Henry Bascom Smith

Henry Bascom Smith was an American Civil War veteran who later wrote about his experiences in Between the Lines: Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After, published in 1911. On the title page, he is identified as a brevet major and as chief of detectives and assistant provost marshal general connected with Major General Lew Wallace.

In the book's opening pages, he says he entered Union service at about twenty and a half years old and served for three and a half years. That gives his recollections an immediate, personal tone: he was not writing distant history, but revisiting events he had lived through himself.

Because the readily confirmed information found here is limited, it is safest to remember him mainly as a memoirist of wartime intelligence and policing work. His writing remains of interest to readers who like firsthand Civil War narratives, especially stories about espionage, investigations, and the hidden side of military service.