Smith was born on September 7, 1963, in Fort Payne, Alabama, and grew up in Albertville.
Playing sports and serving in the Civil Air Patrol as a teen, he graduated from Albertville High School in 1981.
His first book, 'For the Purposes of Defense': The Politics of the Jeffersonian Gunboat Program, based on his PhD dissertation, looked at Thomas Jefferson's naval strategy during the early nineteenth century and War of 1812.
[2] He authored two more books about Manifest Destiny, including Filibusters and Expansionists with Frank Lawrence Owsley, Jr. of Auburn University, which was praised as "a quality piece of historical writing" and "a valuable contribution to the historiography of expansion and the Gulf South" in The Journal of Southern History.
Smith has also authored a book about the role of slaves in the War of 1812, which was lauded as "essential and informative reading" in the Journal of the Early Republic.