Arthur A. Smith was born to Erastus and Martha Hulick Smith
in May 9th, 1829 in Batavia, in Claremont County, Ohio. His father was a New Englander, a native of
Rhode Island. His mother was a native of
Ohio. When young Arthur was eleven years
old, Erastus moved his family to Illinois, and in the Fall of 1840 the family
settled upon a farm in Knox County.
Young Arthur soon settled into the duties and chores expected of a
farmer’s son.
Given the newness of the territory and the limited
opportunities for education, it was a testament to his willingness to seize
what chances he could to improve himself.
He was accepted as a student in the Preparatory Department of Knox
College, and soon afterward was allowed to enter Knox. He graduated from there with high honors in
1853.
After graduation he
commenced the study of law under the tutelage of Abraham Becker, an able
practitioner of the legal profession in Otsego County, New York. After studying with Mr. Becker for a year, he
finished the course in Becker’s office, and then studied under the Honorable
Julius Manning of Peoria. Upon completion
of this commitment, Arthur A. Smith was admitted to the Bar in 1855. About this time he married Mary Delano, but
sadly, the marriage was short-lived, as probably following complications from
childbirth, Mary and her child died in early 1856. Lawyer Smith married again on November 12,
1856, this time to Mary E. Bonner of Galesburg.
During this time lawyer Smith was building up a thriving law practice in
Galesburg. An 1861 Galesburg Directory shows Arthur Smith as a partner in
the firm of Smith and Ford, attorneys, located at 1 Main Street, an address
that boasted a few of the city’s law firms.
In 1861 Smith’s family residence was on Prairie Street, the west side,
the first door north of Tompkins. In
politics he was a staunch Republican who believed in party principles more than
party machinery, and he was elected to the State Legislature in 1861. It was said that he worked faithfully for the
interests of his constituents.
Shortly after the
outbreak of the Civil War he caught the prevailing patriotic fervor and joined
up to help crush the rebellion. With
General Abner Clark Harding, of Monmouth, Illinois, he organized the 83rd
Regiment of Illinois Infantry. Harding
was elected Colonel, and the commander of the regiment, and Arthur Smith was
elected Lieutenant Colonel. The regiment
was sworn in at Monmouth in August of 1862.
Immediately it was ordered to Tennessee, where it performed guard duty
along the Cumberland River in the vicinity of Forts Henry and Donelson.
Smith and
Harding’s opportunity to prove their mettle occurred on February 3rd,
1863. Some of the South’s ablest cavalry
commanders, Nathan Bedford Forrest, “Fighting” Joe Wheeler and John A. Wharton
led approximately 2500 men in an attack on the 800 federal troops garrisoned at
Dover, Tennessee. Defending the hamlet
was the 83rd Illinois, a company of the 5th Iowa Infantry,
and a section of the guns of Flood’s Battery.
Colonel Harding commanded the post and Arthur Smith commanded the 83rd
Illinois.
The combined
Confederate forces surrounded the village and demanded the surrender of the
Union defenders. During the battle, some
of the fiercest fighting pitted Smith’s 83rd against Wharton’s command. At one point they captured one of Flood’s
Battery’s guns. Colonel Smith led a few
brave men in a desperate attempt to recapture it, but were driven back. The battle raged until nightfall, with both
sides running low on ammunition; the rebels finally giving up their attempt in
the wake of such determined resistance.
Naval gunboats came up to lend assistance to the defenders, and Colonel
Smith was ordered to go aboard to direct their fire. This caused the rebels to abandon their hope
to recapture Fort Donelson as well. The
day of failure led to a bitter falling out between Forrest and Wheeler, in
which Forrest told Wheeler “I will be in my coffin before I will serve again
under your command.” General Lowe, the
commandant at Fort Henry, lavished praise upon both Harding and Smith for their
bravery and meritorious conduct in this battle.
Evidently Colonel
Smith had earned the respect of the men whom he commanded as well. Mitchell Thompson wrote on May 12th,
1863, that “our present Col. A. A. Smith is one of the right kind. An officer or soldier who gets drunk is to be
reported to him direct and he will apply Gen. Rosecrans’s order to the very
letter. Before he came down so strong
there was a good deal of drinking done.”
Colonel Smith got
a sample of the inhuman side of war shortly afterward. He had sent a contingent of seven men, led by
a Lieutenant Gamble to guard a train headed to Nashville. The seven men were attacked by rebel
guerillas and captured. The guerrillas
stripped them of their shirts, then lined them up and summarily executed
them. Attached to each of the bodies
were notes that boasted of their actions.
Scrawled in barely literate letters were the words “killed by
guerillas.” Just before this barbarous
act, Lieutenant Gamble broke away from his captors and managed to escape into
the underbrush. When he made his way
back to the command and informed his Colonel of what had happened, the Colonel
was so outraged that he issued orders that the inhuman butchers be captured,
alive or dead. They were soon brought
in; dead.
Colonel Smith was
eventually assigned to the command of the District of Tennessee, with his
headquarters at Clarksville. He held
this position until the close of the war, when in 1865 he was mustered
out. On March 13th, 1865 he
was brevetted a Brigadier General in recognition of “meritorious and faithful
services during the war.”
General Arthur A.
Smith briefly returned to Galesburg, but a month later he decided to return
back to his former headquarters at Clarksville, Tennessee, along with W. A.
Peffer, who would eventually become a U.S. Senator from Kansas. Viewed as “carpetbaggers” by many of the
resentful citizens of the former Confederacy, they met with a hostile
reception. He was shot at during one
dark night, his residence was peppered with bullets, and he received a number
of threatening letters and no doubt torrents of verbal abuse. Finally capitulating to the advice of friends
who urged him to return to Illinois because they feared for his safety in the
post-war political turmoil in Tennessee, he returned to Illinois as soon as the
Mississippi River ice melted enough to enable him to return home via one of the
river steamers. He resumed his law
practice until 1867, when he was appointed by Governor “Uncle Dick” Oglesby to
fill the position of Judge of the Circuit Court to fill the unexpired term of
Judge John S. Thompson.
A local Democrat
filed a lawsuit asking that he be removed from the judgeship, stating that he
did not meet the requirement of having been a resident of Illinois for five
years prior to his appointment. Smith
argued that he never bought a home in Clarksville, that he hadn’t cast a vote
in any Tennessee elections for fear that it would jeopardize his Illinois
citizenship, and that he rented out his Illinois home rather than sell it. He had held on to his Illinois law books as
well in case he would need them again.
Does this account
read eerily familiar? It should. It reads very similar to the circumstances
surrounding the debate as to whether Rahm Emanuel was legally qualified to run
for the coveted political plum of becoming Chicago’s mayor. While Emanuel was in D.C., he had rented out
his home in Illinois. He resided in the Nation’s
capital for a while, then returned to
the Prairie State to run for political office and his candidacy was challenged
because his opponents didn’t believe that he met the residency requirements.
As happened to
Rahm Emanuel close to a century and a half later, it was ruled in a lower court
that Smith wasn’t an Illinois resident, and thus couldn’t qualify to be
appointed judge. As Emanuel would do,
Smith appealed. In 1867 the Illinois
Supreme Court handed down a ruling that it was clearly Smith’s intent to remain
an Illinoisan. He had chosen to rent his
home rather than sell it. He didn’t take
any actions in Tennessee that would have invalidated his Illinois residency. The State Supreme Court ruled that he was
eligible to hold the judicial position that he had been appointed to.
The Emanuel
ruling didn’t sit well with many people, but the precedent had been set back in
1867. Back in Smith’s day the Supreme
Court’s decision didn’t either. The decision was not unanimous. A justice who wrote a dissenting opinion
argued that Smith had moved out of Illinois, and that was all that should
really matter.
His right to wear
judicial robes legally affirmed, in June of 1867 he was elected to the same
position, as he would be for five consecutive terms. Dewey’s City Directory in 1868 shows him as
an attorney and District Judge. It lists
his residence as on Waters, the southeast corner of Cherry Street. For a period of twenty nine years he sat on
the bench as Circuit Judge. According to
the 1899 Illinois History of Knox County
he “performed his duty faithfully, wisely, and justly, with few decisions of
his reversed in the higher courts. The
same source is very laudatory, stating that “in public and private life Judge
Smith has shown himself to be a superior man.
Rigid integrity, a sound judgment, prudence and discretion are some of
the elements of his character. As a
lawyer, his reputation is established for his fairness towards his opponent and
for his candor in speech and argument.
As a judge, his impartiality and the justness of his decisions were the
predominating characteristics. As a
citizen, his views are broad, liberal and charitable, looking towards the
improvement and welfare of his city, his State and his country. He is regarded as an upright and trustworthy
citizen, and is highly honored for his services in the dark days of the
rebellion and as a Judge of the Circuit Court.”
Judge Smith was a
member of the Methodist Church early in his life, but later he chose to attend
services at the Congregational Church, although never officially becoming a
member of the congregation. He resigned
his judgeship in 1889, two years before the expiration of his last term,
recognizing that his health was declining.
His lung ailment became worse, and eventually a move was made to
Colorado in the hope that the mountain air would be beneficial to his health.
It wasn’t. He died on the 21st of September, 1900, two
months after his arrival in Manitou Springs, Colorado. He was buried with full military honors in
the Grand Army of the Republic section of Hope Cemetery in Galesburg. He, along with Philip Sidney Post, is one of
two Civil War Generals buried in that historic cemetery.
Judge Smith left
a rich legacy of public service behind him.
He was a member of the Grand Army of the Republic, and was elected its
State commander from 1876 to 1879. He
was also a member of the Loyal Legion, and was a trustee at Knox College for
more than twenty years, and sat on directorships for both the Galesburg
National Bank and the Purlington Brick Factory. He and his second wife, Mary, left an
accomplished family behind as their legacy as well. Their daughter Blanche became an accomplished
musician who spent five years in Europe studying her art. Three of their sons followed their father
into the legal profession, and one became a respected member in the jewelry
business in Chicago.
For so many of
his generation though, the war became the defining struggle that honed and
shaped their lives. How adamant a
Unionist was General Smith? How
fervently did he believe in the cause?
One has only to walk down to his gravesite near the southwestern edge of
Hope Cemetery to find your answer.
Looking down at the family headstones, you’ll note that Mary and Arthur
had a son born to them in 1864. No doubt
with the intent of making a definitive statement to fling at those in Illinois
who were lukewarm in their support of, or opposed to the war, they named the
young infant… “Loyal.”
Sources
Tom Best covers
the Battle of Dover much more thoroughly in his article on the 83rd
Illinois, so I didn’t spend too much time recounting the battle. His article does it ample justice. I highly recommend it. Tom was also kind enough to send me the
letter from Mitchell Thompson that I quoted.
Other sources that
I used were…
Brown and Hunt’s Brevet
brigadier Generals in Blue
1899 Bios Illinois
History of Knox County, Trails to the Past
General Arthur A. Smith’s Find a Grave Memorial
Rahm Owes it all to a
Civil War Vet, Capitol Fax.com
Battle of Dover
Wikipedia
Civil War Veterans of
Knox County, IL (website)
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