Carl Wilhelm Daniel Rohl-Smith[1] (April 3, 1848- August 20, 1900) was a Danish American sculptor who was active in Europe and the United States from 1870 to 1900.

He contributed a number of architectural figures for Frederik's Church (also known as the Marmorkirken, or Marble Church) in Copenhagen, the Austrian Parliament Building in Vienna (the Akroterie, and the Winged Nike over the main entrance), and for numerous parks and public spaces in Denmark, the North German Confederation, and states of the former German Confederation.

He also designed a number of larger-than-life funerary statues and monuments for famous and wealthy individuals in Boston, Massachusetts; Memphis, Tennessee; and Louisville, Kentucky.

[6] One of these included the funerary monument to William W. Belknap in Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C.[8] Rohl-Smith moved to Louisville, Kentucky, in 1889.

[3] He executed a funerary monument to Henry A. Montgomery, a prominent local businessman and politician and founder in 1888 of the New Memphis Jockey Club.

[6] The Texas Legislature commissioned James Senille Clark, a well-known manufacturer of stock monuments, to erect a memorial to the Battle of the Alamo on the grounds of the state capitol.

[10] Rohl-Smith's other notable American work at this time was a statue of Kentucky Superior Court Judge Richard Reid.

Dreier's large circle of friends included many prominent painters and sculptors, and Rohl-Smith's fame began to spread in the artistic community.

[7] The praise for the Franklin statue caught the attention of Chicago industrialist George Pullman, who commissioned Rohl-Smith's next great work.

Pullman's Chicago mansion was built on or near the site of the 1812 Fort Dearborn Massacre, in which 28 men, 12 children, and two women were killed by rogue warriors of the Potawatomi Native American tribe.

[15] After researching the event with his wife, Rohl-Smith decided that the most important and dramatic part of the narrative was the incident in which a rogue warrior is prevented from killing Margaret Helm and her child by the Potawatomi chief Black Partridge.

Two members of the Lakota nation, Kicking Bear and Short Bull, were imprisoned at nearby Fort Sheridan for having fired at United States Army troops during the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890.

Renowned American Civil War Major General William Tecumseh Sherman died on February 14, 1891.

[22] The New York Times called the decision "one of the most discreditable events ever in the annals of the public art of the United States".

[22] After winning the Sherman Monument commission, Rohl-Smith moved to Washington, D.C., in 1897 and set up a studio on the White House grounds next to the memorial's location.

With a front door extending 50 feet (15 m) high, verandas on three sides, lean-tos in the rear for mixing of plaster, tall windows, and a tin roof, the structure was intended not only to function as a workshop for the construction of a life-size model of the Sherman monument but also as living quarters for the Rohl-Smiths.

Mrs. Rohl-Smith asked sculptors Theo Kitson, Bush Brown, and Jens Ferdinand Willumsen to help with the statue's completion.

[34] Although Rohl-Smith returned to the United States, his ongoing ill health (due to another attack of malaria)[33] kept him from working on the Sherman statue through October 1898.

[33] Rohl-Smith departed Washington for Denmark in July 1900 to escape the city's severe summer heat and humidity.