Thomas Green (8 June 1814 – 12 April 1864) was a Brigadier-General of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.
Biography[]
Thomas Green was born in Amelia County, Virginia on 8 June 1814, and his family moved to Tennessee in 1817. In 1834, he graduated from the University of Knoxville, studying law. Green decided to join the Texian Army during the Texas Revolution of 1836, fighting at the Battle of San Jacinto, and he returned to Tennessee to continue his law studies rather than remain in the Republic of Texas. Green served as a captain in the Texas Rangers of the US Army during the Mexican-American War, leading them in the capture of Monterrey in 1846. In 1861, he became the colonel of a Texas infantry regiment of the Confederate States Army after the start of the American Civil War, and he fought in the New Mexico campaign against the Union. Green led a cavalry brigade under General Richard Taylor's division during the fighting against the Union in lower Louisiana, and he became one of Taylor's best generals. On 12 April 1864, he was killed by a shell from a Union gunboat during the Red River campaign on the Texas-Louisiana border, and David Dixon Porter claimed that he was worth 5,000 men to the Confederates.