Was General Thomas Slow at Nashville?

A recent revival of the venerable charge that General George H. Thomas was slow at Nashville led to the publication, in the New York Sun of August 9, 1896, of the article which is here reproduced by the permission of that journal. A few brief additions have been made to the original text.

It seemed the more important to some of the veterans of the Army of the Cumberland that this charge in its renewed form should be met, because it was put forth with a show of official authority which would naturally give it weight with readers who were not familiar with the war records.

The discussion of the subject also afforded an opportunity to present, though in very concise form, the outlines of those magnificent cavalry operations under General James H. Wilson in the battle of Nashville, and in his subsequent independent campaign through Alabama and Georgia, all of which were without parallel in our war.

Though these movements constitute one of the most brilliant chapters in our war history,--in fact, in the history of cavalry in any war,--the country really knows little about them, because they were performed out of sight in Alabama and Georgia, while the attention of the country was fixed upon the fall of Richmond and the great events immediately following it. For this reason it is believed that the brief story here presented will not be without interest.

H. V. B.

WASHINGTON, D. C., September, 1896.

WAS GENERAL THOMAS SLOW AT NASHVILLE?

A new generation has come upon the stage since our civil war. It has its own writers on the events of that struggle. Some of these, careful students as they are, make proper and effective use of the stores of material which the Government has collected and published. Others, stumbling upon interesting dispatches of notable campaigns, read them in connection with the ill-considered and hasty criticisms of the hot times which brought them forth, and, finding questions settled twenty years ago, but entirely new to themselves, they proceed to reveal them as new things to the new generation. By this process it has recently been announced that General Thomas was slow at Nashville. To give this echo of thirty-two years ago sufficient voice, several columns of dispatches--which a quarter of a century since formed the basis of discussions that demolished the theory they are now brought forward to sustain--are gravely presented as something new.

Nothing better illustrates this situation than the very familiar story of the Irishman who assaulted the Jew for the part he took in the Crucifixion, and upon being remonstrated with upon the ground that the event occurred eighteen hundred years ago, replied that it was nevertheless new to him, as he had only heard of it the day before.

That General Thomas was not slow at Nashville is ancient history. General Grant, who was the first to charge it, was also the first to withdraw the imputation, by declaring in his official report that at the time he had been very impatient over what appeared as unnecessary delay on the part of Thomas, "but his final defeat of Hood was so complete that it will be accepted as a vindication of that distinguished officer's judgment."

The ostensible reason for heralding Thomas as slow--so slow, indeed, as to require his removal and lead to an order for it--was that he insisted upon concentrating his infantry force and remounting his cavalry. Secretary Stanton declared that the delay would be till doomsday if Thomas waited for the latter.