Carthage’s historic courthouse square served as the control center of a major Federal base from 1863 to 1865 in the fight to control the Upper Cumberland River region. After Union Gen. George Crook arrived in Carthage in 1863, he commandeered the courthouse for his headquarters, and from there he and later commanders directed work for the construction of the earthworks on Battery Hill and organized excursions into the countryside. In June 1863, Col. William B. Stokes of the 5th Tennessee Cavalry (US) replaced Crook and waged a determined war against the region’s many partisan units; in September 1864, Stokes asked permission to “clear the country” of Confederates to prevent “bush whacking.” The last officer in command there, Col. Abraham E. Garrett, led the 1st Tennessee Mounted Infantry, a 400-man unit largely recruited in Carthage and Nashville, and he wrote some of his morning reports in the county’s will books. After the war, Garrett remained in Carthage as an attorney and represented Smith County in the Tennessee General Assembly. At the northwest corner of the square, the historic Carthage City Cemetery contains the remains of both Confederate and Federal soldiers and officers, including Confederate Col. John A. Fite and Union Cols. Abraham E. Garrett and William B. Pickering. The square also includes a Confederate monument erected in 1930 by the Henry W. Hart Chapter of United Daughters of the Confederacy. The first courthouse was built in 1805 as a fifty-foot square building with four offices and a hall on the first floor and two offices and a courtroom on the second floor. The present courthouse was built a few years after the Civil War and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. In 1926, thirteen Civil War veterans gathered at the Smith County Courthouse, by which time only a handful of survivors remained.