#GEORGE H FORCE GENEALOGY PROFESSIONAL#
In 1851, he returned to West Point as a cavalry and artillery instructor, where he established a close professional and personal relationship with another Virginia officer, Lt. Thomas was reassigned to Florida in 1849–50. Lieutenant Thomas more than sustained the reputation he has long enjoyed in his regiment as an accurate and scientific artillerist." During the war, Thomas served closely with an artillery officer who would be a principal antagonist in the Civil War-Captain Braxton Bragg. Wool wrote about Thomas and another officer that "without our artillery we would not have maintained our position a single hour." Thomas's battery commander wrote that Thomas's "coolness and firmness contributed not a little to the success of the day. Zachary Taylor reported that "the services of the light artillery, always conspicuous, were more than unusually distinguished" during the battle. In Mexico, Thomas led a gun crew with distinction at the battles of Fort Brown, Resaca de la Palma, Monterrey, and Buena Vista, receiving three brevet promotions. With the Mexican-American War looming, his regiment was ordered to Texas in June 1845. From 1842 until 1845, he served in posts at New Orleans, Fort Moultrie in Charleston Harbor, and Fort McHenry in Baltimore. He led them in successful patrols and was appointed a brevet first lieutenant on November 6, 1841. Thomas's first assignment with his artillery regiment began in late 1840 at the primitive outpost of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in the Seminole Wars, where his troops performed infantry duty. He was appointed a second lieutenant in Company D, 3rd U.S. He made steady academic progress, was appointed a cadet officer in his second year, and graduated 12th in a class of 42 in 1840. Entering at age 20, Thomas was known to his fellow cadets as "Old Tom" and he became instant friends with his roommates, William T. Mason, who warned Thomas that no nominee from his district had ever graduated successfully. Thomas was appointed to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, in 1836 by Congressman John Y. A traditional story is that Thomas taught his family's slaves to read, violating a Virginia law that prohibited this, although not all historians agree that this was true. George Thomas, his sisters, and his widowed mother were forced to flee from their home and hide in the nearby woods during Nat Turner's 1831 slave rebellion. John died in a farm accident when George was 13, leaving the family in financial difficulties. The family led an upper-class plantation lifestyle. George was a middle child and the youngest of the three boys. His father, John Thomas, of Welsh descent, and his mother, Elizabeth Rochelle Thomas, a descendant of French Huguenot immigrants, had nine children. Thomas was born at Newsom's Depot, five miles (8 km) from North Carolina, in Southampton County, Virginia. He also had an uncomfortable personal relationship with Grant, which served him poorly as Grant advanced in rank and eventually to the presidency.
After the war, he did not write memoirs to advance his legacy. He developed a reputation as a slow, deliberate general who shunned self-promotion and who turned down advancements in position when he did not think they were justified. Thomas had a successful record in the Civil War, but he failed to achieve the historical acclaim of some of his contemporaries, such as Ulysses S. In the Franklin-Nashville Campaign of 1864, he achieved one of the most decisive victories of the war, destroying the army of Confederate General John Bell Hood, at the Battle of Nashville. His stout defense at the Battle of Chickamauga in 1863 saved the Union Army from being completely routed, earning him his most famous nickname, the "Rock of Chickamauga." He followed soon after with a dramatic breakthrough on Missionary Ridge in the Battle of Chattanooga. He won one of the first Union victories in the war, at Mill Springs in Kentucky, and served in important subordinate commands at Perryville and Stones River. Thomas served in the Mexican-American War and later chose to remain with the United States Army for the Civil War, despite his heritage as a Virginian.
George Henry Thomas (J– March 28, 1870) was a career United States Army officer and a Union General during the American Civil War, one of the principal commanders in the Western Theater.
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