Double Exposure

ROCK OF CHICKAMAUGA: THE LIFE OF GENERAL GEORGE H. THOMAS (328 pp.) -- Freeman Cleaves--University of Oklahoma ($3.75).

THOMAS: ROCK OF CHICKAMAUGA (385 pp.) -- Richard O'Connor--Prentice-Hall ($4).

George Henry Thomas was born on a Virginia plantation, attended West Point more or less by accident (everybody else nominated from his district had failed), served with the Union Army during the Civil War, and won his place in history by standing firm during the near-rout of the Union forces at the battle of Chickamauga. These two new biographies attempt the difficult task of making the life of a military paragon seem interesting.

Hero. General Thomas' life was almost sensationally unexciting. Even when he was involved in great events, as he often was, some strange internal deflation of spirit seemed to rob them of all drama. Heavy, ponderous, slow-spoken, squarejawed, he shrank from anything that smacked of heroics.

He served with distinction throughout the Mexican War, and of his exemplary conduct in the battle of Buena Vista said only, "I was under fire from 6 o.c. until 4." As artillery instructor at West Point, he taught the cadets with the same calm sobriety with which, during his Indian-fighting days, he removed an arrow from his chest.

Soldier. When Jefferson Davis as Secretary of War organized the famous Second Cavalry Regiment (which produced twelve Confederate generals), Thomas was commissioned a major in the unit. At the beginning of the Civil War, all the elements of a personal tragedy were present in his situation: he was from the South and had principally served with Southerners; Virginia considered making him her chief of ordnance; Thomas had himself applied for the post of commandant of Virginia Military Institute a short time before.

As a Southerner in the Northern army he could expect little confidence to be placed in him. He had moreover recently stepped from a train and wrenched his back and could honestly have claimed a physical disability. He nevertheless renewed his Union oath. His sisters in Virginia turned his picture to the wall and refused to discuss him.

Thomas had actual command in the field in the early battle of Mill Springs, but even his astonishing victory there, coming soon after the disaster of Bull Run, did not win him popular suppojt or the confidence of the Administration. Four Union colonels were made brigadier-generals after the battle, but General Thomas got no promotion until long afterward. He was not even mentioned in Lincoln's announcement of the victory.

Statue. The climax of Thomas' career came at Chickamauga, on Sept. 20, 1863, when his corps of perhaps 20,000 men held up the entire Confederate Army under Bragg (over 50,000), after Thomas' superior, Rosecrans, had retreated to Chattanooga. Contemporaries paid so much attention to the blunders of both Rosecrans and Bragg that Thomas' achievement seemed less impressive to them than it seems now, and the fact that Chickamauga was a Confederate victory obscured the brilliance of his own handling of his troops. Both biographers tell the story of the battle in great detail, and both tell it well. O'Connor is a more ardent partisan of Thomas than Cleaves, and heaps more scorn on the other generals.

Immovable, calm, with a dry humor, Thomas lived as if he had already become one of those statues on horseback that stand in the parks of Washington. He submitted to the favoritism or political considerations that placed lesser men over him, obeyed orders, and was pre-eminently a good soldier. In fact, had there been the slightest element of dash in his makeup, he might have seemed a burlesque of all military heroes.

His greatest limitation was the very quality that made him a master of defense. He seems to have remained with the Union, not because of a sympathy with its aims, or after a deep soul-searching, but for the simplest of soldier's reasons--because he had taken his oath. He had none of the sense of passionate rightness that inspired Sherman and which, if it seemed unbalanced to Thomas, nevertheless prompted the famous marches that finally won the war.

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