[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 85 (Thursday, June 25, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7212-S7213]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
A SALUTE TO GENERAL DANIEL SMITH
Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, General Daniel Smith, a builder of
civilization in the Tennessee Frontier, will be remembered at his home,
Rock Castle in Hendersonville, Tennessee, on October 17, 1998 for his
250th birthday. As a licensed surveyor, Daniel Smith worked with Thomas
Walker in 1781 to extend the state lines of North Carolina and Virginia
to determine the boundary between the unsettled territories of the
future Kentucky and Tennessee.
After serving as Captain in the Revolutionary War, he received a
3,140 acre land grant from North Carolina as payment for his surveying
work and service during the Revolution. In 1784, Daniel Smith brought
his family from Virginia to the North Carolina Territory that would
become Tennessee. He served as Brigadier General of the
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Metro District and Secretary of the Territory South of the River Ohio.
In 1784, Daniel Smith produced the first map of the ``Tennessee
Government.'' As chairman of the committee to draft a state
constitution, he is credited with naming the State of Tennessee. He
served twice as a United States Senator. I now yield to my colleague
from Tennessee.
Mr. THOMPSON. Daniel Smith's many and great accomplishments are far
too numerous to list in this venue, but are celebrated daily in the
freedom of our Nation and the struggles of the early Westward movement.
Thomas Jefferson wrote of Smith after his death:
For intelligence, well cultivated talents, for integrity,
and usefulness, in soundness of judgement, in the practice of
virtue and in shunning vice he was equaled by few men, and in
the purity of motive, excelled by none.
As Tennessee's United States Senators, we salute the vision of
General Daniel Smith. He saw the vast potential in this young nation's
early Westward movement, and his love of Tennessee is an inspiration to
us all. We are proud to follow in his footsteps in the United States
Senate, and we join our fellow Tennesseans in remembering this proud
statesman on the 250th anniversary of his birth.
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