THOMAS, <;!:< Ul< IK II. 



719 



THOMAS, GEOEGE HEXRY, Major-General 

 United States Army, commander, at the time 

 of his death, of the Military Department of the 

 Potomac, one of the ablest, purest, and most 

 successful of the military chiefs of the late 

 war, bom in Southampton County, Va., July 

 SI, 1816; died in San Francisco, Cal., March 

 28, 1870. His family were of the planter class, 

 possessed of a liberal competence, well edu- 

 cated and refined. His ancestors had been for 

 several generations residents of Southeastern 

 Virginia; his father was of Welsh and his 

 mother of IIiiiriK-not French descent. His 

 early opportunities of education were good, 

 and at the age of twenty he had just entered 

 upon the study of law when his friends secured 

 him an appointment as cadet at the Military 

 Academy at West Point. He entered in 1836, 

 and, after a thorough and solid, rather than a 

 brilliant course, ho graduated in 1840, ranking 

 twelfth in a class of forty -two members, among 

 whom were Sherman, Ewell, Jordan, Getty, 

 Herbert, Van Vliet, and others, who afterward 

 attained celebrity. Assigned to duty on the 



day of graduation as second lieutenant of the 

 Third Artillery, he served in the regular 

 Army for twenty years, during which time he 

 rendered honorable and faithful service in the 

 Florida War from 1840 to 1842; in command 

 of various forts and barracks from 1842 to 

 1845; in the military occupation of Texas in 

 1845-'46; in the Me'xican War from 1846 to 

 1848 participating in nearly all its leading 

 battles; in the Seminole War in 1849-'50; as 

 instructor in artillery and cavalry at West 

 Point from 1851 to 1854; on frontier duty at 

 various posts in the interior of California and 

 Texas, leading several expeditions against the 

 Indians, from 1855 to the autumn of 1860. 

 During these twenty years he was repeatedly 

 brevetted for gallant and meritorious services, 

 and rose through all the grades to a captaincy 

 of artillery, and in 1855 was made a major of 

 the Second Cavalry, which regiment he com- 

 manded for three years. He was wounded in 

 a skirmish with the Indians at the head-waters 

 of the Brazos River, in August, 1860, and in 

 the following November went East ou a leave 



