The Confederate General Who Switched Sides and Won the Civil War

Two-line hook: His own sisters turned his portrait to the wall and told visitors he was dead. Four years later, he destroyed an entire Confederate army in two days — and the Civil War in the West was over. Summary: This is the story of Major General George Henry Thomas — the Virginia-born slaveholder who chose the Union, was disowned by his own family, and delivered the single most complete battlefield destruction of a Confederate army in the entire American Civil War. At Nashville in December 1864, with Ulysses S. Grant already drafting the order to relieve him from command, Thomas annihilated John Bell Hood's Army of Tennessee in forty-eight hours and effectively ended the war in the West. And then history forgot him. What you'll learn: Why one Virginian officer chose the Union when nearly every peer chose the Confederacy The truth about the Battle of Chickamauga and why Thomas earned the name "The Rock" How the Army of the Cumberland took Missionary Ridge without orders Why the Battle of Nashville is the most complete Union victory nobody talks about The role of United States Colored Troops in destroying the Confederate line Why Grant nearly fired Thomas hours before the greatest Union victory of the war How the Lost Cause and Thomas's own silence erased him from public memory CHAPTERS: 00:00 The Portrait Turned to the Wall 02:15 A Virginian at West Point 07:40 The Oath He Would Not Break 15:20 The Rock of Chickamauga 22:50 The Ice Storm and Grant's Telegram 31:40 The Two Days at Nashville 38:00 The Family That Erased Him Subscribe to Epic War Extra for more American war history told through the decisions, the people, and the human cost. Sources drawn from the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, Van Horne's biography of Thomas, Einolf's George Thomas: Virginian for the Union, Sword's The Confederacy's Last Hurrah, and correspondence held at the Southampton County Historical Society.