Edward Needles Kirk (February 29, 1828 – July 21, 1863) was a Quaker school teacher, attorney, and then a brigadier general in the Union Army during the American Civil War.

At the start of the Civil War, Kirk recruited and organized the 34th Illinois Infantry, serving as the regiment's first colonel dating from September 1861.

He commanded a brigade of four regiments during the Battle of Shiloh, where he was wounded in the shoulder on April 7, 1862, and eventually shipped home to recuperate.

A little more than a month later, he was severely wounded in the hip during the Battle of Stones River near Murfreesboro, Tennessee, the Minié ball lodging near his spine.

He was transported to a field hospital and then eventually taken to the Tremont House in Chicago, where he died several months later.