George Thomas: Virginian for the Union (review)

John Cimprich's Review

George H. Thomas, one of the more important Civil War commanders, long lacked a recent scholarly biography. Since the last biography in 1961, the National Archives has inventoried Federal army records, several small collections of Thomas letters have appeared, and the relevant primary and secondary literature has greatly expanded. Christopher J. Einolf, a sociologist, drew upon these materials to create the best researched biography of Thomas so far. Maps and illustrations enhance the volume. Both historians and the general public will find the book interesting and enlightening. This moderately long study does not attempt definitive detail but, as noted in the Introduction, focuses primarily on Thomas’s involvements in military matters, southern unionism, and race relations.

Thomas’s biographers have generally judged him as an intelligent, determined, hard-working, courageous, and well organized professional soldier. Einolf adds that his Southern origins led to paternalistic views toward nonwhites, as well as a sense of honor that cultivated both strong integrity and over-sensitivity to criticism. A wide range of experiences before the Civil War built and refined his military skills. During the 1861 Secession Crisis, when a serious back injury caused Thomas to think about resigning from the army, the conflict between obligations to the United States and his home state ended in favor of a unionism that kept him in the national service.

After rapidly rising to the rank of general, Thomas spent most of the war as a subordinate commander. Einolf praises him for skills regarding logistics, discipline, training, morale-building, and tactics. The author also notes the General’s occasional shortcomings, most of all his failure to support the forces defending Franklin, Tennessee, before the battle of Nashville. Although the writer admits that Generals Ulysses Grant and William Sherman may sometimes have been right in saying that Thomas acted too slowly, he implies that their more assertive tactics could result in wastefully rash assaults.

Einolf emphasizes that Thomas was a typical unionist, except that he changed his racial views in a more egalitarian direction in 1864. This greatly affected his participation in Reconstruction after the war. Previous biographies ignored these matters.

While the book on the whole is readable and thoughtfully done, it would have benefited from a little more polishing. Some endnotes are incomplete, making follow-up difficult. The writing has occasional rough spots, especially unnecessary repetition and awkward wording. Explanations of brevet rank, canister, the Texas Controversy of 1844–45, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the location of Corinth, Mississippi, and the purposes of Thomas’s trip to several state capitals in late 1865 are not entirely correct.

Einolf ’s study may not offer dramatic revelations, but it is a very useful updating of Thomas’s life. It achieves its goals generally with sound scholarship and clear, understandable prose. While this reviewer finds all the key arguments persuasive, inevitably some readers will not fully agree with the mostly positive views of the subject. Yet, everyone concerned with George Thomas will have to take the author’s efforts seriously.

Mark W. Johnson's Review

General George H. Thomas has been the subject of much scholarship over the years. Commanding troops in the American Civil War’s Western Theater from late 1861 through the Battle of Nashville in December 1864, he was a dominating presence on a number of battlefields. Recent works on the western campaigns by Peter Cozzens, Larry Daniel, Albert Castel, Wiley Sword, and others have all paid this general his justly-earned battlefield dues.

Yet a satisfactory biography of George Thomas has been lacking. To update a handful of partisan post-mortems published in the late nineteenth century, modern readers could only turn to Freeman Cleaves’s Rock of Chickamauga: The Life of General George H. Thomas and Francis F. McKinney’s Education in Violence: The Life of George H. Thomas and the History of the Army of the Cumberland, works published...