A Civil General. David Stinebeck

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      To Jared, Catherine, and Jeffrey

      for their love and extraordinary patience

      The authors are grateful to Captains William Stineback and John Beatty for their wartime recollections, to Edward Mullaney, Dorothy Reo, Raymond Smith, and Larry Mohr for their guidance on the manuscript, and to Judy MacKenzie, Teri Strahlman, Debbie Brandt, Manny Carreiro, Shalom Endleman, and Mary and Bert Mullaney for their support. For the general reader, this novel is largely factual in its battles and settings and imaginary in its encounters among real and fictional characters. We have attempted to remain true on every page to what is known of General Thomas’ character.

      The quiet, patient soldier, who from his first day’s service in Kentucky had never swerved a line from the strict performance of his duty to his Government, according to his oath, without reference to self, had now met his reward. His fame had steadily grown and rounded from the time he gained the first Federal victory in the West, at Mill Springs, up to the battle of Chickamauga, where he saved the Army of the Cumberland to the nation. He had always been the main stay of that army, holding the command of the centre—either nominally or actually the second in command. Upon his judgment and military skill every commander of that army depended, and no movement was made without his approbation. Yet so modest was he that his face would color with blushes when his troops cheered him, which they did at every opportunity…. His kind consideration for the feelings of others was one of his marked characteristics. With a pure mind and large heart, his noble soul made him one of the greatest of Nature’s noblemen—a true gentleman. The experience of Chickamauga ripened his powers and developed him to his full height. As the General who won the first victory in the West, who saved an army by his skill and valor, and who was the only General of the war on either side able to crush an army on the battlefield, George H. Thomas…stands as the model American soldier, the grandest figure of the War of the Rebellion.

      —Henry M. Cist, 1882

      1

      The woods are crashing. We sit on our horses as still as we can. If the branches cut by the minnie balls fall on us, they do less damage if we do not move, and they are falling everywhere.

      But it is the noise not the branches that we notice. It is deafening. To make ourselves heard, even from two feet away, we shout at the top of our lungs. General Thomas never turned his head when he spoke in battle, and he spoke so deliberately that too much time—and noise—passed between words. What did he want us to do, Generals Baird and Brannan, and I?

      We never expected this battle now. We knew there was going to be a fight soon. We were in Georgia after all, and the Rebs would not put up with that very long. But none of our scouts had alerted us to Confederates on the left. Worse yet, Old Pap did not have all of his troops to fight with. All he had were my cavalry and those two divisions. Maybe eight thousand men against who knows how many Rebs in the woods ahead.

      A cannonball comes flying out of the woods in front of us, not fifty feet away. My horse rears and I start to topple off. I see the general as I go down. He moves his head six inches as the ball flies by, powdering on a rock another fifty feet behind us. He seems twice as large as I am, a perfect target with his barrel chest and regal bearing. But I am the one who falls.

      I clamber back up, embarrassed in the midst of the fighting that a cavalry officer can fall off his own horse. The general has not even noticed, yet he seems to pause before speaking again until I am back in the saddle, sitting motionless next to him.

      I hear him this time: “Go get Reynolds on the right!”

      I wheel away.

      ◊◊◊

      This was Chickamauga, a little town in northern Georgia, just south of Tennessee. Whatever fame General Thomas got in his remarkable career, it was usually linked with Chickamauga, a battle he did not even win. But this was just the start of Chickamauga, not the last day when he held a line no other general could have held, while his commanding officer had already given up and ridden away.

      This was the first day, the day that will always be clearest in my memory of him.

      ◊◊◊

      I get to Reynolds on the right, though I do not know how—dead reckoning, I suppose. Like the rest of our troops, he is spread out, not together. The battle has begun by accident, too soon, and no one is ready. It must be six or seven miles from one end of our army to another. But that does not scare the enemy at all since we are so thin up and down the line, so easily overwhelmed. All day long my cavalry dash to plug one hole after another, and Forrest’s Rebs seem to be doing the same thing on the other side of the Chickamauga. Maybe they are not ready either. All I know is, it is chaos. Our men come into the fight as they arrive on the field, one regiment after another. First Baird and Brannan with me, then we are driven back and Palmer comes in, but his right gets turned. Van Cleve arrives to support Palmer and is thrown back, but Reynolds, after I go for him,

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