General George H. Thomas

“ One of our companies (Bragg's) , with George H. Thomas, John F. Reynolds, and Frank Thomas, had gone the year previous and was at that time with General Taylor's army at Corpus Christi, Texas.
In that year (1846) I received the regular detail for recruiting service, with orders to report to the general superintendent at Governor's Island, New York; and accordingly left Fort Moultrie in the latter part of April, and reported to the superintendent, Colonel R. B. Mason, First Dragoons, at New York, on the 1st day of May. ”

“ If George H. Thomas had had no other title to honor or fame, he would have deserved the profound gratitude of the American people, and a very high place among the country's patriots and heroes, for the reason that while he never yielded ground to an attacking foe, he never uselessly sacrificed the life of a soldier.
It is a sin for a soldier to throw away his own life. It is not his, but belongs to his country. How much greater sin and crime in an officer the throw away the lives of a thousand men! ”

“ Of those who finally decided to bear arms against the South, George H. Thomas easily leads in point of ability and attainments as a soldier. He was born in Southampton County, Virginia, was greatly distinguished in the Mexican War, and was voted a sword by his native State. ”

“ He was supposed, I know not how truly, to be exceedingly impatient and ready for war on any man who crossed his path. But his behaviour when he was ordered to supersede General Thomas, just before the battle at Nashville and Franklin, is a noble instance of magnanimity.
When Sherman started for the sea, Hood, with a large rebel army, was in his rear. Gen. Thomas was ordered to attack him. But he delayed and delayed till the authorities at Washington grew impatient and ordered Logan to supersede Thomas. Everybody knows the intensity of the passion for military glory. ”

“ In May of 1939 Major General George Thomas, former Chief of the Military-Economic Staff in the Reich War Ministry, reported that the German Army had grown from seven Infantry divisions in 1933 to thirty-nine Infantry divisions, among them four fully motorized and three mountain divisions, eighteen Corps Headquarters, five Panzer divisions, twenty-two machine gun battalions. Moreover, General Thomas stated that the German Navy had greatly expanded by the launching, among other vessels, of two battleships of 35,000 tons, four heavy cruisers of 10,000 tons, and other warships ”

“ These extracts from the testimony of General Thomas are a fair exposition of the condition of public sentiment in the Confederate States with the exception in a degree of the border States. It is apparent also that General Thomas had not the degree of confidence in the good purposes of those who had been in the rebellion that was entertained by Northern officers including Grant, Sherman and Sheridan.
As the loyal men of the South were greater sufferers from the war, their hostility was more intense against those who were responsible for the war. ”

“ Thomas, George Henry, American general, born in Virginia; a man of fine character, lacking none of the sterner stuff of the soldier, but blended with modesty and gentleness; universally popular in the army, which he joined in 1840 and continued in till his death, rising to be general of a division through gallantry in the Indian frontier wars and in the Civil War, in which, at the battle of Nashville (1864) , he completely routed the Confederate forces ”

“ Congress appointed him one of the first eight brigadier generals, and he commanded a division at the siege of Boston. In March, 1776, he was appointed a major general, and on the 1st of May following joined the army before Quebec. He died of small-pox, at Chambly, on the second of June. General Thomas was greatly beloved by his soldiers, and his judgment, prudence, and firmness commended him to Washington as one promising to do much for the cause of the colonists. ”

“ Thomas was born of poor parentage in Ireland in 1756, deserted from the British Navy in Madras, and made his way north to Delhi, where he took service under the begum Samru of Sardhana. Supplanted in her favour by a Frenchman, he transferred his allegiance to Appa Rao, a Mahratta chieftain, and subsequently set up an independent kingdom of his own in Hariana with his capital at Hansi. Thomas was a man of great personal strength and daring, and considerable military genius. ”

“ But just far enough under the surface to escape the eyes of historical amateurs, lies the splendid and unparalleled fact that in eight winter days after the date of that dispatch General James H. Wilson, Thomas’s chief of cavalry, had impressed horses enough, with those furnished on previous requisitions, to raise the effective mounted force at Nashville from 5500 to 13,500, and that on the eighth day General Wilson [Pg 12] went into action with 12,000 mounted men, and had besides one brigade of 1500 men engaged in an independent movement. ”

“ In those days a man who had been a soldier was looked upon as being an inefficient workman, no matter what his experience had been before enlistment, and further, he was looked upon by the general public as a rather undesirable character, no matter what his record might have been whilst in the Army, and was considered fit only to be thrown on the scrapheap. Such was the experience of Thomas Edwards. ”

“ On the whole, I can not doubt that the most fitting parallel to General Thomas is found in our greatest American, the man who was ‘first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.’ The personal resemblance of General Thomas to Washington was often the subject of remark. ”

“ H. Thomas, now Major General Thomas, who managed matters in an able manner, and gave complete satisfaction to the people of the frontier. Every warrior was compelled to be present and answer to his name, at roll call, in the same manner as the regular soldiers; and in this way, very few had an opportunity to drop out and lay back, to wreak private vengeance on the settlers; nevertheless, fearing that some might escape the vigilance of the regulars, we had orders to follow up, and arrest or kill any Indian found straggling more than three miles to the rear of the column. ”

“ Thomas suffered mentally under the pressure and the criticisms of the whole campaign, and we may personally share his pain in sympathy with the noble man, whilst we admit that Grant's views were such as the situation demanded. Those who knew Thomas intimately knew that he was a man of quick feeling if of slow action; and his nature was truthfully described by his quartermaster, Colonel Donaldson (who was an old and intimate friend) , in a letter to General Meigs, after a parting interview on the steamboat as Thomas left Nashville for Eastport. ”

“ He grows really enthusiastic over nothing, though occasionally his anger may be aroused. When it is, his rage is terrible. During the campaign in Kentucky, in pursuit of Bragg in 1862, Thomas was second in command of the army under Buell. The new recruits committed many depredations upon the loyal Kentuckians. While the army was passing a small stream near Bardstown, called "Floyd's Fork of Salt River," Thomas was approached by a farmer whom he knew to be a good Union man, and who made complaint that one of the general's staff officers had carried off the only horse left on his farm. ”

“ John Thomas, born in Marshfield, Massachusetts, in 1725, was a successful medical practitioner, entering the British army first as a surgeon, in 1746. He took a prominent part in the French and Indian War, but at its close devoted himself to his profession. He was, however, among the first to counsel resistance to British oppression, and having raised a regiment of volunteers, was appointed brigadier-general by the Provincial Congress on the 9th of February, 1775, and afterward received the same appointment from the Continental Congress on the 22d of June of the same year. ”

“ Thomas was beloved by his soldiers, for whom he always had a fatherly solicitude. He was a man of solid rather than brilliant attainments; he remained in the army all his life, and never had any ambitions outside of it ”

“ By collecting their forces in one spot, and thus rendering them more exposed to a crushing attack, and by drawing off the men who threatened the government camp, it really left the commander of the troops free to act with decision. Accordingly, Captain Thomas at once determined to attack the position. Assembling his forces (somewhat fewer than two hundred men) at three o'clock on the morning of December 3d, he moved toward the stockade.
At about one hundred fifty yards from the intrenchments he was perceived by the scouts of the insurgents, who promptly fired on the advancing troops. ”

“ On the next morning Colonel Wharton wrote a very strong note in reference to this perfidious act, addressed to Major General Thomas, commanding the division in our front. Maj. Tom Harrison and I were sent with an escort under a flag of truce to a stone house, probably five miles from Bardstown, and there delivered the communication. We were detained there at least two hours, at the expiration of which time we received the reply of General Thomas that he would consider the case when he got into camp, and this was the last of the captured party for some months. ”

“ Thomas′s dispositions were deliberately made, and always good. He could not be driven from a point he was given to hold. He was not as good, however, in pursuit as he was in action. I do not believe that he could ever have conducted Sherman′s army from Chattanooga to Atlanta against the defences and the commander guarding that line in 1864. On the other hand, if it had been given him to hold the line which Johnston tried to hold, neither that general nor Sherman, nor any other officer could have done it better. ”

“ General Maury often spoke regretfully of the failure of Thomas to go with his State. He has said that no man was ever more devoted to his State, which had greatly honored him, having voted him a sword for gallantry in the Mexican war. Thomas applied early for command in the Virginia forces, and Governor Letcher held an important post for him. General Maury has stated that Thomas carried to New York with him, after Virginia seceded, his resignation from the army, and that he went to that city to bring away his wife. ”

“ I am very anxious that Thomas should follow up his success to the very utmost point. My orders to him before I left Kingston were, after beating Hood, to follow him as far as Columbus, Mississippi, or Selma, Alabama, both of which lie in districts of country which are rich in corn and meat.
I attach more importance to these deep incisions into the enemy's country, because this war differs from European wars in this particular: we are not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war, as well as their organized armies. ”

“ He is to me in memory the same noble old soldier and commander that he was when he intrusted to me the command of his army in Tennessee, from Pulaski through Columbia, Spring Hill, and Franklin to Nashville, and commended all I had done in that command.
Truthful military history cannot be written without some criticism. "He who never made a mistake never made war." I am keenly sensible of the delicacy of my personal relation to the history of General Thomas, as well as of my obligation to contribute my share to that history, which no other man could ever do if I neglected it. ”

“ General Thomas’s dispositions to protect his left showed military genius of the highest order, and General Baird greatly assisted him in this matter. This was only one instance, however, of General Thomas’s many equally meritorious tactics in this great battle. He rose to the highest point in the estimation of both officers and men.
Both days’ fighting illustrates the fact that when [150] troops are outflanked or attacked in the rear, however brave they may be in other positions relative to the enemy, they will as a rule go to pieces. ”

“ It is necessary to a full understanding of the brilliancy, efficiency, and completeness of Thomas’s final movements to have in mind the situation after General Sherman had marched away from Hood and left Thomas in Tennessee to stand between that veteran Confederate army and the Ohio.
Preparatory to the march to the sea the great army about Atlanta had been carefully inspected both as to [Pg 18] men and equipments. Every weak man, all convalescents, those whose terms of service were expiring—in short, all the “trash,” as General Sherman expressed it—were sent to the rear, that is, to Thomas. ”

“ It is an interesting coincidence that the blunder which lost Lewes, the eagerness of a youthful prince to pursue his routed opponents, regardless of the general fate of the battle, should have been repeated, not once only, by his descendant four centuries later. The hastiness of Rupert prevented Edgehill from being a victory, and definitely lost Naseby, the final battle of the war. Otherwise Lewes has no great military interest. It exhibits the disastrous results to a defeated army of having a river in its rear, and (possibly) the value of a reserve. ”

“ The men were veterans. The new equipment collected was excellent, but, with all that the Cavalry Bureau could do, only 17,000 horses could be provided. This force was raised, by drills and every form of perfecting an organization, to a high state of efficiency. While vigorous efforts were in progress to equip Hatch’s veteran division of 10,000, the orders from Washington and City Point for forward movement began to pour in on Thomas. ”