Happy birthday, you ol’ Rock of Chickamauga, you.

Yes, 204 years ago, my favorite major general of the Civil War, George Henry Thomas, was born in Southampton County, Virginia. Doctors said he emerged from the womb scowling, already grimly resigned to making a desperate stand.

Thomas was raised on a farm; his father died in an accident when Thomas was 12. The property grew corn, tobacco, and cotton, and also had livestock. The apple orchard produced a brandy “potent enough to make a sailor reel," so imagine the effect it must have had on the kids.

The farm also had about a dozen slaves. One of Thomas’ black playmates described him after the war as “playful as a kitten,” and at ease in the slave quarters, sneaking sweet treats to the other kids. He also taught them how to read and write, against his parents’ wishes.

Thomas also had an up-close view of Nat Turner’s slave revolt. When Thomas was 15, a neighbor ran up to warn the family of Turner’s approaching men. The Thomas family hopped into a carriage, driven by George (of course -- who else is gonna take the wheel?) and narrowly escaped.

Thomas was in PA when he heard about Fort Sumter. He wrote to his sisters in Virginia that he’d be fighting for the Union, and they turned his picture to the wall. (19th-century Americans EXCELLED at shunning. We should bring it back and do it to 40 percent of the country.)

Indeed, Thomas’s background dogged him early on, when he was passed up for plum assignments cuz the US Army brass didn’t trust him. (Another round of applause, folks, for the US Army brass, and all the idiots they DID trust instead of the guy who became The Sledge of Nashville.)

Years later, Fitzhugh Lee came out from hiding behind his beard to say Thomas asked for a job in the Confederacy first, cuz he applied to teach at VMI, but that was long before the war broke out, and only 2 states (not Virginia) had seceded at that point. Thomas was NOT pleased.

It’s “an entire fabrication,” Thomas told an aide. “These slanders were caused by men who knew they had done wrong, but were endeavoring to justify themselves by claiming their action to be a virtue which all men should have followed.”

(Good thing THOSE days are gone, huh?)

One of the tragedies of Thomas’ early death at 53, only 5 years after the war, is that we didn’t get more of his Lost Cause bashing. He was uniquely positioned to comment, given his Southern background and the shit he took, and from the little he DID say, he was … unflinching.

They willfully distort history, Thomas wrote, so that “the crime of treason might be covered with a counterfeit varnish of patriotism ... thus wiping out with their own hands their own stains … a self-forgiveness amazing in its effrontery.”

Miss you, George. Wish you were here.