conspicuous leaders in the impending conflict.  Great things were expected of them, and in this the world was not disappointed.  They all reached high rank and great distinction, but only one of the group was fortunate enough to enroll himself amongst the world’s great commanders.  Johnston rose to the leadership of an independent army but failed to win a great victory or to secure the entire approval of his superiors.  Franklin was without doubt a corps commander of sound judgment and unshakable courage, but he also failed to achieve the success that was expected of him, and to secure the support and confidence that his high character fully entitled him to look for from his Government.  Smith who was not inferior to the ablest of his friends and contemporaries, in the art and science of war, had a career of great usefulness, in which he rendered services of extraordinary value and brilliancy but which ended in disappointment and unhappiness.

He was however not only a conspicuous officer connected with important events throughout his life, and especially during the Great Conflict, but he was a singularly virile and independent character who exerted great influence over all with whom he came in contact.  He was strong, self-contained and deliberate in speech, and having been an industrious student and an acute thinker all his life, his opinions always commanded attention and respect.  It so happened that his services brought him into the very focus of events on more than one occasion.  It so happened also that I was more or less intimate with him to the time of his death, from the date of my entry into the Military Academy, where I had the good fortune to receive his instruction in mathematics.  I first met him in the field, while I was serving temporarily on the staff of General McClellan, and he was commanding a division in the Antietam campaign, and next at Chattanooga, whither I was sent in advance of General Grant to prepare for his coming, after the disastrous battle of Chickamauga.

Shortly afterwards Smith was transferred to Grant’s staff as Chief Engineer, and we messed and served together, in the closest intimacy throughout that campaign, and until I was assigned to duty in the War Department in charge of the Cavalry Bureau.  I saw him frequently while I was commanding a division of cavalry and he an army corps in Grant’s overland campaign against Richmond.  During the latter period we were exceedingly intimate, and when we were not serving together an active correspondence was kept up between us.  It is a source of pleasure and satisfaction to me that this intimacy became still closer after General Smith was appointed agent of the United States and assigned as a civil engineer to the charge of the river and harbor works on the Delaware and Maryland peninsula, with his office at Wilmington, Delaware.  This long and close intimacy, extending as it did over the greater part of a lifetime, has afforded me an ample opportunity of studying his character and familiarizing myself with the facts of his military career, and with the point of view from which he considered his relations to the men and events with which he was so conspicuously connected.