Lincoln's Mistaken Neglect of General George H. Thomas

Lincoln's deep humanity, innate wisdom, and determined leadership during our nation's most trying time, ensure his marmoreal greatness against all detractors, when his virtues as a statesman are assessed. As a war leader, however, he remains a figure of uncertain stature and the subject of sharp debate. As with any nationally revered and beloved icon, there are always attempts to gloss over his imperfections. Yet the best way to honor history is to tell the whole truth about it, even if we have to acknowledge inconvenient truths. To fully appreciate Lincoln's importance, we ought to be candid about his mistakes.

Lincoln was a man of great capacity and showed it in almost every area to which he turned his mind. But he had no personal military experience beyond a few weeks of campaigning in 1832 in the Blackhawk War. He had opposed the Mexican War as a war of aggression, and when someone once asked him if he remembered anything about the War of 1812, which took place when he was a child, he said, "I had been fishing one day and caught a little fish, which I was taking home. I met a soldier in the road, and, having always been told at home that we must be good to soldiers, I gave him my fish." So he had no real knowledge of war when the Civil War began.

Some of his blunders were completely understandable. In picking generals, he was sometimes flying blind. Unlike Jefferson Davis, an accomplished soldier and former Secretary of War, he had no personal knowledge of the officer corps. Once the war began, he kept changing his commanders. With disarming candor, he once said that picking a good general was "like putting one's hand in a sack to get one eel from a dozen snakes." As a leader, he also, on occasion, let political considerations skew his judgement. Although opposed to "states' rights" doctrine in its dogmatic form, he was overmuch moved at times by state pride. After Fort Donelson fell, he said, as he signed papers promoting U.S. Grant, "If Southerners think that man for man they are better than our Illinois men, or Western men generally, they will discover themselves in a grievous mistake."

Grant, in fact, was favored over others who had shown more skill. Early in the war, General George H. Thomas of Virginia (who won the first great Union victory at Mill Springs, Kentucky) was not promoted as promptly as normal protocol required--in part, it seems, because Lincoln didn't want a Southern-born general to get credit for reviving the honor of Northern arms. Nine months later, when Thomas ought to have been given command of an army in the West, Lincoln exclaimed: "Let the Virginian wait." Yet the greatness of Thomas kept thrusting itself to the fore--at Stones River, Tennessee (which Lincoln said saved the nation); and then at Chickamauga, Georgia, when Thomas made the greatest stand against an enemy since the ancient Greek stand at Thermopylae. After Chickamauga, Lincoln began to understand how great Thomas was. In awe, he said that it was doubtful the "heroism and skill" Thomas had showed that day had "ever been surpassed in the world."

When it came time in 1864 to pick a new general to head the Army of the Potomac (and, in effect, the Union armies overall), Thomas was considered. But partly for political reasons, Lincoln chose Grant. Given the reckless carnage that followed, that might have been a mistake. Lincoln's friend and counselor, Alexander K. McClure (who admired Grant) wrote afterwards: "No general was better equipped for the supreme command of all our armies" than Thomas who "would have taken Richmond with Grant's army and saved tens of thousands of gallant men from untimely death."

Finally, in December 1864, after Sherman marched through Georgia to the sea and took Savannah (leaving Thomas to confront the Confederate army of the West), Lincoln told Sherman that his success could not be detached from the battle of Nashville, where Thomas, in the most decisive battle of the war, destroyed the Confederate army.

Thomas ought to be a household name. Not only did he win the battle of Chattanooga (which Jefferson Davis said was the key to the outcome of the struggle) for Grant, but even did the heavy lifting for Sherman on his Atlanta campaign. The late, great Civil War historian Bruce Catton wrote late in his life that he was haunted by the feeling that Thomas was, in truth, the greatest general of them all and that Civil War history would one day have to be "upgraded" to give him his rightful place.

So let us celebrate Lincoln. In doing so, let us say that his appreciation of Thomas was a laudable thing. Let us also acknowledge that his belated appreciation of Thomas was a significant factor in the conduct of the war.