Samuel Granville Smith (1835–1864)

Confederate colonel Samuel G. Smith, a planter in Arkansas County, served during the Civil War as a company and regimental commander of the Sixth Arkansas Infantry. He led the regiment after the Battle of Shiloh, Tennessee, until his capture and subsequent death as a prisoner of war in September 1864.  

Samuel Granville Smith was born on April 15, 1835, in Nashville, Tennessee, the eldest child of Thomas Smith and Elizabeth Anderson Robertson Smith. His great-grandfather James Roberston founded Nashville in 1779. His grandfather Felix Randolph Robertson was the first white child born in Nashville, who was an early mayor of the city, became a physician, and was active in establishing a Tennessee colony in Texas in the 1820s before returning to Nashville and serving a second term as mayor.  

Samuel Smith attended the Western Military Institute at the University of Nashville in the 1850s, gaining military training that propelled him into leadership roles during the approaching conflict. In 1860, Samuel assisted his father in running a large Arkansas cotton plantation in Duncan Township in Arkansas County. After the secession of Arkansas in May 1861, Samuel Smith raised a company for service in the Arkansas state troops in June, known as the Dixie Grays, and was elected captain. The unit became Company E, Sixth Arkansas Infantry and was sent to Pittman’s Ferry in northeastern Arkansas, becoming part of General William Hardee’s Confederate forces.  

Hardee’s troops were transferred to Bowling Green, Kentucky, in October 1861 and assigned to General Albert Sidney Johnston’s Army of Central Kentucky. After withdrawal from Kentucky, Johnston’s army, now designated as the Army of the Mississippi, concentrated around Corinth, Mississippi, before attacking Union forces of General Ulysses S. Grant, camped twenty-five miles north, at the Battle of Shiloh, Tennessee, on April 6–7, 1862. Smith led his company in heavy fighting that resulted in numerous casualties. On April 15, he was elected major, and at the reorganization of the army on May 10, he was promoted to colonel when Colonel Alexander T. Hawthorn did not stand for reelection.  

Colonel Smith led the Sixth Arkansas, a part of Brigadier General St. John R. Liddell’s Arkansas brigade, during the summer and fall of 1862 in the Kentucky Campaign, seeing heavy combat at the October 4 Battle of Perryville, Kentucky. Afterward, due to previous losses and casualties, the Sixth and Seventh Arkansas regiments were permanently consolidated, although both were allowed to retain their regimental identities. Smith would command the combined regiment at the December 31, 1862, Battle of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where he was wounded in the assaults on the Union right flank. The wound and an illness resulted in Smith missing the Tullahoma Campaign and Battle of Liberty Gap in June 1863; the bloody Battle of Chickamauga, Georgia, on September 19–20, 1863; and the Chattanooga-Missionary Ridge defeat in late November 1863. 

Returning to his regiment in early 1864, Smith led the Sixth and Seventh Arkansas of Brigadier General Daniel Govan’s Arkansas brigade during the Atlanta Campaign, fighting from May through September in the battles of Rocky Face Ridge, Resaca, New Hope Church, Pickett’s Mill, Kennesaw Mountain, Peach Tree Creek in Atlanta, and Jonesboro in Georgia. At this last battle, on September 1, much of Govan’s Arkansas brigade was captured, including a wounded Smith. Smith developed remittent fever and was admitted to the Union 20th Corps hospital No. 142 near Atlanta. 

Smith died of complications on September 28, 1864, prior to the exchange of Govan’s captured troops. He was buried in grave No. 18, most likely in the hospital cemetery. After the war, his remains were disinterred and repatriated to the family plot in the Mount Olivet Cemetery in Nashville.  

For additional information:
Collier, Calvin L. First In—Last Out: The Capitol Guards, Arkansas Brigade. Little Rock: Pioneer Press, 1961.  

Masters, Daniel A. Hell by the Acre: A Narrative History of the Stones River Campaign, November 1862–January 1863. El Dorado Hills, CA: Savas Beatie, 2025. 

Sanders, Stuart W. “‘Literally Covered with Dead and Dying’: Leonidas Polk and the Battle of Perryville.” American Battlefield Trust, November 7, 2023. https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/literally-covered-dead-and-dying (accessed March 27, 2025). 

Willis, James. Arkansas Confederates in the Western Theater. Dayton, OH: Morningside Press, 1998. 

Anthony Rushing
Benton, Arkansas