left for dead on the field at Germantown. He rose to the rank of Colonel before the close of the war, in

It was to the town of Litchfield that the fragments of the leaden statue of George III, previously standing in Bowling Green, New York City, were sent, when that statue was torn down and broken up by the Sons of Liberty, upon receiving the news of the Declaration of Independence, in 1776. They were there given to the patriotic ladies of the town to be converted into bullets for the use of the soldiers who were fighting for the independence of the colonies. The number of bullets thus made is given as 37,775; and of these, 17,592 were made by Mrs. Reynold Marvin, the wife of ** Deacon" Reynold Marvin, and her dai^ghter Ruth.

After the war, Colonel Ephraim Kirby returned to Litchfield, applied himself to securing an education, was for a short time a student at Yale College, and received from that college, in 1787, the honorary degree of Master of Arts. He studied law with Captain (''Deacon") Reynold Marvin and was admitted to the bar. In 1789, he published "Reports of the Decisions of the Superior Court and Court of Errors," the first volume of law reports issued in the State of Connecticut, and probably the first in the United States. He was a member of the Society of the Cincinnati ; was for thirteen years a member of the State Legislature, and was several times an unsuccessful candidate for the Governorship of Connecticut. In 1801, he was appointed by President Jefferson Supervisor of United States Revenue for the State of Connecticut. On the acquisition of Louisiana by the United States, he was made a judge of the newly acquired territory and died at Fort Stoddard, Mississippi, on the 2nd of October, 1804, while on his way to enter upon the duties of his office.

This, however, is not so interesting to us at present as the fact, that some time prior to 1790, Colonel Ephraim Kirby married Ruth Marvin, daughter of his law preceptor, and had by her two sons, who became soldiers in the War of 1812: Reynold Marvin Kirby and Edmund Kirby (the latter serving his country also in the war with Mexico); and a daughter, Frances Marvin Kirby. Some time prior to 1807, Frances Marvin Kirby married Joseph Lee Smith, a native of New Britain, Connecticut, whose father, Elnathan Smith, had been an officer in the French and Indian War and a Major in the Commissary Department in the Revolution, and whose mother was the daughter of Colonel Isaac Lee, grandson of the first settler in the town of Farmington, Connecticut. Joseph Lee Smith was educated at Yale College, studied law and was practicing his profession when the War of 1812 began. He was appointed Major in the Twenty-fifth Infantry, participated in the invasion of Canada, was promoted Lieutenant Colonel and brevetted Colonel for bravery at the battle of Stony Creek in June, 1813, and became Colonel in 1818, but resigned from the army that year. In 1821, being appointed Judge of the Superior Court of Florida by President Monroe, he removed to that Territory. He fixed his residence at St. Augustine, and there a son was born to him on the i6th of May, 1824, who, though descended on both sides from Connecticut people, was a native Southerner. To this son the baptismal name of Edmund Kirby was given/ /^\ Florida at the time of Judge Smith's residence there presented all the conditions of frontier life. Twenty years after removing there, the Judge wrote of St. Augustine as being ''out of the world." It

^ The Judge had given to each of his older children the name of his wife's family and so prepared the way for the change of the surname Smith to Kirby-Smith in his branch of the family. Throughout his boyhood and until after the war with Mexico, the subject of this biography signed his name either E. K. Smith, or Edmund K. Smith, while his elder brother, Ephraim Kirby Smith, was known as Kirby Smith. After the Mexican War, in which the elder brother lost his life, Edmund began to use his middle name, possibly out of a tender regard for his brother's memory, though more probably to distinguish himself from the several Smiths who won distinction in that war. The widow of Ephraim Kirby Smith objected to this appropriation of the name and thought that the name Kirby-Smith should be the exclusive possession of her late husband and of her son, Joseph Lee Kirby Smith, of whom we shall see more later. Edmund was not generally known as Kirby-Smith until near the beginning of the Civil War. Throughout that war he was known as General E. Kirby Smith, the Kirby being regarded as a given name and as no part of his surname. He was mentioned in all official reports as one of the innumerable Smiths. In the midst of the struggle the question of the use of the name arose, and some one wrote to the Northern papers somewhat resentfully of the *' assumption " by the General of the name of " Kirby Smith," which it was claimed belonged properly to the family of Ephraim Kirby Smith. In the naming of his own eleven children, General Kirby-Smith effectually carried out his father's evident intention and the family name is now Kirby-Smith.

was a town having a population of from i,6oo to 1,700 and was frequently visited by epidemics of sickness. In one of them there were 1,200 sick and nearly all of the officers of the garrison were carried off. On another occasion (1839), nearly half the population was * 'afflicted with a severe malignant bilious fever, almost yellow fever, and there were many deaths." The Judge mentions in a later letter the prevalence of "grippe." From 1835 to 1843, the Seminole War was in progress, and the lives of the residents of the territory were in constant peril. The Judge wrote in 1841 :

"I have at this time a slight fever occasioned by my recent exposures to the hot sun and miasmas of this country. Our war is not yet entirely ended. We have been faithless and treacherous to the Indians Recently, Wild-Cat Coacoochee was, while on a visit and with a pass from the Commanding General, taken prisoner and sent west of the Mississippi River. The Indians understand these violations of moral obligations and of national faith, as well as we understand them, and will never trust us. We have now to hunt them down to the last man before we can be safe."

A few weeks later, the Judge related an incident illustrative of the conditions of life in Florida at that time:

"In this Indian country such things as I am about 8 to relate are daily happening to others, exciting no comment. On my return from court held some time ago in Alachua, at the village of Newmansville, about a hundred miles in the interior and near to that portion of the Territory from which the savage enemy has never been driven ; proceeding by myself (having been detained by business so that I could not accompany the military escort provided for the court), and having progressed on my way from Newmansville about ten miles, I perceived at the moment of crossing the brow of a hill, three Indians on my right at about half rifle distance. My first impulse was to wheel about and return to Newmansville ; but to return, having begun a homeward journey, is always irksome to me, and I determined to keep on toward home if possible. With this in view, I wheeled about toward the brow of the hill which I had just passed, but with great noise and flourish, beckoning with my hat in hand, and making signals as if to persons behind me to hasten on. Then suddenly wheeling again toward the Indians, I dashed at them as if intending with my pretended party to overwhelm them. When lo, as I hoped, they took rapid flight to a near swamp, leaving me to gallop unmolested to the next settlement, twenty miles from Newmansville, which is garrisoned and stockaded, and where I remained until the next day, when I resumed my lonely but safe ride to St. Augustine.

*'On the very day I left Newmansville at twelve o'clock, just at evening, these three Indians appeared there, attacked and burned a house upon the outskirts of the village, killed one of its occupants and then disappeared without scathe to themselves, which is according to the custom of the country."

With the political situation in Florida the Judge seemed far from pleased. Writing about some landed interests there after the admission of Florida to the Union as a State, he said: "Everything here is extremely dull. Vicious and interested men, that they might obtain office, hurried us into State government while we were vastly deficient in population and even more so in the means to support such government."

Young Edmund Kirby Smith seems not to have seen much of these conditions of life. After he had grown to manhood he deplored that he had been deprived, since the age of twelve, of the influences of home life with father, mother and sister. Judge Smith wrote in 1845, that he had not seen his son save for five or six hours at a time, for nine years. The fact is, that despite General Kirby-Smith's later pride in the State which he claimed as his native State, the crude condition of society therein, and the unhealthiness of the climate made it undesirable as a place of residence for a family; and the family of Judge Smith was much scattered. A son, Ephraim

Kirby Smith, had graduated from West Point at the age of nineteen, two years after the birth of Edmund. A daughter was married to Captain Webster of the United States Army and was living any where but in Florida. And Mrs. Smith was of necessity, visiting much of the time in Connecticut, with her son on the Northern frontier or with her daughter, wherever she might be.

Not only was Edmund Kirby Smith's ancestry on both sides of ''fighting stock," but all his family connections were of the army. Edmund's predilections for the army and his aspirations for distinction in his chosen career, were manifested early and amounted almost to a passion. He was accordingly placed, in 1836, in the Alexandria Boarding School, of which Benjamin Hallowell was principal, and where the curriculum had admittance to the Military Academy at West Point especially in view. Alexandria was then described as in the District of Columbia. Some of the young man's reports while at this school are preserved, and show him to have made good marks in Mathematics, English Grammar, Latin, French, History, Physics, Chemistry and Drawing. In 1838, he took up the study of Botany, without giving up the interest he had previously taken in Mineralogy. Thus early did he begin the cultivation of his taste for natural science which lasted to the end of his life.

The long separation of young Edmund Kirby

1 1

Smith from his home and from the members of his family resulted in a correspondence which has been carefully preserved apparently without the loss of any important letter. The letters upon examination prove worthy of preservation, and are the chief reliance of the present writer in the preparation of this book. The letters of Judge Smith are filled with wholesome advice and might serve as models to be followed by a father writing to his son in these days. They are all the more remarkable in view of the meager facilities for correspondence in the early times. It was before the use of envelopes became general, and the amount paid for postage was indicated — eighteen, twenty-five or fifty cents as the case might be — not by postage stamps, but in the indorsement of the postmaster. The letters of the subject of this biography to his mother are thorougly self-revealing, the more so because written with no thought of their being preserved or read by any other person than her to whom they were addressed. They show, among other things, a deep religious tone, and that in the early youth of Edmund Kirby Smith was laid the foundation of that strong Christian character which was very marked in his later years; which placed him with Lee and ** Stonewall" Jackson among the men of approved religious character to whom, as has been noted elsewhere,^ the government of the Confed-

^ Bishop Quintard's Memoirs of the War, page i. 12 erate States, as it came into existence, committed the leadership of its armies; which enabled hirn to bear up under the adversity which later came upon him, and, setting aside flattering offers of worldly gain, to devote himself in his latter years to the education of youth. At the age of twenty-five he writes of the gratification it gave hirn to reflect that, not only himself, but nearly all of his relatives were communicants of the ''Catholic, Apostolic Church." A few years later he entertained serious thoughts of resigning from the army in order that he might enter the ministry of the church. Just before the beginning of the Civil War, he expressed envy of the career of a frontier missionary. And after the Civil War he gave further consideration to the claims which he felt the ministry had upon him. All this while he took pleasure in the fulfillment of his religious obligations, and not infrequently served his church as lay reader. Throughout his career he made religion the foundation of his daily life, and without being ostentatious in his religious conduct, and without a trace of fanaticism, he was faithful in the discharge of every religious duty and proved himself a noble specimen of the Christian soldier.

Chapter II West Point

The zealous efforts of his relations secured for young Edmund Kirby Smith, in 1841, an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, and at the age of seventeen, a new life opened before him. Captain Webster, his brother-in-law, who had spent ten years of his life at West Point, seems to have had considerable influence with the authorities, and was helpful to the young man in many ways. He had long before begun to interest himself in the young man's preparation for the Academy. When finally entered, Edmund appears to have been happy in his work for a time. He acquired from his fellow cadets the nick-name of ''Seminole" (pronounced in four syllables and with accent on the penult), derived in some way from his native territory.

Of the cadets at West Point during the years 1841 to 1845, nearly all were destined to participate within a few years in a war with Mexico; and many were to attain to prominence in the history of the country and to high rank in one army or the other engaged in the great civil war of 1861-65. The class of 1842, the first class which Edmund Kirby

Smith saw graduated, numbered fifty-six and furnished twelve general officers for the Federal Army and eight for the Confederate Army in that great struggle. Included among the former were Pope, Rosecrans, Doubleday, John Newton and Gustavus W. Smith. Among the latter were Longstreet, Van Dorn, A. P. Stewart, Eustis, and Mansfield Lovell. The class of 1843 included Ulysses S. Grant, W. B. Franklin, C. C. Augur, and others who subsequently became general officers. The class of 1844 included Hancock and Pleasanton. The class of 1846 was the largest that had ever left the Academy up to that time, numbering seventy members, among whom were such men as George B. McClellan, Stoneman, "Stonewall" Jackson, A. P. Hill, Pickett, Maury, W. D. Smith and others who rose to special distinction in the army. With many of these. Cadet Edmund Kirby Smith must have been acquainted as well as with the class of 1847. With some of them, indeed, he formed friendships which lasted through life and were not permanently impaired by the Civil War. George W. Morgan, who entered the Academy at the same time with Edmund Kirby Smith and left two years later, was in command of the Federal forces opposed to General Kirby-Smith at Cumberland Gap in 1862. Yet so close was their friendship that Morgan sought occasion to send some presents through the lines to the Confederate General.

Acquaintance was formed with other men destined to distinction in the Civil War. Gustavus W. Smith was Assistant Professor of Engineering in the Academy from 1844 to 1846; A. P. Stewart became Acting Professor of Mathematics; and Horatio G. Wright, who graduated second in the class of 1841, was Assistant Professor of French. Mansfield Lovell married the daughter of Colonel Plympton, a Florida friend of the Smith family. Lieutenant Joseph Hooker, of the same regiment as Lieutenant Webster, was appointed Adjutant at West Point in 1841, and not only carried certain things from Mrs. Webster to her brother, but promised to take an interest in the young cadet. He was on duty at West Point but a short time, however, and was succeeded as Adjutant by Lieutenant Irwin McDowell, who was Assistant Instructor of Infantry Tactics from 1841 to 1845, and was thus intimately related to all the cadets.

There could scarcely have been any four years in the history of West Point in which more men destined to become distinguished in the military history of our country were gathered together there than the four years in which young Edmund Kirby Smith was a cadet. Of course he failed to realize the value of the acquaintances he was then making, and that he and they were to become famous in a great civil strife that was to take place twenty years later, and that many of them were to be engaged as his enemies in that strife. Only to two of them does he make special reference. In his last year (1845), he refers to his roommates at No. — , North Barracks. They were William Farrar Smith and Howard; the latter "a. Mississippian, full of pistols and bowie knives, but now tempered down, by the cooling effects of a northern climate, to quite a gentle and rational being; — black hair and eyes that looked through and through a person, and in his ^oia ensemble quite a handsome young man." Of this Howard we hear but little more, save that he was in General Lee's staff at Winchester. But of William Farrar Smith, nicknamed in his cadet days ''Baldy," and thus known throughout his career of distinction in the army, and especially in the Federal service in the Civil War, Edmund Kirby Smith was a warm friend for life. He described him then as "a Yankee by birth, but as fine a fellow as ever graced a 'short tail.' "

The letters from West Point do not add much to our knowledge of Edmund Kirby Smith. Those that are preserved are principally written in his third and fourth years. He usually refers to himself as a **short tail," that being the designation of a cadet derived from the style of his uniform. He writes of himself to his mother as an ''anchorite," and sometimes experiences seasons of ill-health and of depression and declares that he has been two or three times on the point of resigning, and has only been deterred

3 17 by the desire to gratify his parents and obtain a diploma. His health, however, returns and he begins to watch ''the few months glide by" that mark his detention "as an unwilling prisoner at the Academy." He spent the summer holidays of 1843 with his brother, Captain Ephraim Kirby Smith, who wrote of him:

"Edmund is about my height, will be a much larger man and is very like his father in the face. He is a noble young gentleman — aimiable, well-mannered and intellectual. His standing in his class is very respectable, and his classmates say, were it not for his indolence and carelessness, he might be at the head. He has promised me that for the future he will be studious and exert himself to avoid reports for neglect or demerits. If he does, he cannot fail to be one of the five first next year and will undoubtedly graduate near the head of his class,"

Some of the young cadet's letters contain a little West Point gossip, as that written in the fall of 1843:

"Mrs. Scott and her daughters have been creating quite an excitement here this encampment. Camilla, Cornelia and Ella carry the day here at present. If I were the old General, I should be dreadfully jealous. Mrs. Scott holds her levee to forty or fiftycadets at Kosciusko's, gives them parties, sends them fruit, cake, etc., daily, and never seems at ease till she gets a crowd of cadets (her heart's corps as she calls them) around her. She is very much liked and would make quite a popular Superintendent. From the length of time she has been here and her apparent aversion to leaving, I suspect she is partly inclined to supersede Major Delafield in the regal chair of tyranny."

In one of his letters about this time he offers to abstain from all intoxicating liquors and from playing cards, if his father requests it. In replying to the letter the father expresses surprise at the offer, as he had always supposed that the use of liquors and cards had been prohibited among the cadets. He most earnestly requests the pledge of his son, and there is nothing to indicate that the son was ever guilty of breaking his pledge, or in fact of his having been addicted at any time to the use of either cards or liquor. The presumption is that he made the offer to his father for his own protection.

Young Edmund Kirby Smith was the twelfth in his class in 1843, but in the early months of the following year he fell to the fifty-fifth and was charged with an enormous number of demerits. This caused his father much anxiety and the paternal letters are filled with expostulations and advice. And as the time for graduation approaches the anxiety extends to the other members of the family. All hope of the young man's graduating among the first five in his class is abandoned. At the head of the class of forty-five cadets stood William Henry Chase Whiting, a friend of Edmund Kirby Smith for many years. Other members of the class, besides the subject of this biography, who attained to prominence in the history of our country within the next few years, were Charles P. Stone, Fitz-John Porter, Thomas John Wood, David Allen Russell, T. G. Rhett, Gordon Granger, Bartow Bee and William Farrar Smith. Another member of the class was Jenifer, who had been a fellow-student at the school of Benjamin Hallowell at Alexandria, and who was subsequently associated with Edmund Kirby Smith in the service on the frontier; was the inventor of the celebrated saddle which bears his name, and was a general officer in the Confederate Army.

Trouble arose. Edmund Kirby Smith was at first refused his commission because of failure before the Medical Board of Examiners. This Board found him perfect except as to ''his vision, which was tested in various ways and found so defective as to compel the Board to report unfavorably." ''In the unanimous opinion of this Board," the report read, "Cadet E. K. Smith, in consequence of defective vision, being myopic or near-sighted to a great degree, does not 'possess the requisite physical ability to serve the country in the arduous and laborious station of a military officer.' " The young cadet did not give up, however. At his request, the Academy Surgeon certified that at no time while at the Academy had the cadet complained of any defective vision nor was he ever excused from any of his duties therefor. The Commandant certified that the cadet had frequently had the command of a company in the batallion of cadets and that he, the Commandant, had never perceived any failure on the part of the cadet to perform his duty, either from defective vision or from any other cause. The cadet had often commanded the guard and had always performed his duty satisfactorily. The Commandant would never have known from the manner in which Cadet E. K. Smith performed his duty that he was defective in vision. The instructor in sword exercise and the instructor in riding gave similar certificates, and two members of the Examining Board finally gave certificates which secured, after a time, the desired commission. But Edmund Kirby Smith wore spectacles from that time to the day of his death. With the effective certificate came the assurance that Cadet E. K. Smith was "a general favorite with all who knew him." He was, indeed, ever a lovable character, and to this fact, testimony is added at every stage of his career.