Personal Recollections of Distinguished Generals. Shanks William Franklin Gore

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СКАЧАТЬ time, running the gauntlet of the rebel sharp-shooters, who were fast enveloping Thomas's left wing. During his absence the anxiety of Thomas increased until it grew painful to the observer, and the relaxation which followed the revelation of the fact that the coming force were friends was a positive relief to the by-standers. As Johnston returned with General Steedman the nerves of Thomas calmed down, and his excitement was hardly visible save in the petulant tone and manner in which he cursed Bragg for fighting without any system. During the fight which ensued he remained as passive and apparently as unconcerned as if he were in the safest place imaginable.

      During the morning of the second day of the same battle I was again near General Thomas when the rebels made a vigorous attack on his breast-works. He and a single staff officer were sitting a little in the rear of the centre of the line, and just in range of the shells which the enemy was throwing with great vigor and rapidity. While thus exposed, a shell passed between the general and his aid, causing them to look at each other with a quiet smile. A moment afterward another shell took the same route. The general, instead of smiling this time, turned to his aid and said,

      "Major, I think we had better retire a little," and fell back a few yards to a small wood.

      On the night after this battle, and when the troops had retired to Rossville, General Thomas was asked by Colonel B. F. Scribner to take a cup of coffee at his camp-fire, and did so. Scribner had been slightly wounded in the head, and the clotted blood still stood upon his face, left there in order to prevent the wound from continuing to bleed. Thomas sat down by Scribner, drank his coffee, saw the wound of Scribner, talked of commonplace matters for half an hour, but never by word or act alluded in the slightest way to the fact that he had just fought one of the most important battles of the war, and saved the army from annihilation. No one could have known from Thomas's remarks that a battle had been raging, or that his host had been wounded.

      One of the great faults of Thomas's character is due to this extreme solidity of his nervous system. Without rendering him exactly selfish or acrimonious, it has made him cold and undemonstrative in manner, and rather insensible to the emotions. He is generous without being enthusiastic, and kind without being at all demonstrative. He has been compared to Washington, but the comparison was made by General Rosecrans, who, by the way, knew nothing whatever of human nature, and could not read it even with the best spectacles of saddest experience; and the comparison holds good only thus far, that Thomas, as Washington was, is portly of person and dignified of manner. His undemonstrative manner has given to many the idea that he was incapable of strong affections, firm friendships, or noble emotions; and the only enemies whom he had were men with whom he had been on terms of friendship, and who, falling under disfavor, looked in vain to him for some demonstration of aid. There are two or three instances, not proper to relate in detail, which have given Thomas's fellow-officers the idea that he was selfishly cold; but I do not think such to be the case, for, though cold and undemonstrative, Thomas has never revealed aught of the selfish or envious in his character. His blood ran as sluggishly as oil upon water, but it was from principle, if such a thing could be, and I think it was in this case. One of the subordinate commanders of Thomas's army, who distinguished himself at Stone River and Chickamauga, was an Indiana colonel named Ben F. Scribner, a brave officer, who, from his action at the battle of Perryville, Kentucky, went by the name of "gallant little Scrib" – a sobriquet bestowed upon him by General Lovell H. Rousseau, his immediate commander. After the battle of Chickamauga, Scribner was not treated fairly in the reorganization of the army by Rosecrans, and complained to General Thomas, his corps commander, of the injustice done him. During the conversation Colonel Scribner used the expression that he could not but feel that a serious wrong had been done him, when Thomas slowly and sadly said,

      "Colonel, I have taken a great deal of pains to educate myself not to feel."

      This remark gives a wonderful insight into Thomas's nature, and will explain much in his manner that is a mystery to thousands who have studied his character.

      General Garfield used to relate a story which gave rather a comical turn to the general's undemonstrative style, and one which I do not remember to have ever seen in print. In fact, it has been a somewhat doubtful question with me as to whether I should be justified in relating it, and only do so with the warning, "Honi soit qui mal y pense." When General Thomas relieved Rosecrans at Chattanooga in 1863, General Garfield remained with him for a time as chief of staff. One morning the two officers were riding around the town, examining the defenses which were then being built, when they heard some one hailing with the cry,

      "Hello, mister! you! I want to speak with you."

      On looking around, General Thomas discovered that he was the "mister" wanted, and that the person who had hailed him was one of those East Tennessee soldiers who were always easily distinguishable from the Northern soldiers by their peculiar rough, uncouth, and backwoods appearance. He stopped, and the man approached him and began,

      "Mister, I want to get a furlough."

      "On what grounds do you want a furlough, my man?" asked the general.

      "I want to go home and see my wife," replied the East Tennesseean.

      "How long since you saw your wife?" asked the general.

      "Ever since I enlisted – nigh on to three months."

      "Three months!" exclaimed the general, good-naturedly. "Why, my good man, I haven't seen my wife for three years."

      The East Tennesseean stopped whittling the stick which he had in his hand, and stared for a moment incredulously at the general.

      "Wall, you see," he said at length, with a sheepish smile, "me and my wife ain't that kind."

      Shaking all over with laughter, the general put spurs to his horse and galloped away, leaving the astonished soldier unanswered.

      I should have enjoyed hugely hearing Thomas laugh aloud. During the three years in which I saw him almost daily, and under all sorts of circumstances, I never saw him smile but once, and that was under circumstances so peculiarly ridiculous that it would have provoked laughter from Patience on a monument, or even the grief that she smiled at. A low comedian, named Alf. Burnett, from one of the Cincinnati theatres, essayed to become a war correspondent, and during the summer of 1863 made his appearance in the camp of General Rosecrans, quartering himself at Triune with Colonel James Brownlow, son of the famous Parson Brownlow, and at that time in command of an East Tennessee regiment. Burnett was very good as a mimic, and particularly excelled in his delivery of a burlesque sermon in which the sentence "He played upon a harp of a thousand strings, spirits of just men made perfect," frequently occurred as a refrain. Colonel Brownlow on one occasion invited Burnett to deliver this sermon before his regiment, and, as a joke upon the chaplain of the command, that worthy was requested to announce the occasion of its delivery, and when the time arrived to open the services with a hymn. Burnett began his burlesque sermon, and had gone through a considerable portion of it before the chaplain and the soldiers began to suspect how much they had been outraged. As soon as he perceived the nature of the performance, the chaplain approached Burnett, took him by the back of the neck, marched him to the camp limits, and with the injunction to "go and sin no more," kicked him out of the camp. The facts were at the same time represented to Rosecrans, who expelled Burnett from the department, but, at the solicitations of some friends, the mimic was allowed to return to make his explanations. After hearing Burnett's explanations, Rosecrans insisted on hearing the "Hard-shell Baptist sermon," and Burnett gave it in his best style. Rosecrans was delighted, declared it was inimitable, and told Burnett he should remain at his quarters, should deliver it nightly, and would have put him on his staff if Burnett had asked it. The sermon became Rosecrans's hobby; he thought and talked for a time of nothing else, and one night invited General Thomas to quarters to hear it. The general and his staff came, and the performance began with songs which did not interest, and continued with the sermon, which, much to Rosecrans's surprise, did not amuse "old Thom." But, after Burnett's СКАЧАТЬ