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George Henry Thomas (July 31, 1816March 28, 1870) was a United States Army officer and a Union general during the American Civil War, one of the principal commanders in the Western Theater. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Grant and William T. Sherman. 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. After the war, he did not write memoirs to advance his legacy. He also had an uncomfortable personal relationship with Grant, which served him poorly as Grant advanced in rank and eventually to the presidency. ==Early life and education== Thomas was born at Newsom's Depot, Southampton County, Virginia, five miles (8 km) from the North Carolina border.〔Cleaves, p. 7.〕 His father, John Thomas, of Welsh descent, and his mother, Elizabeth Rochelle Thomas, a descendant of French Huguenot immigrants, had six children. George had three sisters and two brothers. The family led an upper-class plantation lifestyle. By 1829, they owned and 24 slaves. John died in a farm accident when George was 13, leaving the family in financial difficulties.〔Einolf, pp. 14–15.〕 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.〔Cleaves, pp. 6–7; Einolf, p. 20; O'Connor, p. 60.〕 Benson Bobrick has suggested that while some repressive acts were enforced following the crushing of the revolt, Thomas took the lesson another way, seeing that slavery was so vile an institution that it had forced the slaves to act in violence. This was a major event in the formation of his views on slavery; that the idea of the contented slave in the care of a benevolent overlord was a sentimental myth.〔Bobrick, p. 14.〕 Christopher Einholf, in contrast wrote "For George Thomas, the view that slavery was needed as a way of controlling blacks was supported by his personal experience of Nat Turner's Rebellion. ... Thomas left no written record of his opinion on slavery, but the fact that he owned slaves during much of his life indicates that he was not opposed to it."〔Einolf, p. 19. Einolf's statement about owning slaves "during much of his life" is apparently derived from his family's ownership, his use of a family slave as a personal valet during "at least part of his military service", and the woman named Ellen whom his wife Francis bought in 1858 (p. 74).〕 A traditional story is that Thomas taught as many as 15 of his family's slaves to read, violating a Virginia law that prohibited this,〔Cleaves, pp. 6-7; O'Connor, p. 60; Furgurson, p. 57, suggests that while this was illegal, it was not uncommon for slaves to be taught to read; (biography of Thomas ), by Kennedy Hickman. Einolf, p. 13, offers a contrary view: "It is unlikely, however, that Thomas taught his families slaves how to read .... While Thomas did eventually come to support education and freedom for blacks, he did not do so until much later in life, when the events of the Civil War had changed his views on race." He attributes (p. 12) the story to an interview conducted in 1890 by Oliver Otis Howard, who "wanted to explain Thomas's Unionism in terms of an antipathy toward slavery and so looked for early indications of sympathy toward African-Americans in Thomas's childhood."〕 and despite the wishes of his father.〔Coppée, p. 4.〕 Thomas was appointed to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, in 1836 by Congressman John Y. Mason, who warned Thomas that no nominee from his district had ever graduated successfully. Entering at age 20, Thomas was known to his fellow cadets as "Old Tom" and he became instant friends with his roommates, William T. Sherman and Stewart Van Vliet. He made steady academic progress, was appointed a cadet officer in his second year, and graduated 12th in a class of 42 in 1840.〔Einolf, pp. 22–29.〕 He was appointed a second lieutenant in Company D, 3rd U.S. Artillery.〔Eicher, p. 527; Einolf, p. 30.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「George Henry Thomas」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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