that there would be no war. Looking back from our present standpoint, we can hardly understand how widespread was the opinion, both North and South, that the Union was gone, and the Government was powerless to restore it. To an officer of the army the situation was painful and perplexing to the last degree. Dissolution of the Union without war, would carry with it the inevitable dissolution of the army; and, besides the shame and humiliation which an officer must feel at the ruin of a nation whose honor he had so long defended in arms, he saw that he must look about him for some new pursuit by which to earn his bread. What will THOMAS do? What path will he mark out for his own feet to follow through this bewildering maze? His State had not yet seceded; but her heart was on fire, and no one knew how far she would go, nor how many would follow her in the work of ruin.

Let us consider more closely his surroundings.

He was

a major of the Second Cavalry, a regiment organized in 1855 by JEFFERSON DAVIS, Secretary of War, out of the elite of the Army. Either by accident or design, three-fourths of its officers were from the slave States. Its roster [see Appendix A], as printed in the Army Register of 1860, shows a list of names now widely notorious in the history of the ALBERT SIDNEY JOHNSTON was its colonel, ROBERT E. LEE its heutenant colonel, and W. J. HARDEE its senior major. Among its captains and lieutenants, were VAN DORN, KIRBY SMITH, JENIFER, HOOD, and FITZHUGH LEE. More than onethird of its officers afterward became rebel generals, and others held less conspicuous rank in the same service.

war.

The regiment had served for five years on the Indian frontier; and its officers, thus remote from the social and political centers, had lived on terms of the closest official and personal intimacy. It is difficult to overestimate the combined influence of these brilliant and cultivated men upon the senti

ments and conduct of each. We have seen already, how strong were the influences of family, neighborhood, and early life that bound THOMAS to his State. All these were now thrown violently into the Southern scale. Beside the fact that his wife was a patriotic Northern lady, there was scarcely a countervailing force in the whole circle of his domestic and social life. Given these facts and the impending conflict, what will be the conduct of a man possessing clear perceptions, high character, and real nerve? He would be less than a man who could choose his path without the keenest suffering. Only a man of the highest type could comprehend all, suffer all, and, resolutely striking through the manifold entanglements of the problem, follow, with steady eye and unfaltering step, the highest duty. While the contest was confined to the politicians, and found expression only in constitutional theories and legal subtleties, the wisest might well be perplexed. But the flash of the first gun revealed to the clear intellect of THOMAS the whole character and spirit of the controversy; and his choice was made in an instant. Relinquishing the remainder of his leave of absence, he reported for duty at Carlisle Barracks, Pa., on the 14th of April, the day that our flag went down at Sumter, and less than forty-eight hours after the first shot was fired.

His regiment, betrayed in Texas by the treachery of GENERAL TWIGGS, had come North to be reorganized and equipped; and he entered at once upon the work. Three days after his arrival at Carlisle, by fraud and intrigue in her convention, Virginia resolved herself out of the Union; and (pending a ratification of the act by a popular vote to be taken on the 23d of May) formed a treaty offensive and defensive with the rebel government of JEFFERSON DAVIS. The resolutions of 1798 had borne their bitter fruits. The same day, GOVERNOR LETCHER, as the chief of a “sovereign State," issued his procla

mation, calling upon "all efficient and worthy Virginians in the army of the United States, to withdraw therefrom and enter the service of Virginia."

Three days later (April 20), ROBERT E. LEE resigned his commission, after a service of thirty years, and his example was followed by hundreds of Southern officers. With but two exceptions, all the officers from seceded States who belonged to the Second Cavalry joined the rebellion. THOMAS was one of the two. While his brother officers were leaving, and at once taking high command in the rebel army, a comrade asked THOMAS what he would do if Virginia should vote to secede. "I will help to whip her back again," was his answer. On the 23d of May, the people of Virginia enacted the mockery of an election, to ratify her secession from the Union against which she had already taken up arms.

Their overwhelming vote in favor of secession, swept away from our army nearly all the Virginians who had not left in April. With the news of this election, there came to THOMAS the passionate appeals of his family and friends, the summons of his State to join her armies, and the threatening anathemas of them all in case he should refuse. He answered by leaving Carlisle Barracks on the 27th of May, and leading a brigade from Chambersburg across Maryland to Williamsport, and, on the 16th of June, rode across the Potomac in full uniform, at the head of his brigade, to invade Virginia and fight his old commanders; and, a few days later, he led the right wing of GENERAL PATTERSON's army in the battle of Falling Waters, where the rebels under STONEWALL JACKSON were defeated. Such was the answer that THOMAS made to the demands of rebellion! Before leaving this period in the life of GENERAL THOMAS, it is due to his memory and to the truth of history that I should notice an attempt which was first made in the South, amidst the passions of war, to throw a shadow on his good name, by

declaring that he sought service on the rebel side, and only determined to stand by the Union when he failed to receive such rank as he desired among his enemies.

When peace reopened intercourse between the North and South, these voices of calumny were silent, and remained so as long as THOMAS was alive to answer. But when he was dead, his defamers ventured again to speak. The spectacle of a grateful nation standing in grief around his honored grave, awakened to new energy the envy and malice of those who had staked all and lost all, in the mad attempt to destroy that Republic which THOMAS had so powerfully aided to save. I should dishonor his memory, were I even to notice the wicked assaults made upon him in rebel journals, by writers who withheld their names, or shielded themselves behind the impersonalty of a newspaper editorial.

One attack, however-and, so far as I know, only one-has had the indorsement of a responsible name. The Richmond (Va.) Dispatch, of April 23, 1870, contains a letter from FITZHUGH LEE, late a general in the rebel army, and before the war a lieutenant in the regiment of which THOMAS was major.

In this letter, LEE asserts: That just before the war THOMAS' feelings were strongly Southern; that in 1861 he expressed his intention to resign; and about the same time, sent a letter to GOVERNOR LETCHER, offering his services to Virginia.

To this statement I invite the most searching scrutiny. That prior to the war the sentiments of THOMAS were generally in accord with those which prevailed in Virginia, and that he strongly reprobated many of the opinions and much of the conduct of Northern politicians, were facts well known to his friends and always frankly avowed by himself. That in the winter of 1860-61 he contemplated the resignation of his commission, we have no proof except the declaration of FITZHUGH LEE. But it would not be in the least surprising or inconsis

tent, if, at that time, it seemed to him more than probable that disunion would be accomplished, and the army dissolved by political action and without war. Should that happen, he must perforce abandon his profession and seek some other employment. If it should appear that at that time he made inquiries looking toward a prospective employment as professor in some college, the fact would only indicate his fear that the politicians would so ruin both his country and its army, that the commission of a soldier would be no longer an object of honorable desire.

The charge that he ever offered or proposed to offer his sword to Virginia, or to any rebel authority, except point foremost, and at the head of his troops, is utterly and infamously false. Not a shadow of a proof has ever been offered, nor can it be. When FITZHUGH LEE's letter was published, he was challenged on all sides to produce the letter which he alleged THOMAS had written, tendering his services to the rebellion. His utter failure to produce any such letter, or any proof that such a letter was ever written, is a complete refutation of the charge.

A few weeks after his first assault, LEE did indeed publish what purports to be a letter written by GENERAL THOMAS, dated New York city, January 18, 1861.

Whether this letter is genuine or not, and if genuine, whether printed as it was written, we have no other evidence than our faith in those who received and published it. But waiving the question of its genuineness, and of the correctness of the printed text, I appeal to the letter itself. It is not addressed to GOVERNOR LETCHER, nor to any rebel authority; nor does the writer tender his services to Virginia or to any government or person. It is a letter addressed to a gentleman who had advertised in the newspapers for some one to fill a professorship in a military college in Virginia. The letter