George Henry Thomas

George Henry Thomas 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 was born at Newsoms Depot, Southampton County, Virginia, five miles from the North Carolina border. 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 upperclass plantation lifestyle. By 1829, they owned 685 acres andslaves. John died in a farm accident when George was 13, leaving the family in financial difficulties. George Thomas, his sisters, and his widowed mother were forced to flee from their home and hide in the nearby woods during Nat Turners 1831 slave rebellion. 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 th

Source: Wikipedia