hanna260
Sergeant Major
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- Mar 1, 2015
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Talking to a member about their avatar made me remember that there was an excellent and very thorough Smithsonian article on George Thomas- with 235 interesting comments on the bottom. Here are some excerpts of the article. I thought it was a very fitting tribute to one of the most unjustly forgotten figures of the war- a contradictory man, perhaps the best general of the war, a stolid quiet man with an explosive temper, a Virginian who fought against his native state, a boy who escaped from Nat Turner's raid and a man who learned to embrace colored troops. I've always admired General Thomas very much and I think a lot of people on here do too- so enjoy!
Catching Up With "Old Slow Trot"
Stubborn and deliberate, General George Henry Thomas was one of the Union's most brilliant strategists. So why was he cheated by history?
Expired Image Removed
The Amazon loses 8,800 acres a day to "This army does not retreat," Gen. George H. Thomas famously asserted. Later in 1863, he rallied Union troops in the Battle of Chickamauga, in Georgia. His equanimity shows in a Civil War portrait, as it did in the heat of combat. (Rudy Ayordoa / David Perry Collection)
By Ernest B. Furgurson
Smithsonian Magazine | Subscribe March 2007
"Out of the august night, James Gurley came galloping past the massive oak before Elizabeth Thomas' white plantation house. Get out! he shouted. Take your family and run! Now! The renegade slave leader Nat Turner was coming with a band of vengeful slaves, rampaging from farm to farm, killing white men, women and children.
George Henry Thomas, 15, piled into a carriage with his mother and sisters and racketed along dirt roads into the darkness. Before they had gone far, afraid the assassins would overtake them, they abandoned the carriage and took to the woods. In and out of gloomy Mill Swamp, across Cypress Bridge and the bottomlands of the Nottoway River, they escaped to the county seat of Jerusalem, some 12 zigzag miles from home.
Nat Turner's 1831 insurrection, in Southampton County, Virginia, was the bloodiest slave uprising in American history. Before it ended, 55 whites were killed. It stirred deep fears across the South, sweeping aside any talk of gradual emancipation, and hardened both sides in the long-running debate that ended in civil war. What it did to young George Thomas, who as a Union general became one of the most successful, most controversial, yet least recognized figures of that war, remains a question"
"When Atlanta's mayor protested Sherman's harsh military rule, the general replied, "War is cruelty and you cannot refine it...those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out....You might as well appeal against the thunderstorm." Then he set out on his storied march to infamy and greatness, pillaging the countryside as he cut a great swath through the Confederacy.
Thomas took a different view. Stern though he was in combat, he posted a guard at the house of a citizen suspected of disloyalty because, he said, "We must remember that this is a civil war, fought to preserve the Union that is based on brotherly love and patriotic belief in the one nation....The thing becomes horribly grotesque...when we visit on helpless old men, women, and children the horrors of a barbarous war. We must be as considerate and kind as possible, or we will find that in destroying the rebels we have destroyed the Union."
"When the two surviving Thomas sisters were nearing 90, they allowed the general's prize sword to go to the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond, where it remains. As a further gesture of reconciliation, they sent acorns from the great oak outside the home place to be planted around his statue in Washington.
The acorns never sprouted."
Read more here: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/histo...84/?no-ist=&=&onsite_campaign=SmithMag&page=4
Catching Up With "Old Slow Trot"
Stubborn and deliberate, General George Henry Thomas was one of the Union's most brilliant strategists. So why was he cheated by history?
Expired Image Removed
The Amazon loses 8,800 acres a day to "This army does not retreat," Gen. George H. Thomas famously asserted. Later in 1863, he rallied Union troops in the Battle of Chickamauga, in Georgia. His equanimity shows in a Civil War portrait, as it did in the heat of combat. (Rudy Ayordoa / David Perry Collection)
By Ernest B. Furgurson
Smithsonian Magazine | Subscribe March 2007
"Out of the august night, James Gurley came galloping past the massive oak before Elizabeth Thomas' white plantation house. Get out! he shouted. Take your family and run! Now! The renegade slave leader Nat Turner was coming with a band of vengeful slaves, rampaging from farm to farm, killing white men, women and children.
George Henry Thomas, 15, piled into a carriage with his mother and sisters and racketed along dirt roads into the darkness. Before they had gone far, afraid the assassins would overtake them, they abandoned the carriage and took to the woods. In and out of gloomy Mill Swamp, across Cypress Bridge and the bottomlands of the Nottoway River, they escaped to the county seat of Jerusalem, some 12 zigzag miles from home.
Nat Turner's 1831 insurrection, in Southampton County, Virginia, was the bloodiest slave uprising in American history. Before it ended, 55 whites were killed. It stirred deep fears across the South, sweeping aside any talk of gradual emancipation, and hardened both sides in the long-running debate that ended in civil war. What it did to young George Thomas, who as a Union general became one of the most successful, most controversial, yet least recognized figures of that war, remains a question"
"When Atlanta's mayor protested Sherman's harsh military rule, the general replied, "War is cruelty and you cannot refine it...those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out....You might as well appeal against the thunderstorm." Then he set out on his storied march to infamy and greatness, pillaging the countryside as he cut a great swath through the Confederacy.
Thomas took a different view. Stern though he was in combat, he posted a guard at the house of a citizen suspected of disloyalty because, he said, "We must remember that this is a civil war, fought to preserve the Union that is based on brotherly love and patriotic belief in the one nation....The thing becomes horribly grotesque...when we visit on helpless old men, women, and children the horrors of a barbarous war. We must be as considerate and kind as possible, or we will find that in destroying the rebels we have destroyed the Union."
"When the two surviving Thomas sisters were nearing 90, they allowed the general's prize sword to go to the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond, where it remains. As a further gesture of reconciliation, they sent acorns from the great oak outside the home place to be planted around his statue in Washington.
The acorns never sprouted."
Read more here: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/histo...84/?no-ist=&=&onsite_campaign=SmithMag&page=4
Bringing the