George Thomas

George Henry Thomas (July 31, 1816 – March 28, 1870) was an American general in the Union Army during the American Civil War and one of the principal commanders in the Western Theater.

Thomas served in the Mexican–American War and later chose to remain with the U.S. Army for the Civil War as a Southern Unionist, despite his heritage as a Virginian (whose home state would join the Confederate States of America).

He won one of the first Union victories in the war, at Mill Springs in Kentucky, and served in important subordinate commands at Perryville and Stones River.

By 1829, they owned 685 acre and 15 slaves.

John died in a farm accident when George was 13, leaving the family in financial difficulties.

George Thomas, his sisters, and his widowed mother were forced to flee from their home and hide in the nearby woods during Nat Turner's 1831 slave rebellion.

Benson Bobrick has suggested that while some repressive acts were enforced following the crushing of the revolt, Thomas took the lesson another way, seeing that slavery was so vile an institution that it had forced the slaves to act in violence.

This was a major event in the formation of his views on slavery; that the idea of the contented slave in the care of a benevolent overlord was a sentimental myth.

Christopher Einolf, in contrast wrote "For George Thomas, the view that slavery was needed as a way of controlling blacks was supported by his personal experience of Nat Turner's Rebellion. ... Thomas left no written record of his opinion on slavery, but the fact that he owned slaves during much of his life indicates that he was not opposed to it."

A traditional story is that Thomas taught as many as 15 of his family's slaves to read, violating a Virginia law that prohibited this, and despite the wishes of his father.

Thomas was appointed to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, in 1836 by Congressman John Y. Mason, who warned Thomas that no nominee from his district had ever graduated successfully.

Entering at age 20, Thomas was known to his fellow cadets as "Old Tom," and he became instant friends with his roommates, William T. Sherman and Stewart Van Vliet.

He made steady academic progress, was appointed a cadet officer in his second year, and graduated 12th in a class of 42 in 1840.

He was appointed a second lieutenant in Company D, 3rd U.S. Artillery.

Thomas's first assignment with his artillery regiment began in late 1840 at the primitive outpost of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in the Seminole Wars, where his troops performed infantry duty.

He led them in successful patrols and was appointed a brevet first lieutenant on November 6, 1841.

From 1842 until 1845, he served in posts at New Orleans, Fort Moultrie in Charleston Harbor, and Fort McHenry in Baltimore.

With the Mexican–American War looming, his regiment was ordered to Texas in June 1845.

In Mexico, Thomas led a gun crew with distinction at the battles of Fort Brown, Resaca de la Palma, Monterrey, and Buena Vista, receiving two more brevet promotions.

At Buena Vista, Gen. Zachary Taylor reported that "the services of the light artillery, always conspicuous, were more than unusually distinguished" during the battle.

Brig. Gen. John E. Wool wrote about Thomas and another officer that "without our artillery we would not have maintained our position a single hour."

Thomas's battery commander wrote that Thomas's "coolness and firmness contributed not a little to the success of the day. Lieutenant Thomas more than sustained the reputation he has long enjoyed in his regiment as an accurate and scientific artillerist."

During the war, Thomas served closely with an artillery officer who would be a principal antagonist in the Civil War—Captain Braxton Bragg.

Thomas was reassigned to Florida in 1849–50.

In 1851, he returned to West Point as a cavalry and artillery instructor, where he established a close professional and personal relationship with another Virginia officer, Lt. Col. Robert E. Lee, the Academy superintendent.

His appointment there was based in part on a recommendation from Braxton Bragg.

Concerned about the poor condition of the Academy's elderly horses, Thomas moderated the tendency of cadets to overwork them during cavalry drills and became known as "Slow Trot Thomas".

Two of Thomas's students who received his recommendation for assignment to the cavalry, J.E.B. Stuart and Fitzhugh Lee, became prominent Confederate cavalry generals.

Another Civil War connection was a cadet expelled for disciplinary reasons on Thomas's recommendation, John Schofield, who would excoriate Thomas in postbellum writings about his service as a corps commander under Thomas in the Franklin-Nashville Campaign.

His stout defense at the Battle of Chickamauga in 1863 saved the Union Army from being completely routed, earning him his most famous nickname, "the Rock of Chickamauga."

He followed soon after with a dramatic breakthrough on Missionary Ridge in the Battle of Chattanooga.

In the Franklin–Nashville Campaign of 1864, he achieved one of the most decisive victories of the war, destroying the army of Confederate General John Bell Hood, his former student at West Point, at the Battle of Nashville.

Thomas had a successful record in the Civil War, but he failed to achieve the historical acclaim of some of his contemporaries, such as Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman.

He developed a reputation as a slow, deliberate general.

In an environment rife with jealousy and avarice for promotion and recognition, Thomas stood out as an oddball for occasionally refusing promotions to positions that he thought he was still not capable of; although on some occasions he regretted his refusals or found it injurious that he was passed over for promotion.

After the war, he did not write memoirs to advance his legacy.

Thomas was born at Newsom's Depot, Southampton County, Virginia, five miles (8 km) from the North Carolina border.

His father, John Thomas, of Welsh descent, and his mother, Elizabeth Rochelle Thomas, a descendant of French Huguenot immigrants, had six children.

George had three sisters and two brothers.

The family led an upper-class plantation lifestyle.