Southampton County was proud of its son, and presented him a magnificent sword, its gold pommel clasping an amethyst, its silver scabbard engraved with the names of his battles. Then Thomas was breveted to major for the way he handled his guns at Buena Vista, when Taylor defeated Mexican general Santa Anna in the last major battle in northern Mexico. Zachary Taylor in 1846, Thomas won honorary promotion to captain for his conduct in the pitched battle of Monterrey. Real war lay ahead in Mexico, where as an artillery lieutenant under Gen. All his movements were deliberate, his self-possession was supreme, and he received and gave orders with equal serenity." Thomas' captain wrote an appraisal that would well describe his entire career: "I never knew him to be late or in a hurry. Among the cadets, his gravitas earned him his first of many nicknames: Old Tom.įive months after graduation, Thomas sailed for Florida and the long, ugly little war begun by Andrew Jackson to force the Seminole Indians onto reservations. Along the way, Thomas put a halt to the hazing of some fellow cadets by threatening to throw a bullying upperclassman out a barracks window after years helping supervise a sprawling plantation, he had learned to exert calm authority. They became friendly rivals, and after four years Sherman had finished 6th, Thomas 12th, among the 42 members of the class of 1840. His roommate was a red-haired, impulsive Ohioan named William Tecumseh "Cump" Sherman.
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Nearly six feet tall, solid in body and stubborn in temperament, George was almost 20 years old when he arrived at West Point. He would long remember the parting advice he got from his brother John: "Having done what you conscientiously believe to be right, you may regret, but should never be annoyed by, a want of approbation on the part of others." It was advice that would prove prophetic. But he was restless, and gladly accepted an appointment from his congressman to the U.S. Teaching slaves was illegal in Virginia and across the South, but George was among the many who had broken the law, teaching his own family's 15 slaves to read.Īfter attending the local academy, he became his uncle's deputy clerk and took up the study of law at the county courthouse. He heard talk that all the trouble would never have happened if Turner had not been taught to read and write. Young George was immersed in the initial panic, the mobilization of militia and the fury of citizens demanding prompt justice. The boy's uncle, James Rochelle, who had mentored him since his father's death, was clerk of the court where Turner confessed and was hanged that November. George's father had died two years earlier. While Turner and his band, armed with guns, clubs, axes and swords, carried out their gruesome task, Thomas' mother led her family to safety, helped to do so by some of her own slaves, according to local tradition. 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 unsettled. 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. Nat Turner's 1831 insurrection, in Southampton County, Virginia, was the bloodiest slave uprising in American history. 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. Before they had gone far, afraid the assassins would overtake them, they abandoned the carriage and took to the woods. George Henry Thomas, 15, piled into a carriage with his mother and sisters and racketed along dirt roads into the darkness.
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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. Out of the august night, James Gurley came galloping past the massive oak before Elizabeth Thomas' white plantation house. His equanimity shows in a Civil War portrait, as it did in the heat of combat.
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Later in 1863, he rallied Union troops in the Battle of Chickamauga, in Georgia. The Amazon loses 8,800 acres a day to "This army does not retreat," Gen.