General George H. Thomas: A Biography of the Union's "Rock of Chickamauga" for $32.00

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Three new books about Thomas in 2 years! His time is coming.

This is the latest of the three. Broadwater sincerely admires Thomas and pleads eloquently for his rescue from undeserved obscurity, but his criticism of Grant and Sherman is muted.

Sometimes his analysis of Thomas' character is simplistic, as when he calls him "the consummate lieutenant and team player." However, at Perryville he sat out the game, disobeying an order or strong suggestion of the evening before the battle to report in person at Buell's HQ (OR16:2:581). There has been much controversy about this. Broadwater, in his detailed treatment of the battle, doesn't mention this order, but does provide the key to the mystery. The commander of the 3rd corps, Charles Gilbert, whom Buell had put in charge of Thomas' troops, was technically still a captain while passing himself off as a major general. Poor judgment on Buell's part. Of course Thomas stayed away. A couple of months later, Buell's conduct of the battle was investigated by a military commission before which Thomas testified and refuted the various false charges, but with one factual statement, undermined Buell's defense against the real but unspecified charge that Buell wasn't up to independent command of an army in battle (few people are). During the run-up to Chickamauga, Thomas disregarded Rosecrans' orders to attack Bragg's army (massed in front of him at Lafayette) and instead stopped and then retreated in the nick of time out of McClemore's Cove. At Chattanooga, Thomas subverted Grant's politically motivated plan to have Sherman defeat Bragg, and at Nashville he dug in his heels and refused to attack Hood before he was ready. There were limits to Thomas' team spirit.

Broadwater also doesn't understand the extent of Hooker's contribution to the success of Thomas' charge up the ridge at the battle of Chattanooga by breaking Bragg's left flank at Rossville Gap on the third day, 25 Nov. 1863. He has Hooker waiting 3 hours for the repair of the bridge at Chattanooga (not "Chickamauga") Creek. However, Hooker's lead unit under Osterhaus arrived there around noon and began to cross immediately on the remains of the burned bridge (Osterhaus, Cozzens). By 3 P.M Osterhaus had not just "located" the Confederate left at Rossville Gap, but pushed by it. Osterhaus then found a road on the east side of the ridge (today Seminole Dr.). It was empty, and he was only 2 miles away from Bragg's HQ. I imagine he recognized his historic opportunity. He did press forward and did attack Bragg's HQ from the rear. Of course the Confederate grunts on the crest could hear something awful going on back there and knew a hostile force was getting between them and the road home. In their place I would have been thinking about saving my little part of the army if Bragg wouldn't or couldn't, how about you? If we don't include Osterhaus' end run in the narrative, then Thomas' piercing the center against all normal odds becomes a miracle, i.e. a one-time fluke, and we don't understand what really happened. Which is what Grant intended. Payback to Thomas for managing "the battle behind Grant's back" (Redman, Bobrick pg. 206).

Visit the collection of historical maps at the website of the Office of Coast Survey and consult map CWCK8 issued by the War Department in 1896. Then read the reports of General Alexander Stewart and his subordinates who defended the southern end of the ridge (Google "Stewart's Division's reports"). They paint quite a different portrait of Hooker's activity that afternoon than Grant's report which left Hooker in a black hole in Rossville for 4 hours. Stewart's Division's reports were long hidden in an archive and were first published in 1996 by Broadfoot as a supplement to the ORs. They tell a gripping story, and it's time they made their way into mainstream historiography.

You might ask, why all the fuss about one bridge crossing on one flank on one afternoon at one battle? That is easy to answer. At that point it was a question of how much time Bragg could buy the Confederacy. Jefferson Davis wrote after the war (Piatt, pg. 509): "Chattanooga was the key to the situation, and its loss was terrible to the Confederacy. Our only comfort was, that the people at Washington did not know what to do with it." Any less decisive victory than what Thomas achieved there would have, all other factors remaining equal, postponed the fall of Atlanta and cost Lincoln's coalition the 1864 elections, permitting the Confederacy to negotiate a settlement with the anti-war Democrats. As it was, it was a near thing, and it all turned on the main variable in Thomas' plan - How fast could Hooker get behind Bragg.

Broadwater worked hard with this book and did a good job synthesizing the views of the authors of what I call the middle period of Thomas biographies from Cleaves (1948) to Palumbo (1983). However, although he listed the grand pioneer of revisionist history Mckinney ("Thomas, Education in Violence," 1961) in the bibliography, he didn't cite him in the text. Also, the important books of Cozzens and Sword are missing in the bibliography. In short, this is a useful book which will help focus attention on a largely forgotten general who was spectacularly successful in his service to the nation, but it needs some revision.

To round out the picture read my reviews of the recent Thomas biographies by Einolf ("Virginian for the Union") and Bobrick ("Master of War").

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"General George H. Thomas: A Biography of the Union's "Rock of Chickamauga"" Overview

One of the Civil War's most successful generals is heralded by military historians but never achieved the lasting fame of Grant, Lee, Jackson or Sherman. George Thomas's Southern birth, the ambition of fellow officers, and his action in the less-publicized Western Theater combined to keep him from attaining recognition. This comprehensive biography focuses on the military career that covered such battlegrounds as Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge and Nashville, as well as the political maneuvers that kept Thomas out of the spotlight.

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