Editing George Henry Thomas (section)

==Early life and education==
Thomas was born at [[Newsoms, Virginia|Newsom's Depot]], [[Southampton County, Virginia]], five miles (8&nbsp;km) from the [[North Carolina]] border.<ref>Cleaves, p. 7.</ref> His father, John Thomas, of Welsh<ref>{{cite book|last1=Coppee, LL. D.|first1=Henry|title=Great Commanders, General Thomas|date=1898|publisher=D. Appleton and Company|page=2}}</ref> descent, and his mother, Elizabeth Rochelle Thomas, a descendant of French [[Huguenot]] immigrants, had six children. George had three sisters and two brothers.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Coppee, LL. D.|first1=Henry|title=Great Commanders, General Thomas|date=1898|publisher=D. Appleton and Company|page=3}}</ref> The family led an upper-class plantation lifestyle. By 1829, they owned {{convert|685|acre|km2}} and 15 slaves. John died in a farm accident when George was 13, leaving the family in financial difficulties.<ref>Einolf, pp. 14–15.</ref> George Thomas, his sisters, and his widowed mother were forced to flee from their home and hide in the nearby woods during [[Nat Turner]]'s [[Nat Turner's slave rebellion|1831 slave rebellion]].<ref>Cleaves, pp. 6–7; Einolf, p. 20; O'Connor, p. 60.</ref> Benson Bobrick has suggested that while some repressive acts were enforced following the crushing of the revolt, Thomas took the lesson another way, seeing that slavery was so vile an institution that it had forced the slaves to act in violence. This was a major event in the formation of his views on slavery; that the idea of the contented slave in the care of a benevolent overlord was a sentimental myth.<ref>Bobrick, p. 14.</ref> [[Christopher J. Einolf|Christopher Einolf]], in contrast wrote "For George Thomas, the view that slavery was needed as a way of controlling blacks was supported by his personal experience of Nat Turner's Rebellion. ... Thomas left no written record of his opinion on slavery, but the fact that he owned slaves during much of his life indicates that he was not opposed to it."<ref>Einolf, p. 19. Einolf's statement about owning slaves "during much of his life" is apparently derived from his family's ownership, his use of a family slave as a personal valet during "at least part of his military service", and the woman named Ellen whom his wife Francis bought in 1858 (p. 74).</ref> A traditional story is that Thomas taught as many as 15 of his family's slaves to read, violating a Virginia law that prohibited this,<ref>Cleaves, pp. 6–7; O'Connor, p. 60; Furgurson, p. 57, suggests that while this was illegal, it was not uncommon for slaves to be taught to read; [http://militaryhistory.about.com/od/americancivilwar/p/ghthomas.htm/ biography of Thomas] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111119044440/http://militaryhistory.about.com/od/americancivilwar/p/ghthomas.htm |date=November 19, 2011 }}, by Kennedy Hickman. Einolf, [https://books.google.com/books?id=YiBtHrGgUWoC&pg=PA13 p. 13], offers a contrary view: "It is unlikely, however, that Thomas taught his family's slaves how to read.... While Thomas did eventually come to support education and freedom for blacks, he did not do so until much later in life, when the events of the Civil War had changed his views on race." He attributes (p. 12) the story to an interview conducted in 1890 by [[Oliver Otis Howard]], who "wanted to explain Thomas's Unionism in terms of an antipathy toward slavery and so looked for early indications of sympathy toward African-Americans in Thomas's childhood."</ref> and despite the wishes of his father.<ref>Coppée, p. 4.</ref>

Thomas was appointed to the [[United States Military Academy]] at [[West Point, New York]], in 1836 by Congressman [[John Y. Mason]], who warned Thomas that no nominee from his district had ever graduated successfully. Entering at age 20, Thomas was known to his fellow cadets as "Old Tom," and he became instant friends with his roommates, [[William T. Sherman]] and [[Stewart Van Vliet]]. He made steady academic progress, was appointed a cadet officer in his second year, and graduated 12th in a class of 42 in 1840.<ref>Einolf, pp. 22–29.</ref> He was appointed a [[Second Lieutenant#United States|second lieutenant]] in Company D, [[3rd Air Defense Artillery Regiment|3rd U.S. Artillery]].<ref>Eicher, p. 527; Einolf, p. 30.</ref>