And really, Thomas's reputation is greatly exaggerated. His reputation as a great defensive fighter comes from one battle...Chickamauga...and is an example of skill on the TACTICAL defensive. Defending one hill on a battlefield is a great deal different than conducting an entire battle...or a campaign. To do the latter, you have to have skill in STRATEGIC planning, and Thomas never demonstrated much accumen in that area.
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Huh? Thomas was a superb strategic planner. The problem was that his superiors hardly ever listened to him, but on those occasions that his plans were allowed to proceed, they went very well. Case in point, the Atlanta campaign plan, which he was in large part responsible for -- not that he got any credit for it. Not to mention the entire Nashville campaign, in which despite the lack of support from his superiors, he achieved the destruction of Hood's entire opposing army.
I admit that I may be biased. In my opinion, George Thomas was the greatest general on either side of the ACW.
The reasons that he was not given his due are threefold. First of all, he was a Virginian who fought for the Union. This meant that he was a pariah in the South, and distrusted in the North. Second, he never published his memoirs, due both personal reticence and lack of egotism, and the fact that he died not long after the end of the war. Third, he was not a member of the Grant-Sherman-Sheridan clique, and they spent the several decades after his death continually degrading his effort and acheivements while promoting their own.