Background
Smith was born in 1826 in Richmond, Kentucky to John Speed Smith and his wife Elizabeth Lewis (Clay) Smith (1798-1887) as the third of seven children.
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Smith was born in 1826 in Richmond, Kentucky to John Speed Smith and his wife Elizabeth Lewis (Clay) Smith (1798-1887) as the third of seven children.
Graduate Transylvania University, Lexington, Kentucky. Studied law.
Elected to the Kentucky state house before the American Civil War, he was commissioned as a Union officer when he volunteered, advancing to the rank of major general before he resigned the next year to go to Congress. He was elected to the United States Congress from Kentucky in 1862 representing the Unionist Party, serving until 1866. That year, Smith was appointed as the Territorial Governor of Montana, serving from 1866 to 1869.
He returned to Washington, District of Columbia, where he was ordained as a Baptist minister and became active in the temperance movement.
Smith"s father was elected to the Kentucky legislature and the United States. House of Representatives. Cassius became known as an abolitionist before the war.
As a young man, Green Clay Smith pursued academic studies. When the United States.-Mexican War began, he enlisted in the Army and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the First Regiment of the Kentucky Volunteer Infantry on June 9, 1846.
Smith returned to Kentucky, where he graduated from Transylvania University in 1849, then studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1852.
He began his practice in Covington. From 1853 to 1857, Smith served as a school commissioner. Congressman
On April 4, 1862, he was commissioned colonel of the Fourth Regiment of the Kentucky Volunteer Cavalry.
He later advanced to brigadier general of volunteers on July 2, 1862.
In 1862, he was elected as an Unconditional Unionist to the thirty-eighth congress, resigning from his military post on December 1, 1863. He served as chairman of the Committee on Militia from 1865 to 1866.
He was brevetted major general of volunteers on March 13, 1865. Governor
Smith resigned from Congress in July 1866 when President Andrew Johnson appointed him as Territorial Governor of Montana.
He served there from 1866 to 1869, working to moderate hostilities between European American settlers and the Native Americans who occupied the lands, including tribes of the Blackfoot Confederacy.
Pastor
After he resigned, Smith returned to Washington, District of Columbia He was ordained to the Baptist ministry and served in a number of congregations in while supporting the temperance movement. He was pastor in Richmond, Mountain.
Sterling, Frankfort and Louisville, Kentucky. In 1890 he was called as pastor of the Metropolitan Baptist Church (now Capitol Hill Baptist Church) in Washington, District of Columbia, which he served until his death in 1895.
Presidential nomination
In 1876, the National Prohibition Party nominated Smith for President of the United States.
With his running mate, Gideon T. Stewart, the two received 9,737 popular votes in the election. Smith continued his work in religion and temperance. Smith was interred in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.
His mother"s younger brothers, Brutus J. Clay and Cassius M. Clay, both became state politicians and were later elected as members of the Unionist Party to the United States Congress from Kentucky during the American Civil War. Smith was elected as a member of the Kentucky House of Representatives, serving from 1861 to 1863.