Civil War Service
Upon President Lincoln's call for volunteers at the outbreak of the Civil War, Atkins immediately chose to defend the Union cause and entered the volunteer ranks of his home state. He served in the western theater of the conflict. He was appointed a captain in the 11th Illinois Infantry on April 30, 1861, and was promoted to major on March 21, 1862. By April he was assistant adjutant general of the 4th Division in the Army of the Tennessee, but resigned on April 17 to take a two-month respite from duty for health reasons.
Atkins re-entered military service that fall when he was appointed the colonel of the 92nd Illinois Mounted Infantry on September 4, 1862. By February 1863 he was given brigade command in the Army of Kentucky (Department of the Cumberland) until June 8. Next he commanded a brigade in the Army of the Cumberland's Reserve Corps until July 15, when he was transferred to the Department's Cavalry Corps. He then commanded two brigades of cavalry of the Department of the Cumberland and one in the Military Department of the Mississippi in 1864 and into 1865. During these commands, he led a brigade of cavalry during Major General William T. Sherman's March to the Sea.
Although Atkins was not appointed as a full, substantive grade general, on January 23, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln nominated Atkins to the grade of brevet brigadier general of volunteers, to rank from January 12, 1865, and the U.S. Senate confirmed the award on February 14, 1865. Atkins was mustered out of the volunteer service on June 21, 1865 and he returned to his civilian life in Illinois. On March 21, 1866, President Andrew Johnson nominated Atkins for the award of the grade of brevet major general of volunteers, to rank from March 13, 1865, and the U.S. Senate confirmed the award on April 26, 1866.
Read more about this topic: Smith D. Atkins
Famous quotes containing the words civil war, civil, war and/or service:
“They have been waiting for us in a foetor
Of vegetable sweat since civil war days,
Since the gravel-crunching, interminable departure
Of the expropriated mycologist.”
—Derek Mahon (b. 1941)
“Both of us felt more anxiety about the South—about the colored people especially—than about anything else sinister in the result. My hope of a sound currency will somehow be realized; civil service reform will be delayed; but the great injury is in the South. There the Amendments will be nullified, disorder will continue, prosperity to both whites and colored people will be pushed off for years.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“I have agreed to go into the service for the war ... [feeling] that this was a just and necessary war and that it demanded the whole power of the country; that I would prefer to go into it if I knew I was to die or be killed in the course of it, than to live through and after it without taking any part in it.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“We have in the service the scum of the earth as common soldiers.”
—Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke Wellington (1769–1852)