Excerpt from The Life and Military Services of the Late Brigadier General Thomas A. SmythThese Memoirs originated in the action of the Delaware State Historical Society, which in the year 1866, actuated by a laudable State pride in the reputation of its patriot dead, and by a desire to preserve in its archives the records of such fallen heroes, by resolu tion, invited the author to prepare an essay upon The Life and Military Services of Brigadier General thomas A. Smyth, to be read at a future meeting of the Society.In addition to this stimulus to engage in the labor, there was another one in the fact that the friends of Gen. Smyth generally de sired, in a more connected and compact form than editorial comments, letters of newspaper correspondents, general orders, congratulatory ad dresses, press dispatches and written military reports could shape, some narrative of his life, a kind of aggregation of many of the favorable notices and acknowledgements of military services rendered, he had received from both commanders and troops.The task was a labor of love, and was accepted, if not with confidence, at least with the will and intent to chronicle as faithfully as possible with the means at command, the career of the gallant soldier, and to represent him as he appeared in the estimation of those who knew him best in that field in which he so signally distinguished himself.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.