[2] Smith was appointed by President Zachary Taylor to serve as a member of the board of commissioners to adjust claims against Mexico from 1849 to 1851.

[1] He was a member of the Peace Convention of 1861 held in Washington, D.C., in an effort to devise means to prevent the impending American Civil War.

[2] He was appointed by President Abraham Lincoln to serve as the 6th United States Secretary of the Interior from March 5, 1861, to January 1, 1863.

[2][1] However, Smith had little interest in the job and, with declining health, delegated most of his responsibilities to Assistant Secretary of the Interior John Palmer Usher.

[3] When Lincoln showed the draft of the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet, the conservative Smith considered resignation upon its public announcement, but accepted the decision in the end.

In 1977 an excavation in the Connersville City Cemetery in Indiana in the Smith-Watton lot was carried out with permission[6] from family members to locate Smith's body.

In 1977, John Walker, a Connersville, Indiana resident, received permission from the Smith family, Norvella Thomas Copes, and Nancy S. Hurley, and the city of Connersville, Indiana, to excavate the body of Caleb Blood Smith.

A letter inquiring about the whereabouts of Smith's body found in the 1980s arose from a New York public library in the 1930s.

Lincoln Memorial University has also inquired about the location of Smiths' body, in a letter to my grandfather, John Walker.

[14] Today, the highest award presented by the Grand Lodge of Indiana is the Caleb B. Smith Medal of Honor.