Outdoor group albumen CDV. Lookout Mountain, Chattanooga, Tennessee, 1863. Period pencil inscription to mount verso identifying subjects and location. Canceled blue two-cent stamp adhered to mount verso. 

This photograph features Gen. George H. Thomas and his staff on Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The photo was attributed to George Barnard. 

Thomas was born on 31 July 1816 in Virginia, just five miles north of the North Carolina border. At age 20, he attended West Point, was roommates with William Tecumseh Sherman, and graduated 12th of his class of 42. Prior to the Civil War, Thomas served in the Seminole Wars and the Mexican-American War. He returned to West Point to teach, working closely with Robert E. Lee and teaching J.E.B. Stuart. 

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Thomas sided with the Union, despite growing up and working in the South. Around when this photo was taken, he succeeded Gen. William Rosencrans (1819-1898) as the commander of the Army of the Cumberland right before the Chattanooga Campaign commenced. Thomas would be remembered in part for taking Lookout Mountain during the Chattanooga Campaign, a fitting legacy for this CDV. 

George Barnard operated several successive photography studios in New York, specializing first in daguerreotypes and then stereographs. He went to work with Mathew Brady, taking studio portraits of Civil War troops once the war began. In 1864, he was employed by the Department of the Army to take photos of Gen. Sherman's military campaign, which began at Chattanooga. This is most likely when Barnard took this photograph of Thomas and his staff. 

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