CONFEDERATE BIOGRAPHY:  ASHBEL SMITH - Houston, TX

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Submitted by Peggy Brannon - peggybrannon@hotmail.com
17 November 2001
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TEXANS WHO WORE THE GRAY by Sid S. Johnson

ASHBEL SMITH

Ashbel Smith, the diplomatist of the Texan Revolution, was born in Hartford, 
Conn., August 13,1805. He graduated from Yale College, went to North 
Carolina and there studied law, but on account of ill health abandoned it 
for medicine, the study of which he completed in Paris, where he was during 
the last year of his stay "exteme" in the Neckor Hospital. Returning to 
North Carolina he practised his profession till 1836, when in response to a 
call for volununteers to oppose Santa Anna's invasion he hastened to Texas, 
but did not arrive until after the battle of San Jacinto; was appointed 
Surgeon-General of the Texan army, and in 1838 was one of the commissioners 
who negotiated the first treaty of Texas with the Comanche Indians.     
Under President Sam Houston's second administration he was Minister 
Plenipotentiary from the Republic of Texas to Great Britain and France, 
residing alternatelyin Paris and London. He visited Rome on a diplomatic 
mission to Pope Gregory XVI. The correspondence and papers prepared by him 
during his mission abroad were pronounced by Peel and Guizot among the 
finest pieces of state literature they had seen. On his return from Europe 
he was appointed Secretary of State under President Anson  Jones, and in 
view of impending annexation returned to Europe to close up diplomatic 
relations with the European powers. While Secretary of State he negotiated a 
treaty with Mexico--accepted by the Mexican Congress--which placed Texas in 
the position of acknowledged independence before the world. This treaty was 
rejected by the Texan Congress which accepted in preference the annexation 
resolutions. He fought throughout the entire Mexican war 1846-47. Upon the 
call to arms in 1861 he entered the Confederate army as captain, and was 
promoted to lieutenant-colonel on the field of Shiloh for gallantry; was for 
a while inspector-general of the army in North Mississippi; then succeeded 
to the coloney of his regiment, the 2nd Texas infantry; after the fall of 
Vicksburg he commanded a brigade and then a division until the closing ofthe 
war. During his absence as honorary commissioner to the Paris exposition in 
1878 he was elected State Senator. He was a regent of the University of 
Texas from its foundation until his death. His versatility of mind, 
scientific attainments, linguistic accomplishments and political sagacity, 
made him one of the well known Americans of his time. Many of his scientific 
papers were republished with commendation in the European journals, and he 
was elected a member of various learned and scientific bodies on both 
continents. He died in Houston, Texas, January 21, 1886, and is buried in 
the State cemetary at Austin