Thomas Kilby Smith 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 . Early life and career . 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 the Post Office Department at Washington , D . C . , and later United States Marshal for the Southern District of Ohio and deputy clerk of Hamilton County . Civil War . Smith entered the Union Army on September 9 , 1861 , as a lieutenant colonel . Later in the year , he was commissioned as the colonel of the newly raised 54th Ohio Infantry . He organized the regiment was Camp Dennison near Cincinnati in the summer and fall of 1861 . In February 1862 , Smith and his men were ordered to Paducah , Kentucky , where they joined the division of Maj . Gen . William T . Sherman . He was conspicuous in the Battle of Shiloh , on April 6 and 7 , 1862 , assuming command of Stuart ' s Brigade , Sherman ' s Division , during the second day . As commander of brigade in the XV and XVII Army Corps , he participated in all the campaigns of the Army of the Tennessee , being also for some months on staff duty with General Ulysses S . Grant . He was commissioned as a brigadier general of volunteers on August 11 , 1863 . Smith was assigned on March 7 , 1864 , to the command of the detached division of the XVII Army Corps and rendered distinguished service during the Red River Expedition , protecting Admiral David D . Porter ' s fleet after the disaster of the main army . During the Red River campaign , he ordered the destruction of the library and other items at Louisiana State University , but the building was spared at the request of Maj . Gen . William T . Sherman , the school ' s first superintendent . His health failed , and Smith was relieved of field duty on January 17 , 1865 . After the fall of Mobile , Alabama , he assumed the command of the Department of Southern Alabama and Florida , and then of the Post and District of Maine . He was brevetted as a major general for gallant and meritorious service . Postbellum career . After the war he removed to Torresdale , Philadelphia . In 1866 President Andrew Johnson appointed him as the United States Consul at Panama . At the time of his death , he was engaged in journalism in New York City . On May 2 , 1848 , he married Elizabeth Budd , daughter of Dr . William Budd McCullough and Arabella Sanders Piatt , of Cincinnati . She was a gifted and devout woman , and through her influence and that of the venerable archbishop Purcell he became a Catholic some years before his death . He left five sons and three daughters . Smith is buried in Saint Dominic Church Cemetery in Torresdale , Philadelphia . In 1911 , a bronze bust of Smith by sculptor Louis Milione was dedicated in Vicksburg National Military Park . Smith ' s sons paid for the plaque and donated it to the park . 54th Ohio Infantry Monument . The monument is located in the Vicksburg National Military Park on Union Avenue approximately 150 yards south of Grant Avenue . Also a marker designating the assaults of May 19 , 1863 located on the ridge on the south side of Graveyard Road 400 ' east of the Stockade Redan . This unit was attached to Col . Thomas Kilby Smith and Brig . Gen . Joseph Andrew Jackson Lightburn ' s ( assumed command May 24 , 1863 ) 2nd Brigade of Maj . Gen . Francis P . Blair ' s 2nd Division , Maj . Gen . William T . Sherman ' s XV Army Corps and was commanded by Lt . Col . Cyrus W . Fisher .