William Farrar Smith

After graduating from West Point, he was appointed to the Topographical Engineers, and served on engineering and lighthouse projects and as an instructor at West Point until 1861.

He accepted a Volunteer commission as Colonel of the 3rd Vermont Infantry in July 1861, and was appointed Brigadier General in August 1861. He was promoted to Major General of Volunteers on 4 July, 1862 and took command of the 2nd Division of the Sixth Army Corps.

He commanded the Second Division in Franklin's Sixth Corps in Maryland.

After Antietam he was assigned to the command of the Sixth Corps and was engaged at the battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862. The recriminations which followed led to the famous general order in which several of the senior officers of the army were dismissed and suspended by General Burnside. Smith was one of these, but he did not leave the Army, and as a Brigadier General he commanded troops in Pennsylvania during the Gettysburg campaign.

He transferred to the 9th Corps in February 1863 and was appointed Major in the Corps of Engineers (Regular Army) on 3 March. The next day his appointment of Major General of Volunteers having not been confirmed by the Senate, expired, and he resumed his rank of Brigadier General in the Volunteer service.

He was engaged in operations about Chattanooga, TN, participating in the battle of Missionary Ridge.

He was re-confirmed as Major General of Volunteers in March 1864, and in May was assigned to the 18th Corps, which he commanded at Cold Harbor and at Petersburg till July, when he was relieved of his command and put on 'special duty.'

He resigned his US Volunteer commission in 1865 and that in the Regular Army in 1867. He became President of the International Ocean Telegraph company in 1865, police commissioner of New York City in 1875, and subsequently president of the board. After 1881 he was a practicing civil engineer.

Sources: Heitman, Francis Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army 1789-1903, Washington, US Government Printing Office, 1903; and Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, edited by James Grant Wilson and John Fiske. Six volumes, New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1887-1889

2/17/1824; St. Albans, VT

2/28/1903; Philadelphia, PA