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Was Gen. George Thomas Right – A Civil General ControversyDavid Stinebeck and Scannell Gill | May 12, 2009 | Single Page | 9 comments | Print | E-mail
David Stinebeck, whose great-grandfather fought under General George Thomas and recorded the experience in his diaries, has a BA from Stanford University and a PhD in American Studies from Yale. He is the author of Shifting World: Social Change in the American Novel and co-author of Puritans, Indians and Manifest Destiny. Scannell Gill graduates from Union College, has an MS in Marriage and Family Therapy from the University of Rhode Island, and is writing an original analysis of the multifaceted roles of women in society. Together they are working on a trilogy of novels based on the racial and economic history of Nantucket Island. Thomas refused to accept a war of attrition as an honorable and reliable way for the North to win. During the American Civil War, Union general George Henry Thomas’ fighting style—to crush the enemy in big battles and avoid a war of attrition—worked in the Western Theater, and differed significantly from the fighting styles of Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, and William T. Sherman. Thomas was an intense tactician and strategist—thinking through all scenarios in the campaign and battles ahead—and he was certain that his kind of thinking was the quickest and best way to win the war. He was determined both to defeat the Confederate army in the West in a big battle or two (which his men in fact achieved at Missionary Ridge and Nashville) and to do it with fewer casualties than on the other side. Our careful accounting of all of Thomas’ engagements was unable to unearth a single one in which his men suffered more wounded and dead than the opposing forces. But Grant and Sherman had a hard time trusting this kind of thinker and leader, and not just because he was a Virginian. Thomas wanted to be left alone to do his job and hated to curry favor with those above him whom he publicly supported but whose leadership, we believe, he did not respect. There is a scene in the novel, after Grant slogs his way to Chattanooga following Vicksburg, in which the two of them confront each other over Thomas’ personality. Grant basically says to Thomas, whom he has just picked to lead the Army of the Cumberland, why should I fully trust someone who does not play the game and curry favor with or climb over those above him, someone who turned down two earlier promotions because he did not want to appear ambitious? Grant bullies Thomas in this scene but scores points against a general who wants only to do things his way and be judged on nothing more than the results. This, we believe, was also Thomas’ motive in having his wife destroy all his personal papers upon his death: he wanted to be judged only on his performance in battle—to dissuade any aspersions in the North that he was a Southerner or ridicule from Southerners mocking his service to the Union. He died of a stroke five years after the war while writing a defense of the remarkable victory at Nashville in response to an unfounded, anonymous attack by a fellow Northern general. While Thomas refused to accept a war of attrition as an honorable and reliable way for the North to win, Grant was willing to overwhelm the South with numbers and was unconcerned about casualties on either side. He and Lee in the East tried to wear each other out, regardless of the loss of life. Thomas, from all indications, was appalled by this approach to war. He was convinced that dramatic, overwhelming victories by the North would, in fact, save lives on both sides, and bring the South to its knees far quicker. Grant and Sherman certainly felt they had won the war with their quite different strategy. We leave it to historians to judge whether Thomas’ approach would have worked as well in the East as it did in the West. Pages: 1 2Help Armchair General by bookmarking to
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9 Comments to “Was Gen. George Thomas Right – A Civil General Controversy”
Although I think that George Thomas is a great General I don’t think his tactics would have worked in the East for the following reasons.
1) His deliberate thinking and strategy would not have worked against an aggressive General like Robert E. Lee. While he was pondering Lee would be attacking.
2) Thomas being from Virginia would never gain the full trust of the Army of Potomac. When Grant took over the Army it had a great mistrust of Commanding Generals.
3) Thomas while a great strategist was not a visionary and I believe his ability to think beyond the task at hand was limited.
Regards,
Rich Guida
Author of the Civil War novel “The Winds of Change”
By Richard Guida on May 12, 2009 at 10:38 pm
Although Grant’s bitter if ultimately successful campaign leading the Army of the Potomac against Lee was extremely bloody for both sides, he won his decisive victories in the west at Fts Henry and Donelson, at Vicksburg and at Chattanooga (where he commanded Thomas) with comparatively moderate casualties. Only Shiloh was truly bloody on the Eastern scale. At Shiloh Grant was defending against an all-out Confederate surprise attack, and he stood his ground at staunchly as Thomas at Chickamauga, but in his other Western victories Grant himself used surprise and manuever to keep casualities low.
This wouldn’t work against Lee, who anticipated and tenaciously contested each manuever by Grant. If Thomas had faced Lee in the east, he would have been force either onto the strategic defensive (like Meade after Gettysburg) or into a bloody battle of attrition (like Grant after he took command.) Another way to think of it: Grant was too good a general to allow Lee to win another Chancellorsville, and Lee was too good a general to allow Grant another Chattanooga or Donelson. So, instead we had this terrible war of attrition in which neither side could win a brilliant victory and sheer weight of numbers eventually prevailed.
By LearningCurve on May 29, 2009 at 10:33 am
I don’t believe Thomas’ vision would have succeeded in the larger Eastern theater.
My assessment is that the large battle defeats had less effect that the steady debilitation of the Confederacy. The loss of supplies from the Trans-Mississippi after Vicksburg, the blockade, and drain of fighting men from the the attrition campaigns pretty well complete that inexorable equation for the war.
Lastly, if Thomas’ perspective had been allowed to prevail, the lasting and unifying effect of the war may not have been so powerful. There is no doubt that the enormous loss of life in the war is a factor in the eventual unification of the country. The war’s horrors reinforce our current convictions of “The” United States as oppose to “These” United States as used antebellum. It may seem ghastly but the death toll from a war of attrition may have helped us become a stronger nation.
After all it was R.E. Lee that said “It is good that war is so horrible, lest we learn to love it too much.”
By Mike Spangler on Jun 18, 2009 at 10:37 pm
Based on his performance at those battles he commanded relatively ‘unsupervised’, Thomas seemed more than any other major commander (other than, it pains me to say, McClellan) that preparation was the key to victory. Put him in command during the Seven Days– would he have folded as did Little Mac? At Antietam, would he have failed to coordinate his army as badly as did McClellan? Would his command have allowed the tragedies of the Battle of the Wilderness or kept the components acting in synchronicity as Grant/Meade failed to do? At Chancellorsville, would he have collapsed as did Hooker? He planned well, prepared his fight and his army well, and executed better than any of the bombastic generals that too often led the armies of the US. As for responding to the operational agility of the Army of Northern Virginia, don’t forget Thomas earned his fame on the defensive at Chickamauga. Lee was a great general, and the ANV a great fighting force, but the combination succeeded to a great extent by the truism: ‘better an army of sheep led by a lion than an army of lions led by a sheep.’ The Army of the Potomac deserved a general like Thomas, who may not have whipped Bobby Lee (though I think he could have, and would have at Antietam), but would have spared that army the waste of such fights as Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, the Peninsula and the Overland Campaign.
By DDT on Jul 3, 2009 at 11:55 pm
Certainly Thomas liked to prepare and was a thinker, tactician, and strategist. But don’t confuse that with an inability to act quickly and powerfully when needed. It was in large part the efforts of Thomas at Chickamauga that ground Longstreets incredible breakthrough to a halt when the rest of the union leadership had fled over the mountain. He saved the Union army from certain destruction and earned the moniker, “The Rock of Chickamauga”.
By Dan Lacich on Sep 5, 2009 at 6:07 pm
Thomas’ reputation for being slow was mostly due to the jealousy & antagonistism of Grant, with help from Sherman. The former berated Thomas for slowness at Nashville (weeks) while himself leading the blisteringly fast assault ( 3+ months) on Richmond-Petersburg; the latter while “foraging” his way through the indefended south with 2/3 of the army, having left Thomas to scrape together a force with which to fight Hood. Of course Thomas could have attacked sooner at Nashville – if going off half-cocked without parity in infantry, with horseless cavalry, in horrendous weather is the recipe for anything except disaster.
Remember Little Mac (at his highest) always outnumbered his foe, was never satisfied with less than 110% of his wish list of equipment, and at best fought to an inconclusive draw.
Grant destroyed men in frontal assaults to wear down his opponents until statically depending on a crisis of logistics beat them or ran them out of their lines. Sherman also leaned towards stand – up fights that yielded little but heaps of dead soldiers and when Hood wouldn’t stand he left him to Thomas while he went off to defeat farms and towns, cows and mules.
I would like to see a fantasy football – like wargame where all the great commanders’ stats are entered and they can go head to head in the arena of battle. I would bet on Pap against all comers.
By Lance H on Sep 12, 2009 at 7:52 pm
A couple of other posters have made this point, but I will put it a different way. Thomas’ attitude was very much like Grant’s and Lee’s, and all 3 differed sharply from all of the commanders who preceded Grant in the East. That is, they all believed that the opponent’s force was the objective, rather than a spot on the map. All 3 believed in battle’s of annihilation and sought that whenever they could – with “whenever they could” being the operative term. Lee sought annihilation at 7 Days, but the terrain and immaturity of his army prevented it. He sought and largely won it at Second Manassas because Pope walked into it. He failed at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg because the force imbalance was too great. Grant sought annihilation at Henry and Donelson, and got it because his enemy obliged. In his most skillfully-executed campaign around Vicksburg, he won annihilation despite the ridiculous complexities of terrain. And Thomas sought it at Nashville, and won because of his own skill and Hood’s near-insanity.
By Kevin Browne on Sep 15, 2009 at 8:00 pm
Lance is correct in all aspects of his description, except for a couple items.
1. Sherman started the defamation of Thomas as slow as early as 1861. Grant picked it up after Chattanooga and continued until his (Grant’s ) death.
2. Grant’s “blisteringly fast assault” actually was more like eight months.
3. Sherman left Thomas with so few troops that after the Battle of Franklin when Hood and Schofield arrived in front of Nashville simultaneously so did Smith and his Israelites.
4. Most of the Union troops at Nashville were rookies, some were not trained (about 15,000), and about 10,000 were unarmed. Thanks to Sherman who took two of Thomas’ Infantry Corps and most of his Cavalry. ONE WAS THE 14TH, Thomas’, pets who he trained from Kentucky and who Sherman sneakily wrote to Grant that they were abysmally slow.
5. Sherman never wanted to fight “battles.” He admitted as much to his daughter. When he did fight, he always lost e.g.: Kennesaw Mountain, Bentonville.
Couldn’t describe Grants “strategy” any better than you did.
Don
By D. W. Plezia on Dec 4, 2009 at 12:38 am
Do you folk’s read anything but Grant, Badeau’s, and Sherman’s memoirs?
Thomas destroyed one Rebel army at Mill Springs and another at Nashville. Forced Bragg into a staff job after Chattanooga and retired Hood after Nashville. His pursuit of the AOT after Nashville was the longest by any side in the war. He staved off the complete defeat of the AOTC at Chickamauga and had he been in command at the start of the “Atlanta Campaign” the war in the west had a good chance of ending on ~May 15. Had that happened there would have been no Rebel army in the west. Lincoln may have lived to enjoy his grandchildren. Assuming Grant et al could have overcome Lee and the ANV, thirty to fifty thousand troops may have returned home in August. Had Thomas gone east to help, maybe June.
You who chime in with the Grant/Sherman chant Of Thomas’ slowness, certainly recall that after Mill Creek Thomas planned to attack Knoxville and secure East Tennessee for the Union. But, his commander W. T. Sherman dithered, recalled him and suffered a mental breakdown. After Sherman’s removal Buell had other ideas for Thomas. Thus was lost Knoxville, the Tennessee Virginia railroad and the opportunity to cut off the main Confederate supply route to the great granary of the Midwest. Does that count as being slow?
How about when crossing the Chattahoochee Thomas was attacked by Hood in the midst of crossing. Thomas personally directed placement of Newton’s division’s artillery, sped up the horses with the flat of his sword, lined up his artillery, directed their fire and destroyed Hoods attack. Was that slow?
In addition, you all must know that Sherman’s plan to cut Johnston off from Atlanta by sending McPherson’s undermanned force thru the Snake Creek Gap originally was planned and submitted to Grant by Thomas. Grant ignored him completely. Sherman, claiming the plan as his own, ignoring simple military strategy sent McPherson with 23,000 infantry and about 600 cavalry thru the gap that Thomas planned to send his AOTC with 60,000 infantry and 10,000+ cavalry. Sherman, with his superior military acumen, had Thomas act as a diversion and McPherson as the strike force.
Although Sherman blamed McPherson for being timid he refused Thomas’ requests to send two of Hookers divisions as backup assuring McPherson’s defeat.
Now, I can supply many more examples of Thomas’ alacrity, tell me, without using his preparatory methods as examples where was old Thom slow?
Don
By D. W. Plezia on Dec 26, 2009 at 4:25 pm