One of the North’s greatest generals—the Rock of Chickamauga Most Southerners in the U.S. Army resigned their commissions to join the Confederacy in 1861. But at least one son of a distinguished, slaveholding Virginia family remained loyal to the Union. George H. Thomas fought for the North and secured key victories at Chickamauga and Nashville. Thomas’s wartime experiences transformed him from a slaveholder to a defender of civil rights. Remembered as the “Rock of Chickamauga,” Thomas became one of the most prominent Union generals and was even considered for overall command of the Union Army in Virginia. Yet he has been eclipsed by such names as Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan. Offering vivid accounts of combat, Einolf depicts the fighting from Thomas’s perspective to allow a unique look at the real experience of decision making on the battlefield. He examines the general’s recurring confrontations with the Union high command to make a strong case for Thomas’s integrity and competence, even as he exposes Thomas’s shortcomings and poor decisions. The result is a more balanced, nuanced picture than has previously been available. Probing Thomas’s personal character, Einolf reveals how a son of the South could oppose the views of friends and family. George Thomas: Virginian for the Union offers a fresh appraisal of an important career and lends new insight into the inner conflicts of the Civil War.

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: DR. SAMUEL F. B. MORSE. REMARKS MADE AT THE MORSE MEMORIAL MEETING, HELD IN THE HALL OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, April 16, 1872. THE grave has just closed over the mortal remains of one whose name will be forever associated with a series of achievements in the domain of discovery and invention the most wonderful our race has ever known, ?wonderful in the results accomplished, more wonderful still in the agencies employed, most wonderful in the scientific revelations which preceded and accompanied their development. The electro-magnetic telegraph is the embodiment?I might say the incarnation ? of many centuries of thought, of many generations of effort to elicit from Nature one of her deepest mysteries. No one man, no one century, could have achieved it. It is the child of the human race, ? the heir of all the ages. How wonderful were the steps which led to its creation The very name of this telegraphic instrument bears record of its history, ? electric, magnetic; the first word from the bit of yellow amber, whose qualities of attraction and repulsion were discovered by a Grecian philosopher twenty-four centuries ago, and the second from Magnesia, the village of Asia Minor where first was found the loadstone whose touch forever turns the needle to the north. These were the earliest forms in which that subtle, all-pervading force revealed itself to men. In the childhood of the race, men stood dumb in the presence of its more terrible manifestations. When it gleamed in the purple aurora, or shot dusky-red from the clouds, it was the eye-flash of an angry God, before whom mortals quailed in helpless fear. When the electric light burned blue on the spear-points of the Roman legions, it was to them and their leaders a portent fromthe gods, beckoning to victory. W..