Kirby-Smith, Edmund
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Kirby-Smith, Edmund
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Confederate General Edmund Kirby-Smith was a professor of mathematics and botany at the University of the South.
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Edmund Kirby-Smith was born in 1824 to a prominent family in what was then the Florida Territory. Trained at West Point and seasoned by military service in the American war against Mexico, Kirby-Smith ultimately gained fame as one of the seven Full Generals fighting for the Confederacy.
The general headed the military forces of the Trans-Mississippi Department, which included Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, and even parts of Arizona. Historian Drew Faust explores Kirby-Smith's treatment of black Union soldiers during this period of command in her recent book This Republic of Suffering. In the Confederacy, armed blacks and their white officers were considered slave insurrectionists, not soldiers, and did not enjoy the protections guaranteed to prisoners of war. In 1863, Kirby-Smith scolded his subordinate based on a related rumor: “I have been unofficially informed, that some of your troops have captured negroes in arms. I hope this may not be so, and that your subordinates who may have been in command of capturing parties may have recognized the propriety of giving no quarter to armed negroes and their officers.” Faust writes that “ ‘propriety’ seemed all too often to dictate murder. Killing was not simply justified but almost required.” Kirby-Smith and other Confederate officers never faced trial.
After Appomattox, Kirby-Smith diverged from Robert E. Lee’s example and pressed his men to fight to the last, believing “God would yet give us victory.” Finally, at the end of May 1865 – fully six weeks after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox – Kirby-Smith begrudgingly ordered the surrender of the Trans-Mississippi Department: “I am left a Commander without an Army. A General without troops. You have made your choice. It was unwise and unpatriotic, but it is final.” Despite expressing the need to continue the war through guerilla tactics in his final orders, Kirby-Smith fled to Mexico and then Cuba to escape prosecution.
In 1875, Kirby-Smith became professor of mathematics and botany at the University of the South. Loved by students, he served in this capacity until his death in 1893. The fraternities on campus passed a heartfelt resolution in honor of their "true friend."
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16 May 1824
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28 March 1893
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