General George H. Thomas and the Army of the Cumberland
and the Army of the Cumberland ..(prototype of the modern army: 28 May 1861 - 24 May 1865) "The Federal army that assembled [before Dalton in the spring of 1864] - and particularly the Army by Bob Redman |
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| .... Dedicated to George H. Thomas, William S. Rosecrans, Don Carlos Buell, and
Robert Anderson: "soft war" commanders who really won the war while or because they took care of their men.
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Cmdr. 28 May - 8 Oct. 61 Recruited the right man. |
William T. Sherman 1820-91 Cmdr. 8 Oct.- 9 Nov. 61 Troubled visionary |
Don Carlos Buell 1818-98 Commander 9 Nov. 61 - 29 Oct. 62 Not quite up to the job. |
William S. Rosecrans 1819-98 Commander 30 Oct. 62 - 20 Oct. 63 Architect of the masterpiece Tullahoma |
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George H. Thomas 1816-70 Commander 20 Oct. 1863 - 27 June 1865 ... Solid as a rock at Mill Springs, Murfreesboro, Hoover's Gap, Steven's Gap, McLemore's Cove, Chickamauga, Chattanooga, 100 Days Campaign, Peachtree Creek, and Nashville. At Mill Springs, Chattanooga, and Nashville he was a swift hammer. .. Born in the South, fought for the North. A man of the "angle," he was too good to get rid of, and a thorn in the side of generals turned politician. He did his homework, left the road to his soldiers. Read the 1882 biography Major General George H. Thomas by Thomas Van Horne, My article that got this project started (no other CW website would post it): "Damn the fellow, he is a mere pounder after all." BBeware of the pounders who propose to send (not lead) you to glory. An act of faith: Commit to the future by understanding the past. |
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In tribute to Dr. Roy Kaufmann who taught and demonstrated crtical thinking, and welcomed critical thinking from me.
Thanks to Don Plezia and Bob Meiser for helping me to create this site and for continuing to support it.
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Quick tour
- Click on the commanders' names for salient facts about them.
- click on battle names for a summary.
- click on biographies for more information.
1. Robert Anderson, hero of Ft. Sumter and Kentucky as well. He started in Kentucky without a single soldier, but he recruited the right man (Thomas) and put him in the right place (Camp Dick Robinson). See short biography.
2. William T. Sherman owed his position to the political power of his relatives. He was commander of the AotC for only one month before requesting to be removed, amid charges of a mental breakdown. In that short period he made some poor decisions based on gross overestimates of the strength of the Confederate forces in Kentucky. See short biography.
3. Don Carlos Buell was a methodical organizer and a poor politician. He turned the tide at Shiloh and saved Kentucky for the Union at Perryville. He was then hauled before a politically motivated court of inquiry which ended his military career. See short biography.
4. William S. Rosecrans was a brilliant tactician and a rather poor politician. He did pretty good work at Iuka and Corinth, held on at Murfreesboro, and was the architect of the military masterpiece Tullahoma which effectively took Tennessee out of the Confederacy. His subsequent flanking movement pushed the Army of Tennessee into Georgia and established Union control over the crucial East-West railroad. However, he overreached himself at Chickamauga. See short biography.
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5. George H. Thomas, an astute non-politician, won every one of his engagements starting with Mill Springs which was the first major Union victory of the Civil War. He is known as the Rock of Chickamauga where he saved the Union army, but he was equally solid beforehand under Rosecrans, and afterward during the Dalton to Atlanta and Atlanta campaigns. He was at his most creative at Chattanooga and Nashville. Finally, Thomas planned the largest cavalry raid of the war which took Selma and captured Davis. See short biography. Available also the complete 1882 biography Life of Major General George H. Thomas by Van Horne.
6. Joseph Hooker, an honorary member of this group. He came from the east with the 20th Corps to reinforce Thomas at Chattanooga and provided the intelligence and drive which allowed Thomas to carry out his original plan of turning the Confederate left at Rossville Gap. This then made possible the famous charge by Thomas' troops up the center of Missionary Ridge. All of this succeeded in the face of mismanagement on the part of Grant and Sherman's failure at the other end of Missionary Ridge. Thomas managed the battle behind Grant's back, saving Grant's career. Grant never forgave him for that.
7. Braxton Bragg, the determined opponent of Buell, Rosecrans, and Thomas.
8. Ulysses S. Grant, the determined opponent of anyone who could possibly get between himself and higher command.
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1. George H. Thomas and Politics in the Union army at the Battle for Chattanooga by Bob Redman, 12 Sept. 2000
Grant comes to Chattanooga with the express purpose of creating the conditions for promoting Sherman and relegating Thomas and Hooker to secondary roles at best. Sherman’s political allies will then promote Grant’s career. As events unfold and Sherman can’t bring off even a semblance of a victory on his wing, Grant gets desperate and orders Thomas to sacrifice part of his army in order to relieve the pressure on Sherman. Thomas hinders the execution of the order until Hooker has begun to undermine Bragg’s left flank. The most highly trained army of the day then does its job and takes the ridge, whereupon Grant rewrites history so that it conforms to a modfied version of his original plan. Article based upon McKinney and Cozzens, but goes one logical step further. Mcfeely wrote on page 380 of his "Grant" biography that Grant "had outmaneuvered all the generals who might have stepped in front of him during the war". Fortunately for the nation this was true only politically. As the following article will demonstrate, Thomas outmaneuvered Grant militarily, and Grant never forgave him for it
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2. Sherman and Grant vs. Thomas at Resaca by Don Plezia, 17 Sept. 2000 - WORK IN PROGRESS
On May 7th, 1864 Sherman started his campaign to "break up Joe Johnston's Army" as ordered by Grant. He could have won the war in the West On May 9th, 1864! However, he refused to acknowledge Thomas’s strategic and tactical superiority. Thomas had fought in the area for three years. He knew it like the back of his hand and had in fact drawn maps of the area. Secondarily (maybe primarily), Sherman was not going to let Thomas overshadow again as he had done at Chattanooga. So instead, Sherman’s ego or perhaps his unsettled mind allowed the conflict to proceed, until Thomas finally Thomas ended it at Nashville, December 18th, 1864. During the entire “Atlanta Campaign” Sherman was content to chase Johnston down the tracks. Thomas never quit trying to destroy the Army of Tennessee.
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3. 'Slow Trot' and other Thomas nicknames! by Don Plezia, 19 Sept. 2000
The nick name “Slow Trot” was used pejoratively by Sherman, Grant and others to deprecate Thomas and his achievements. At times, when “Slow Trot” was not thought forceful enough, it was reinforced by additions such as, “slow of mind, word and deed”. How was the nickname “Slow Trot” derived and what was it’s real meaning? Read on and you’ll find out.
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4. The Execution of Captain Jazeb R. Rhodes, C.S.A. by Terry Foenander
Before the battle of Chattanooga Gen. Bragg, struggling with outright rebellion from his top commanders, was aware of the corruption within his army and the effect this had on the daily life of the soldiers in his army. This report, based upon contemporary newspaper accounts, indirectly bears witness to his concern for this problem and his attempts to deal with it. Regardless of what Sam Watkins wrote, Bragg was not "a bad feeder". Richmond assigned to the Army of Virginia the choice forage areas closest to Bragg, and furthermore never granted Bragg the authority necessary to establish a modern command structure in the Army of Tennessee - Bob Redman, ed.
5. George H. Thomas, Practitioner of Emancipation by Bob Redman, 5 Oct. 2000
As a boy Thomas gave family slaves bible and reading lessons, his attitudes towards secession, views on slavery, use of colored troops in general, doubts about their ability to sustain combat, his employment of colored troops at Nashville, defense of colored troops after war, efforts to integrate former slaves into economy while military governer of the South. Lincoln was the great moral philosopher of the social revolution of the 1860's, Thomas was its greatest practitioner. "...measuring him by the sentiment of his country...he was swift, zealous, radical,and determined." Thomas ought to be appreciated by black and white Americans, but he is not even known to most people, being ignored or, at best, played down in most popular treatments of American history.
6.The complete text of the 1882 biography The Life of Major General George H. Thomas (Part 1 pages 1-159;Part 2 pages 160-310; Part 3 pages 311-465) by Thomas Van Horne. In his 1875 History of the Army of the Cumberland, Van Horne had restrained himself, in keeping with Thomas's wish to avoid controversy. However, in his biography Van Horne, reacting to the crude polemics of the Grant apologists, took the gloves off. Compared to the mendacity of Badeau & co., Van Horne's occasional exagerations are mild. This book has not been reprinted since 1882, and you can not get it through interlibrary loan because it is falling apart. We are saving this book for posterity.
7. On the Causes of the Civil War, a short essay by Bob Redman, Oct. 2000
8. The Pioneer Brigade by Geoffrey L. Blankenmeyer, 11 Nov. 2000
By August of 1862, the Union offensive into Tennessee had bogged down. A new commander, William Starke Rosecrans, was put in charge of the Union forces in Nashville to renew an advance the coming spring. Rosecrans, an engineer by training, knew that he required the proper logistical support to sutain a successful drive into the Southern Heartland. When his overtures to Washington for an increase in engineers was refused, Rosecrans developed his own units with the men he had on hand. Therefore on November 3, 1862 by General Order #3, the Pioneer Brigade sprang to life. And it was these handpicked men that lead Rosecrans' Army of the Cumberland from Nashville to Chattanooga with musket as well as with spade. In fact, it was the only unit to receive Congressional recognition as a unit when reformed as the First United States Veteran Vounteer Engineers in May, 1864. This is the story of those Pioneers.
9. A series of newspaper articles which Karl Marx wrote about the Civil War.
10. A brief treatment of the Spencer repeater and other Civil War breechloading rifles by Bob Redman, Jan. 2001
About 40 different models of breechloading rifles and carbines were introduced during the Civil War, but the 7-shot repeating Spencer was the best and the most important of them. Its breech mechanism was primitive compared to later mechanisms and required hand cocking of the hammer, but it was reliable under abuse and adverse conditions. At Hoover's Gap on 24 June 1863 the firepower it gave Wilder's Lightning Brigade under Thomas completely overwhelmed Wheeler and Hardee and changed the course of the war.
11. Thomas Shows He's No Slacker in Taking the Offensive by Robert Meiser, first printed in the Washington Times on 8 Jan. 2000
Summary: It assuredly is especially tragic when a soldier loses his life in a useless or mismanaged battle or campaign. Fortunate indeed therefore were those who served under George Thomas, for there was no more competent commander on either side, North or South, to whom one could entrust one's life. He wasted no lives because he made no significant mistakes, yet at the same time he accumulated a long record of remarkable military achievement. In fact, Thomas appears to be the only Civil War general on either side of whom this can be said. This article reviews the facts and adds voice to those who argue for a long overdue reevaluation of Thomas's record and place in history, in line with what this remarkable man deserves.
12. Gen. George H. Thomas: Chief Conservator of the Union and Victim of Gross Historical Injustice: A Compendium of Sources in Support of the Argument by Robert N. Meiser, June 15, 2003
Summary: A scholarly evaluation of the current state of historical analysis of the role Thomas played in determining the outcome of the Civil War and the fate of the nation.
13. Outline of a short essay about the Confederate railroads.
14. A Storm in the Cedars: Colonel John F. Miller’s Brigade at the Battle of Stone’s River by Daniel A. Masters. This is a digest of a chapter from his coming book on the battle.Col. Miller's role was similar to that of Chamberlain at Gettysburg.
15. Schofield vs. Stanley, by Bob Redman, 25 July 03. The story of the campaign within a campaign to plant Schofield in Thomas' pick-up army before the battle of Nashville.
16. Photographic essay Bring Thomas Home, by Bob Redman, 11 Aug. 03. A discussion of why Americans, and among them Virginians, and among Virginians the residents of the county where Thomas was born, should better appreciate Thomas.
17. Sheridan's Ride at Chickamauga, by Bob Redman, 2 Sept. 03. An exposure of Sheridan's attempt to cover up his worst day in the Civil War.
18. "Days of Glory" by Larry J. Daniel: A review by Don Plezia (24 May 2004)."There are many more incidents of these contortions of the truth or poor research by the Reverend Daniel. They are too many to refute individually, so I’ll leave it to the reader to question the need for this attempt to revise history."
19. "The Battle of Kennesaw Mountain: Sherman's Worst Day of the War" by Bob Redman, 26 Nov. 2009. New first draft.
20. “Time and History Will Do Me Justice” – George H. Thomas and his place in history by Brett Michael Mills M.A.. A good summary of Thomas' military career.
21. "On Generalship" by Joseph A. Rose (Chapter one of his book "Grant under Fire").
22. This space is waiting for your article about the Army of the Cumberland (US) or the Army of Tennessee (CS).
