As a child growing up in Alabama, I was steeped in stories of cavaliers and cotton fields—and of course, ghosts.
Thomas Benton Smith was born February 24, 1838, in Tennessee. Benton was a brilliant young man with a flair for mechanical inventiveness. He even acquired a patent for one of his inventions. At sixteen, he was accepted at Western Military Institute in Nashville.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, twenty‑three‑year-old Smith and his older brother, John, enlisted in the Twentieth Tennessee Regiment. Benton rose quickly in the ranks and was elected colonel shortly after the Battle of Shiloh.
At the Battle of Stone’s River, he was seriously wounded by a shot through the chest and left arm. His brother, who served as the Regiment’s color bearer, was killed.
On July 29, 1864, he became the youngest brigadier general in the Army of Tennessee, earning him the nickname The Boy General.
On December 16, 1864, Benton Smith was captured at the battle of Shy’s Hill. Smith and his men were marched through the Federal dead and wounded, who lay thick on the steep slopes of Nashville’s Overton hills. Eyewitnesses reported he exchanged words with Federal Colonel McMillen, who began verbally assailing Smith. Smith’s only reply was, “I am a disarmed prisoner.”
At that remark, McMillen struck the twenty-six-year-old Smith over the head with his saber three times, each blow cutting through Smith’s slouch hat, the last driving him to the ground and fracturing his skull.
Smith, despite all odds, recovered enough to be sent to Federal prison at Fort Warren, Massachusetts, but his injuries proved more detrimental than they initially seemed. After his release in 1865, he began to succumb to frequent bouts of mania. Deemed dangerous to himself and others, he was placed in a Tennessee insane asylum.
Thomas Benton Smith passed away from a heart condition on May 21, 1923, at the asylum. He was interred in the Confederate Circle in Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Nashville.
His gallantry, courage, intelligence and tragic life inspired me to write Gatekeeper.
The character of Thomas Benton Smith is based on many aspects of the real Smith’s life, although I took liberties to turn one of my real‑life heroes into a romantic hero.
