Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith surrenders to the Union at Galveston, Texas on June 2, 1865, nearly two months after General Robert E. Lee surrendered his troops and nearly one month after Confederacy President Jefferson Davis was captured.
Kirby Smith commanded Trans-Mississippi Department, which comprised of Confederate troops in Arkansas, Missouri, Texas, western Louisiana, the Arizona Territory, and the Indian Territory region.
Following the Union victory at the Battle of Vicksburg in July 1863, the Trans-Mississippi became cut off from the rest of the Confederacy, and somewhat became its own independent nation nicknamed “Kirby Smithdom.”
Smith was not the last Confederate general to surrender, but the last Confederate general with a major command to surrender.
The last Confederate general to surrender to the Union was Cherokee General Stand Watie who surrendered on June 23.
Even though historians have marked the end of the U.S. Civil War as May 9, 1865, some regard the marking of the end of the Civil War the day Kirby Smith surrendered.
Following the war, Smith had a short career in the telegraph business, then served as Chancellor of the University of Nashville and a professor at the University of the South in Tennessee where he taught mathematics and botany.
Smith contributed greatly to the botany community. Some of his specimens were donated to Harvard and the Smithsonian.
A statue of Smith was erected in the National Statutory Hall Collections in the U.S. Capitol building in 1922, but was removed in 2018 and replaced with civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune.
Hosing down an Eagle! The legendary gun camera shot of Joe “Hoser” Satrapa, flying an F-14, scoring a mock kill on an F-15 during AIMVAL/ACEVAL exercises. It is claimed that this HUD photo almost caused the Japanese to revert their decision to buy the F-15! Strory via TheAviationist:
USS Enterprise (CV 6) pictured transiting the Panama Canal in April 1939 en route to the Pacific. She did not return to the East Coast until 1945 following World War II.
