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Giles Alexander Smith
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Giles Alexander Smith (September 29, 1829 – November 8, 1876), was a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War.
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Smith was born in Jefferson County, New York. When he was 18, he moved to southwestern Ohio, and for a decade engaged in business in Cincinnati. In the late 1850s, he moved to Bloomington, Illinois, where he was proprietor of a hotel.
At the beginning of the Civil War, he joined the 8th Missouri Infantry Regiment, in which he became a captain. He took part in the capture of Fort Donelson, the Battle of Shiloh, and the operations against Corinth, becoming, later in 1862, colonel of a regiment which he led at Chickasaw Bayou. After the final campaign against Vicksburg, on August 4, 1863 he was appointed brigadier general of volunteers to rank from August 4, 1863.[1][2] He was wounded at the Third Battle of Chattanooga. He took part in the Atlanta Campaign, the March to the Sea and the Carolinas Campaign.[3] He was appointed to the rank of major general of volunteers on November 24, 1865, the last one based on seniority for the Civil War.[4]
His brother Morgan Lewis Smith was a Union Army brigadier general of volunteers.[5]
After the war, Smith declined the offer of a colonelcy in the Regular Army.[3] He was mustered out of the volunteers on February 1, 1866.[6] He was subsequently engaged in Illinois politics, retiring from public life in 1872.[3] Smith was an Illinois delegate to the Republican National Convention. He moved to California in 1874 in a futile attempt to improve his health, but returned to Illinois two months before his death. He died at Bloomington, Illinois, and was buried in Bloomington Cemetery.[7]
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