THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, February 9, 1995 TAG: 9502090414
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 62 lines
The Postal Service is releasing on June 29 in Gettysburg 20 stamps commemorating the Civil War, and already it is in trouble - with me.
For the Union are President Lincoln; Generals Grant, Sherman and Winfield Scott Hancock; Vice Adm. David G. Farragut; nurse Clara Barton; abolitionist Harriet Tubman; and journalist-orator Frederick Douglass.
The lineup omits Gen. George Henry Thomas, a son of Southampton County. Many historians rank him with Grant and Sherman.
He had to overcome suspicions about his origins. ``Let the Virginian wait,'' Lincoln advised. But he saved the Army of the Cumberland at Chickamauga, where his corps' battle line bent into a horseshoe shape but did not break, enabling Gen. William Rosecrans' army to escape.
At Nashville, despite Grant's impatience, Thomas waited until his men were ready, and then smashed Gen. John Bell Hood's Rebel army. Thomas' men called him ``Pop'' and ``Slow-Foot.'' Other leaders ordered massed troops to rush modern artillery; Thomas cherished his men, who loved him.
Thomas never returned to Southampton. Three sisters turned his picture to the wall. After the war, the federal command in Petersburg sent food to Thomaston. His sisters refused it. ``We have no brother,'' said Judith, the oldest. He died, she said, the day Virginia seceded.
In July 1985, the county historical society, led by Gilbert Francis, met at Thomaston under an oak where Thomas had played as a child. They unveiled a marker honoring him as being ``loyal to conscience, country and family.''
On Union stamps, Thomas should replace Hancock, a good soldier wounded at Gettysburg but no match for ``the Virginian.''
For the South are Jefferson Davis, Generals Lee, Jackson and Joseph E. Johnston; Rear Adm. Raphael Semmes; diarist Mary Chesnut; nurse Phoebe Pember; and Brig. Gen. Stand Watie.
Somebody should give way to J.E.B. Stuart, gallant cavalry leader from Patrick County who was no less than Robert E. Lee's eyes. On a search on the Richmond front in 1862, he rode with 1,200 cavalry around George McClellan's army.
With flowing beard, wearing a gray, red-lined coat and a cocked hat with a gilt star that held a peacock's plume, Stuart forbade swearing and drinking, but he gave his men their fill of fighting. ``I would rather die than be whipped,'' he said.
In 1864, riding along his front line, turning a Union advance on Richmond, he was shot by a dismounted Union soldier. He died at 31 and the South sorrowed.
``He never gave me a false piece of information,'' Lee said.
Georgia-born Watie, son of a full-blood Cherokee and half-blood mother, became a planter. He raised a company of home guards and then a Cherokee cavalry regiment and fought the entire war.
It's a close vote, but I'd allot the diarist's place to Stuart, though that gallant might insist otherwise.
Battles chosen are Shiloh, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg and the Monitor-Virginia clash.
KEYWORDS: COMMEMORATIVE STAMP U.S. POSTAL SERVICE by CNB