Allen Thomas was a Confederate soldier and diplomat.
Background
Allen Thomas was born December 14, 1830 in Howard County, Maryland. He was the son of Allen and Eliza Bradford (Dall) Thomas. He was a descendant of Tristram Thomas, born in England, who settled in Talbot County, Maryland, in 1666. Tristram's father, Christopher, had been in Maryland in 1637-38, but returned to England and came back to Maryland in 1664. The elder Allen Thomas, a physician and farmer, was a leading man in the neighborhood, a member of the legislature for several terms, and once a presidential elector.
Education
He entered Princeton as a sophomore in 1847 and graduated in 1850. He studied law under John S. Tyson in Ellicott City, Maryland. Following his marriage, he removed to Louisiana and became a planter.
Career
He was admitted to the bar, and practised for several years in Howard County. At the beginning of the Civil War he organized a battalion of infantry, of which he was appointed major. It was later expanded into the 28th Louisiana Regiment (some official records call it the 29th). Thomas was elected its colonel and was appointed in October 1862 with rank antedated to May 3. He served during the Vicksburg campaign, notably at the battle of Chickasaw Bluffs, and during the subsequent siege, commanding his regiment and at times a brigade. After the surrender of Vicksburg he was paroled and carried the report of Gen. John C. Pemberton to President Davis.
Subsequently, he was put in charge of collecting other paroled prisoners and reorganizing them west of the Mississippi. Appointed brigadier-general, February 4, 1864, to the place vacated by Gen. Henry W. Allen, who had resigned upon his election as governor of Louisiana, Thomas was assigned to the command of a brigade of troops from that state, then stationed at Alexandria, La. He served with it until Polignac's departure for France, when he succeeded to the command of the division. He surrendered and was paroled at Natchitoches, La. , on June 8, 1865. Again he became a planter at New Hope on the Mississippi River.
He was a presidential elector in 1872 and in 1880, voting for Greeley and Hancock; in 1876 he declined nomination for Congress. He was a member of the board of supervisors of Louisiana State University in 1882, and from 1882 to 1884 was professor of agriculture in that institution. Following a term of service as coiner of the mint in New Orleans during Cleveland's first administration, he removed in 1889 to Florida, which remained his home till near the end of his life. In January 1894 he was commissioned consul at La Guayra, and in July of the next year took over the legation at Caracas as envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to Venezuela. His tenure of office covered the period of controversy over the boundary of British Guiana. There is nothing in his dispatches to the state department, however, to suggest that he was consulted as to American policy toward Great Britain, or that he had any influence upon President Cleveland's vigorous action in defense of Venezuela's rights. Resigning after the change of administration, he left the legation in June 1897 and returned to Florida. Some ten years later he removed to a plantation which he had bought at Waveland, Miss. , and there he died. He was buried in the Bringier family vault at Donaldsonville, La.
Achievements
Connections
In January 8, 1857, he married Anne Octavie Marie, daughter of Michel Doradu Bringier of New Orleans.