It is interesting to note that the "Welcome Center" to the State of Virginia is located just south of the Rappahannock River, in the town of Fredericksburg. This town sits about sixty miles south of the state border with Maryland and Washington, DC. The impression this gives is that Virginians do not consider areas north of the Rappahannock as part of the state. One need only scan 1862–1864 to understand why.

North of that river, which I have mentioned before, the United States dominated the terrain during the War of the Rebellion. It was only to the south of the Rappahannock that rebel armies held sway on a consistent basis, almost to the end. So it seems natural that recidivist state politicians of the past half-century would pander to those voters who were most vocal about the "glory and honor of the Old South." One means of doing so was by making sure that the Welcome Center coming into their state from the "North" was nearly 60 miles south of the actual border, which rests on the south bank of the Potomac River.

In other words, they placed their "Welcome" center at what they consider the boundaries of the limits of the United States of America, versus where they think they live. Indeed, if you look at the map which the State of Virginia provides, it is almost comical how its "Welcome" centers parallel the de facto front lines of the period of rebellion, when they were fighting against the United States. Seriously, look at this map provided by Virginia and see the locations of "Welcome" centers #1, #12, and #2. Yep, now look again at all the others. Everywhere they have contact with the old states who fought against the United States, the "Welcome" center is right there at the border… but not towards the north.

Actually, strike that. It would be "almost comical," as I just said, were it not simultaneously so sad. In general, I have observed that the attitudes towards loyalty to the United States vs. the Mythical Nation of Slavery still track pretty closely with those "Welcome" centers.

A little more than a decade ago I was going through a divorce. It was pretty ugly, and emotionally, it left me distracted and out of sorts. The Ex had decided on a course of action with another fellow, and I really could not stand by for that. Allegiances and oaths and vows sort of mean a lot to somebody like me, and this being the second time, that was the end of things. Somehow, however, it was I who ended up moving out of our nice home.

What followed was stereotypical for a divorce of this sort. I spent a lot of time after work going to local bars. All of them within walking distance from my apartment on a hillside known as Marye's Heights, in the town where I lived. This was 2002.

Being disinclined to sociability at the time, when prompted by a fellow barfly into a conversation I did not feel like having, I would assess my interrogator. If he fit the profile (and so many did), I would counter-present a statement as a way of starting a "conversation." That "profile" had nothing to do with socio-economic status, but it did have a hell of a lot to do with race, and the bugaboo of "heritage." At least "heritage" as it is interpreted in rural Virginia anyway. Regardless of the topic he was trying to engage me on, I would parry. Then I would start a new conversation. My entree was, "I think that Robert E. Lee, as a traitor and betrayer of his solemn oath before God and the Constitution, was a much greater terrorist than Osama Bin Ladin… after all, Lee killed many more Americans than Bin Ladin, and almost destroyed the United States. What do you think?"

Yeah, I flunked "Subtle 101" in High School. Oh well. Like I said, I was not in a good place.

But the fact is that there was nothing that any of these men, and they were all men, could say in honest denial to my assertion. They sputtered and growled, spouted and shouted, but not once did it end well for them on any level. You see, if they were "unreconstructed rebels," well then I was something almost none of them had ever experienced, an "unreconstructed Yankee." What is more, at the intellectual level I was not playing fair.

Not only did I have the historical facts on my side, but I was also deliberately playing upon two southern biases which are nearly independent of politics: Reverence for military service, and reverence of the concept of "honor" and "oaths." I am a military officer, Airborne and Ranger qualified. I swore an oath, almost exactly the same as the one Robert E. Lee had, to the United States. Most of those I confronted over barstools and tables in Fredericksburg eventually just asked to be let out of the argument, because I would not let go. I was alone, and angry, and historically versed, and my own G-G-G-Grandfather had actually fought there, not 300 yards from where my crappy apartment was, in 1862. And they were stunned, at the outset, that I was saying something that defied their understanding.

See, I really do think Robert E. Lee was a traitor who should have been executed. Polite people, nice folks in Fredericksburg and other southern places where I have been on a rip, are not used to hearing such a virulent assault upon "Marse Robert." But when I feel like being left alone I am neither polite, nor Southern, and so when I am annoyed, I have in the past let loose upon the traitor. And he was that.

He had a choice. Lee chose to betray the United States. Some of his peers, Virginians through-and-through, with more reason than him to want to keep "slaves in their place," decided not to betray our nation. These were men who decided to keep true to their oaths. These were men who believed in the nation. One, in particular, matters to this campaign we are talking about in Tennessee. His name was George Thomas.

Now we have a little time, in our narrative of the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War. It will be a few weeks before the ever-cautious Rosecrans gets off his duff and figures out how to flummox Braxton Bragg again. (SPOILER: He succeeds, and take Chattanooga.) So for now, let us look at the real central character. Of course, history demands context, so let us begin at the beginning.

George Thomas was fifteen years old in August 1831. His family was not mega-rich, but they were pretty well off. Remember at the time that there was damned little, north or south, that could be called a "middle class." That whole construct really doesn't come until after WWII. But if you were going to place his family, you would put them in "lower upper class."

His family had a plantation in what is now known as the "Tidewater" region of Virginia, not too far from Yorktown. They owned slaves. Estimates range from 12-15, depending upon the year. His father had died three years earlier, in 1828, so George was stepped up. Young George had played with the slaves as a child, and as a teen, had illicitly and secretly been teaching some of them to read. Do not assume that he was an abolitionist from this. Only acknowledge his developing appreciation of humanity. But that year something would happen that would shake his entire world, and which should have made him into the most racist-slave-owning radical extant. In that year, a slave named Nat Turner initiated a revolt, very close to the Thomas plantation. And by very close, I am talking thousands of yards.

When word of the slave revolt hit his own family plantation, young George drove the horses as the family and many of their own slaves tried to escape the circle of violence. They did not run fast enough, the pursuit was gaining and in a desperate measure the teenaged George led the family off the road and into the swamps for succor. Eight days later, with some sixty of his white neighbors now slaughtered, he led the family back. Probably more than 200 African-Americans, slaves and non-slaves were dead as well, without justice or question. But the terror that Nat Turner's rebellion brought to the slave-holding south cannot be underestimated. Yet George Thomas did not succumb.

In 1836, he went to West Point, to become an Army officer. He graduated, twelfth in his class in 1840. The oath he swore went like this: "I, _____, appointed a _____ in the Army of the United States, do solemnly swear, or affirm, that I will bear true allegiance to the United States of America, and that I will serve them honestly and faithfully against all their enemies or opposers whatsoever, and observe and obey the orders of the President of the United States, and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to the rules and articles for the government of the Armies of the United States."

The oath I, and all modern officers swear, runs this way: "I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."

Not a whole lot of difference, at least in the swearing to the United States bit, eh? Hence my annoyance with those who defend Lee. Of course, almost none of them know about the loyal officer, Thomas.

After his commissioning from West Point he served in the Seminole Wars and the Mexican-American War, and fought well in both cases. Between the wars he developed as an officer of the United States, until the crisis appeared.

Thomas was in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, when the word of the fall of Fort Sumter arrived in the Spring of 1861. He, unlike his fellow Virginian, the betrayer Robert E. Lee, knew where his duty rested. There was an oath, he had sworn to it, and that was the end of things. He immediately wrote to his wife. In that letter he summed up the difference between himself and those who sought to destroy the United States of America.

"Whichever way I turned the matter over in my mind," he wrote, "my oath of allegiance to the Federal government always came uppermost."

Then, this Virginian, no, this American, officer, went to a federal magistrate there in Carlisle and renewed his oath to the United States of America. Three days later Virginia stated that it was in rebellion against the United States. In his family home in Tidewater Virginia, nearly six-hundred miles away, his sisters took George Thomas's picture off the wall and effectively disowned him.

I acknowledge that the whole idea of an "oath" actually meaning something in the "modern" age may not resonate with everyone. I do not really know how to bring this into the present for most of you. The social/intellectual/emotional concept of individual honor has sort of changed a lot in the past 150 years. Unfortunately sometimes I really do not understand those of you who do not feel deeply about honor.

This is not because I am a historian. It is because I swore essentially that same oath that George Thomas and Robert Lee swore, and I was taught to mean it when I swore an oath or make a pledge. But even so, even I do not think that my own emotional and psychological commitment to my oath is as deep as these things were in the early-mid 19th Century. So Lee's treason, his betrayal of his oath as an officer of the United States Army, is sort of personal to me, and I am offended by his lying (if he never meant it when he swore the oath) or his two-faced nature, if he did. Snowden? Manning? Pshaw. They are nothing compared to a man who actually commanded forces that killed tens of thousands of American soldiers. I resent Lee's subsequent fame which stemmed solely from his ability to kill American soldiers. As an American soldier, that strikes me as wrong.

What strikes me as even more unfair is that at the same time, George Thomas rejected the course of political and familial opportunism and stayed true to his oath. He won on the battlefield, over and over again, and defended the United States with his every action, and now he is largely forgotten.

Ultimately Thomas would become, as judged by some of his peers and not a few historians, as the greatest general the United States had during the War of the Rebellion. Grant smashed his way to victory. You could argue that Sherman never won a battle all his own. But Thomas, distrusted by the Administration, held suspect at times by the American public, and detested by his own family for staying true to his oath, ultimately destroyed two entire rebel armies, and saved two American armies, by his own abilities, example, and skill.

He was, in the end, the man true to his oath. As opposed to the others he fought.

If you care to debate me on these points, I am more than happy to meet you in the comments section. Those who wish to issue personal threats, feel free to contact me at R_Bateman_LTC@hotmail.com.

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