I recently travelled to Troy, New York to visit the city’s Historic Oakwood Cemetery. The graveyard is best known where Uncle Sam’s grave is, but I will attend to that in another post. Many readers have heard of the exploits of General George Thomas. “The Rock of Chickamauga” was a Virginia-born West Pointer who rose to command the Union Army of the Cumberland. When the 53 year-old Thomas died on March 28, 1870 in San Francisco, his body was shipped to Troy, New York, a city near Albany. His burial was attended by President Grant, Generals Sherman, and Sheridan and many veterans. The pall bearers were Generals Meade, Schofield, Hooker, Rosecrans, Hazen, Granger, Newton and McKay. Regular army and New York State guard companies took part in the funeral parade, along with civilian contingents. Reports say that the procession was a mile in length.
The New York Times published the announcement of Thomas’s death on the front page of the paper:
The March 30, 1870 New York Times recorded the sadness in the army over the passing of General Thomas:
Although raised in Virginia and died in California, Thomas was buried in Troy, New York where his wife was from. While thousands attended his procession and burial, not one of his Virginia relatives came to the ceremony. When Thomas decided to continue to serve in the army during the Civil War, his family disowned him. His wife built a monument on his grave site and enclosed it with a fence.
In 2021, the restored grave was rededicated by the Sons of Union Veterans after a decade-long restoration effort. The site, which had shown significant wear and tear, is as beautiful today as it was a hundred and fifty years ago. The Sons of Union Veterans spent $50,000 and dedicated hundreds of volunteer hours to restoring the site.
The plot belonged to the Kellogg family, of which Thomas’s wife sprang from, and the restoration has included all sites within the Kellogg plot. Frances Lucretia Kellogg married Thomas in 1852.
In 1851, Thomas returned to West Point where he was an instructor of cavalry and artillery. While John Schofield was a student, Thomas recommended his expulsion from the Academy for allowing students under his supervision to make offensive jokes
Here is a plaque that was installed in 1992 from the Civil War Society of Berryville, Virginia telling the Thomas’s story, including that he tried to reconcile with his family after the war but that they refused his offers.
The monument is topped by a fighting bald eagle, having just killed a snake in the grass.
The monument includes Thomas’s birthplace in Virginia.
Thomas was born in 1816. The area where he was growing up in Virginia was the scene of Nat Turner’s rebellion in 1831, which forced hi family to live as refugees during the revolt. Thomas’s family owned a plantation with fifteen slaves. In 1836, Thomas entered classes at West Point and he befriended his roomate William Sherman. After graduating, he began a constructive career in the army, serving with artillery, cavalry, and infantry, good preparation for a future army commander.
On the eve of the Civil War, Thomas had been serving in Texas. When in Washington, Thomas told General Winfield Scott in 1860 that Major General David Twiggs, commander in Texas, favored secession and could not be trusted. As states began seceding in 1860 and 1861, many Southern officers resigned their commissions, including David Twiggs, but Thomas stayed in the army even though Virginia’s governor had offered him a commission when his state seceded.
While after the Confederate surrender many Rebels claimed not to have been guilty of treason for their decision to back the Rebellion, many Southern whites accused Thomas of just that crime. Here is what J.E.B. Stuart said about Thomas:
“Old George H. Thomas is in command of the cavalry of the enemy. I would like to hang, hang him as a traitor to his native state.” [Einolf, Christopher J. George Thomas: Virginian for the Union p. 99]
After service in the Bull Run Campaign in 1861, Thomas transferred to the West. In 1863, as a wing commander, Thomas organized a successful defense at Chickamauga after much of the rest of the Union army was pulling back in retreat, earning him the nickname “The Rock of Chickamauga.”
Thomas did a fine job as a corps and wing commander in the West and in November of 1863 he was given command of the Army of the Cumberland. At the battles around Chattanooga in November of 1863, his army helped throw the Confederates off of their positions overlooking the city, liberating it from the Confederacy.
The lifelike bald eagle is not just majestic, it is mean. While George Thomas always showed considerable care for his men and their lives, he was always ready to deal the Confederates a defeat. His most memorable moment came when he defeated the Confederate Army of Tennessee in 1864 in Nashville under John Bell Hood. Thomas was the rare commander to have a second nickname added to his identity, being called “The Sledge of Nashville.”
Although Thomas was a Virginian and a slave holder, during the war he came to appreciate the role Black troops were making in achieving Union victory. After the war he participated in occupying the former-Confederacy where he was known for protecting the rights of Black citizens, combatting the Klan, and enforcing the right of Blacks to vote.
In 1868, he wrote about the developing Lost Cause interpretation of the war from Confederate soldiers:
the greatest efforts made by the defeated insurgents since the close of the war have been to promulgate the idea that the cause of liberty, justice, humanity, equality, and all the calendar of the virtues of freedom, suffered violence and wrong when the effort for southern independence failed. This is, of course, intended as a species of political cant, whereby the crime of treason might be covered with a counterfeit varnish of patriotism, so that the precipitators of the rebellion might go down in history hand in hand with the defenders of the government, thus wiping out with their own hands their own stains; a species of self-forgiveness amazing in its effrontery, when it is considered that life and property—justly forfeited by the laws of the country, of war, and of nations, through the magnanimity of the government and people—was not exacted from them.
This is Thomas’s wife’s family’s monument.
During the restoration, five signs were installed directing visitors to the grave site and one was places at the gravesite in the blue and yellow paint so often seen for New York historical markers. This a large cemetery with hilly features, so the signs were perfect for finding the grave.
This photo from wikimedia shows what the tomb looked like in 2009.
The Oakwood Cemetery is free and there are a number of Civil War Era graves. The cemetery is located at 50 101st Street in Troy, New York. Once you are inside the entrance, you can follow the blue and yellow signs to Thomas’s grave. You might also want to visit the “Uncle Sam” grave as well.
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Excellent post about “Rocky”. In his command of battlefield tactics and logistics, he had no superior, and perhaps only Sherman his equal in the latter. I would qualify your use of Stuart’s fulminating statement about his fellow Virginian; that was made during the war, when both sides were free with “hang the traitors!” outbursts.
Thomas was right on point about the false equivalency argument being made post war by southern ultras.
Tragic that the true measure of his significance was obscured for years by the “damning with faint praise” attitude of certain of his superiors.
Thomas was a great Soldier and General, in that order, which is the very reason he was so successful in the latter role.
In short, Thomas proved that the ‘Union paramountcy’ view of American federalism and Constitutional interpretation/application was largely, but not necessarily, adhered to sling regional lines.
No one on this earth, past/present/future, can deny that as an agent of the era, Thomas had the right to give his opinion. And that opinion is a prime piece of significant historical evidence,
But we belie history and historiography if we tout his opinion as comprehensive; that because Thomas pronounced such, it is wrong to question/challenge/critique that opinion.
For, if Thomas’ argument of the Confederate war effort is absolutely correct, would he have been just as prepared to pronounce such on New England in the War of 1812; South Carolina in the Nullification Crisis and Maine in the Aroostook War?
Why did he not?
And if we can establish that as far as known, these are historical questions that Thomas never put to his views, we as historians are obliged to.
Such questions are not features of ‘whataboutism’; they are directly connected evidences to how genuinely and rigorously we have truly vetted the stances we might claim to adhere to.
Nothing in this necessarily compels anyone to admire or esteem the Confederate war cause; it means we are prepared to grapple with the whole of relevant history.
It gladdens my heart to finally see a true American Hero’s saga proclaimed. Bravo to all who’s enlightened conscious saw fit to call attention to and honor his courageous deeds by restoring his tomb to a “pearl of great price”. May the memory of the name of General George H. Thomas be made better known as a true patriot who had the wisdom and strength to follow his conscious no matter what the cost.
I am so glad that someone wrote this article. Does anyone know who has the general sword.
This man not only had integrity but for the others as well they were human.
I’m very glad to hear and see Thomas’ final resting place is being honoured, as he deserved in life.
Since Jeb Stuart’s opinion that Thomas was guilty of treason for siding with the Union, and against his native state of Virginia, I’d say we as historians would have to put about the matter and ask the questions-
Would Stuart have then opined that the actions of the Union with regards New England in the War of 1812; South Carolina in the Nullification Crisis; and Maine in the Aroostook War, were treasonous? As were any citizens of the involved states above who sided with the Union rather than their native states in these conflicts?
I can appreciate Stuart may have as sincerely believed Thomas as guilty of treason as Thomas in turn would have held of Stuart for the side each took in the CW/WBTS.
But their personal sentiments, though vital to explicitly cite and critically reflect on, did not then, and do not now, convey a legal reality.
They were BOTH patriots. And they were both Americans.