SMITH, Ashbel, diplomatist, born in Hartford, Connecticut, 13 August, 1805; died in Harris county, Texas, 21 January, 1886. He was graduated at Yale in 1824, and at the medical department in 1828, after studying law in the interval. He also attended the Paris hospitals in 1831-'2, and practised in North Carolina till 1836, when he removed to Texas, and was appointed in the same year surgeon-general of the new republic. He was joint commissioner in making the first treaty with the Comanches in 1837, Texan minister to the United States, Great Britain, France, and Spain, during the administration of President Samuel Houston and President An-son Jones, was recalled in 1844, and became secretary of state under the latter, which office he held until the annexation of Texas to the United States in 1845. He was a member of the legislature from Harris county for several years, and served throughout the Mexican war. In the early part of the civil war he raised the 2d Texas volunteers for the Confederate service, leading that regiment in several campaigns east of Missouri river. He retired to his plantation on Galveston bay in 1865, and while taking an active part in state politics as a Democrat was also occupied in the preparation of papers on scientific and agricultural topics. In his profession his services were rendered gratuitously, and in every yellow-fever epidemic he went to Houston or Galveston and devoted himself to the sufferers. He was instrumental in the establishment of the state university, and president of its board of regents. His publications include "Account of the Yellow Fever in Galveston, in 1839" (Galveston, 1840); "Account of the Geography of Texas" (1851); and "Permanent Identity of the Human Race " (1860).