- A first-rate historian: Benson Bobrick is the author of several celebrated books, including The Fated Sky and Testament . His work has been hailed as "Lucid and vivid" by The New Yorker , "elegant" by The Washington Post Book World , and "engrossing...detailed and gripping" by the Chicago Tribune . And The New York Times Book Review says, "Bobrick is perhaps the most interesting historian writing in America today.". - A fascinating biography of an underappreciated American hero: George H. Thomas was, Bobrick ...
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- A first-rate historian: Benson Bobrick is the author of several celebrated books, including The Fated Sky and Testament . His work has been hailed as "Lucid and vivid" by The New Yorker , "elegant" by The Washington Post Book World , and "engrossing...detailed and gripping" by the Chicago Tribune . And The New York Times Book Review says, "Bobrick is perhaps the most interesting historian writing in America today.". - A fascinating biography of an underappreciated American hero: George H. Thomas was, Bobrick argues, the greatest general of the Civil War. Known as the Rock of Chickamauga, Thomas was regarded by his contemporaries as the equal of Grant and Sherman. In the entire Civil War, he never lost a battle or a movement, and he was the only Union commander to destroy two Confederate armies in the field. But Thomas never wrote a memoir and history neglected him. Until now. . - Powerfully told and grippingly rendered: With his characteristic flair for drama and fast-paced writing, Bobrick takes readers onto the battlefields, into the smoke of gunpowder and the stench of bodies. From the parade grounds of West Point to the bloody Battle of Chattanooga, Bobrick masterfully renders every detail, right down to the buckles on Thomas's boots and the courage in his heart. Backed by scholarly research, this informed and vivid biography at last brings Thomas's tale to readers everywhere..
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Some time ago, a friend and I were driving home from an event and went through Thomas Circle, in downtown Washington D.C. Thomas Circle is dominated by a large equestrian statue of General George Thomas constructed in 1879 by the Society of the Army of the Cumberland and cast from captured Confederate guns. My friend has lived in Washington, D.C. for many years, is well-educated and has an excellent knowledge of political United States history. "Who was General Thomas?", he asked as we drove through the Circle. I explained that General George Thomas was a Union Civil war hero who fought mostly in the western theatre and was best-known as the "Rock of Chickamauga" for his grand defense during the course of a Union retreat.
Many people with only a cursory knowledge of the Civil War or of American history, will not know anything about General George Thomas (1816 -- 1870). This is a pity. Thomas was a remarkable person and general whose accomplishments and character deserve recognition. Thomas was born in Virginia to a slaveholding family. In his youth, he and his family narrowly escaped murder in Nat Turner's slave rebellion. Thomas attended West Point where he was a solid if not outstanding student and served in the U.S. Military all his life. He earned a reputation for military skill and judgment in the Mexican War, Indian wars, and in participating on courts-martial panels.
When Thomas's home state of Virginia left the Union in 1861, Thomas without hesitation or reserve cast his lot with the Union, for which his family disowned him. Thomas achieved an early and important military success in the Battle of Mill Springs, Kentucky, an important predecessor to the Union victories at Forts Henry and Donelson. In the early stages of the war, Thomas twice declined promotions because he did not wish to be seen as conspiring against generals under whom he was serving at the time. Serving for the duration of the Civil War, Thomas had many achievements. His most brilliant accomplishments were his defense of the Union Army at Chickamauga, mentioned above, which saved the Army from a total rout, and his victory over General Hood late in the war at the Battle of Nashville. This battle was the only occasion during the Civil War in which a major army suffered total destruction. Among many other things, the battle is important for the large role that Thomas gave to African American troops who performed heroically on Nashville's second day. Thomas was beloved by his troops and fought his battles to avoid wanton loss of life. After the War, Thomas fought to halt the spread of the Ku Klux Klan. An individual of considerable reserve, Thomas had his personal papers, including letters to his family in Virginia and to his wife, destroyed. He wanted to be remembered for his public accomplishments.
Benson Bobrick's new biography, "Master of War: the Life of George H. Thomas (2009)" amply explains why Thomas deserves to be remembered. As such, the book is valuable. Unfortunately, the book is marred by a great deal of polemic and derogation of other leaders. Bobrick writes as if, in order to establish Thomas's stature for the reader, it is necessary to tear down the accomplishments of other persons. Thus, much of the book appears to be at least as much a vendetta against Grant and Sherman as it is a consideration of George Thomas. Bobrick is highly critical of the generalship of Grant and Sherman even when the activities of these commanders had little relationship to any activity of Thomas. He seems to have forgotten the complexity of military engagements and the limitations of a single point of view. Thus, his book appears more as a brief than as a historical study. He tends to find sources that support his preconceived position. These sources he too often accepts uncritically while ignoring differing interpretations. He denigrates Grant and Sherman unduly, with the apparent belief that in so doing he elevates Thomas. I don't think General Thomas would have had much sympathy for such an approach. Thomas deserves better.
Bobrick also argues that Grant and Sherman in their postwar Memoirs tended to downplay Thomas's achievements in favor of each other. Here Bobrick is on firmer ground. Grant and Sherman were closer to each other professionally and personally than either man was to Thomas. And Thomas sometimes was passed-over so that the two could work as a team. Yet both generals acknowledged the importance of Thomas's accomplishments. Bobrick is correct to point out that Grant and Sherman undervalued Thomas. But he does not show either leader deserves the vitriol he pours on them. Bobrick's book is also full of quirky and unsupported judgments about other Civil War leaders. Beyond an effort to be provocative, some of his assessments add little to his account of Thomas.
There is a great deal in the book about the battle of Chattanooga which followed Thomas's great defense at Chickamauga. Grant and Thomas had an uneasy relationship at Chattanooga. The most famous event of this battle was the storming of Missionary Ridge by the troops without direction from either Grant or Thomas. Bobrick seems to accept that neither Grant nor Thomas ordered the charge. He finds the victory at Chattanooga due to Thomas's efforts exclusively and occurred in spite of the efforts of Grant. Students of Chattanooga have long differed about the respective roles of Grant in Thomas in the outcome of the battle. Both leaders contributed. It is not plausible to read out one leader's contribution, as Bobrick does with Grant, to elevate the contributions of the other.
Readers who study the Civil War seriously frequently develop strong opinions early about leadership in the conflict. Grant, Sherman, McClellan for the Union, Lee, Jackson, Stuart, Joe Johnston, Albert Sidney Johnston for the Confederacy all have strong admirers and detractors. Among the benefits of continued study of the conflict is that readers frequently learn to put aside their initial biases, through reading and reflection, and to either form a more balanced view of the conflict or at least to recognize that views other than the reader's own may be plausible and consistent with the evidence. The problem with this book is that Bobrick does not get much beyond the early stage. He wants to show that Thomas was the greatest general of the War, and the greatest general since George Washington. His book is geared to making an overly and unnecessarily strong case to establish Thomas's merit.
Even though Thomas may be unknown to many Americans, students of the Civil War have long recognized his importance. At the outset of his book, Bobrick acknowledges that Thomas is generally ranked as one of the three great Union generals of the Civil War, together with Grant and Sherman. (pp 1-2) This acknowledgement is itself worthy recognition of Thomas. It is unclear about the value of insisting that Thomas should be rated first among these three generals, as Bobrick tries to do. (In the world of classical music, for example, Bach, Mozart and Beethoven have claim to be among the three greatest composers. How much is to be learned to insisting on the superiority of one or the other of these figures at the expense of belittling the two others?) Bobrick has performed a worthy service by bringing Thomas's high military and personal accomplishments to a wide readership. But he has performed a disservice, with questionable historical basis, by trying to elevate Thomas's accomplishments by denigrating those of others.
Robin Friedman
slowtrot
Mar 9, 2009
"Time and History will do me justice,"
Master of War
The Life of
General George H. Thomas
By
Benson Bobrick
"Time and History will do me justice," said Major General George H. Thomas to his biographer Thomas Budd van Horne!
Well maybe the time is here! The History has always been there, but very few were reading it.
Most of those writing about Thomas and the Civil War had a stake in maintaining the slander created by Sherman and picked-up by Grant that Thomas was ?slow.? Most sought to perpetuate the myth that Grant and Sherman were the greatest generals of the war. A myth easily disproven. Why would they lie about ?History?? Easy ? to sell books. The profit motive is very strong in liberal academia and it supplements their salaries.
Since Thomas Budd van Horne's ?Life of Major General George H. Thomas? the first biography of Thomas written in 1882, to the first 20th Century effort, ?Education in Violence? by Francis F. McKinney, in 1961, several books have been written about Thomas. Of these McKinney's still stands as that which others are measured. In 1997 Thomas Buell wrote ?The Warrior Generals - Combat Leadership in the Civil War.? In it he presented a case for several Civil War Generals. One of which was George H. Thomas. It was the first time a compelling case was made for the elevation of Thomas? Generalship over Grant's by a major author. Now, in the space of five years two books on Thomas have appeared and a third will be out in the summer of 2009. Yes, the ?Time? may be here!
Well, I received my copy of Benson Bobrick's ?Master of War - Life of George H. Thomas? and have finished it.
The book is a healthy respite from the current pseudo historical writings that, for the most part, curiously seek to devalue and demean General Thomas? contributions to the Union civil war effort. You can find more detailed descriptions of some of those efforts on Robert Meiser's "General George H. Thomas" Web Site.
Mr. Bobrick writes in an engaging, straightforward style making for easy reading. He has so far ?not? commented on whether General Thomas made any military errors as authors of the last two books on Thomas did. Mr. Bobrick, in fact, is sympathetic to Thomas! I always thought it interesting how writers having no military experience (the first a Reverend and the other a schoolteacher), felt capable of criticizing the deployments, tactics, strategies and actions (and in the case of the holy man, Generals Thomas? physiognomy), of a man trained and fighting in the 19th Century. Although tactics and strategies may apply throughout the centuries (in the 1st Gulf war Schwarzkopf used Thomas Nashville tactics in reverse), criticizing troop deployment has to be dependent on knowledge of conditions andcircumstances of the moment. It also has to be cognizant of what is happening at that moment influencing the commander's actions. To imply a commander is mistaken because he deploys his units in a particular fashion, without knowing what he is seeing or has seen, is unsustainable criticism. The critic can only know what has been told him or written by the commander, military reports (O.R.?s), who may or may not supply all the facts or a correspondent, or historian who may or may not know the whole story. We see plenty of that in histories written by authors with a viewpoint (e.g. Sherman's and Grant's ?Memoirs?). A guesstimate may be offered and should include the conditions known to the one making the criticism whose guess it is!
However, while Mr. Bobrick goes over much material known to Thomas scholars, he intersperses new items I have never seen. Original material! He also brings into focus many of the slanders perpetrated by Sherman and Grant.
He blows Sherman's story that he nominated Thomas to Robert Anderson as a Brigadier to go west and build an army. The truth being that Lincoln asked Anderson about Thomas and he without equivocation vouched for Thomas? loyalty. Sherman in writing this fabrication in his ?Memoirs? also told Anderson added ?Thomas was slow.?
He goes through several lies perpetrated by the two officers and gentlemen and explains the untruthfulness of them all. In my first go though, he seems to have missed Halleck's contributions to the slander scheme.
Bobrick points out that after the charge up Missionary Ridge Thomas mixed with his troops and congratulated them. To one regiment he remarked ?that the men had made a fine race up the hill, and one of the soldiers, who had felt the want of food for weeks, cried out, ?Yes, general, you have been training us for this race for several weeks.? At that moment, looking around, he observed a steamboat puffing and snorting up the river, and he replied, ?That is so; but there comes full rations, and in future the Army of the Cumberland shall have full rations.?
Combine this with the fact that Thomas had his Corps and Divisional commanders in for meetings to discuss their orders from Grant. Plans to charge up the hill were designed and discussed. With the meetings and discussions and the comment by the trooper, and Thomas? response, I do not understand why there is any discussion as to their origin. They were planned and the troops were following orders! This is another case of authors failing to do their research. Or, as historian, Martin van Creveld, claims ?. . . Much of what we are given to believe is based on . . .a sad testimonial to the readiness of many historians to copy each other's words without giving the slightest thought to the evidence on which they are based" Obviously, Thomas prepared his men for the final charge up Missionary Ridge to Sherman's right as directed by Grant. Of the eleven brigade commanders engaged in the assault only one stated positively that he was to halt at the foot of the Ridge and await orders. Two seemed to feel that to continue the advance or to halt was optional. Four stated that their commands were under orders from the division commander to continue to the crest of the Ridge. The remaining four considered the top of the Ridge to be their objective.
This was Thomas? appointed task in all save Grant's last plan given orally two hours before the attack.
In my opinion, based on the information above, the men were following orders. They were inspired by their commanders careful planning not the divinity.
Soon after this heroic demonstration by Thomas? men, Sherman and Grant began their campaign of slander.
While Bobrick skillfully demolishes the slanders against Thomas, he also lays out the case for a re-appraisal of the Confederate General Joseph Eggleston Johnston. As with his appraisal of Thomas, I agree with his statements about Johnston. ?The second best Rebel general.? Johnston has been unjustly maligned almost as much as Thomas has.
Mr. Bobrick starts on page 355 a discussion of the characters of Sherman and Grant that deserves careful reading. He demolishes a number of rumors, fictions and outright balderdash created by our alleged historians. Good book Mr. Bobrick, keep them coming. There's lots more to clarify.
I hope that Mr. Bobrick will follow up this fine effort with additional endeavors. It?ll take more than one book to refute a century and a half of repeated falsehoods and poor research.
