Editing George Henry Thomas (section)

==Legacy==
The veterans' organization for the Army of the Cumberland, throughout its existence, fought to see that he was honored for all he had done.{{citation needed|date=August 2017}}  In 1879, they commissioned the equestrian statue of Thomas at Thomas Circle, Washington, D.C.<ref name="furgurson">{{cite web |last=Furgurson |first=Ernest B. |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/catching-up-with-old-slow-trot-148045684/ |title=Catching Up With "Old Slow Trot" |work=[[Smithsonian Magazine]] |date=March 1, 2007 |access-date=July 24, 2021}}</ref>

Thomas was in chief command of only two battles in the Civil War, the [[Battle of Mill Springs]] at the beginning and the [[Battle of Nashville]] near the end. Both were decisive victories. However, his contributions at the battles of Stones River, Chickamauga, Chattanooga, and Peachtree Creek were decisive. His main legacies lay in his development of modern battlefield doctrine and in his mastery of logistics.{{citation needed|date=August 2017}}

Thomas has generally been held in high esteem by Civil War historians; [[Bruce Catton]] and [[Carl Sandburg]] wrote glowingly of him, and many{{Who|date=October 2018}} consider Thomas one of the top three Union generals of the war, after Grant and [[William Tecumseh Sherman]]. But Thomas never entered the popular consciousness like those men. The general destroyed his private papers, saying he did not want "his life hawked in print for the eyes of the curious." Beginning in the 1870s, many Civil War generals published memoirs, justifying their decisions or re-fighting old battles, but Thomas, who died in 1870, did not publish his own memoirs. In addition, most of his campaigns were in the Western theater of the war, which received less attention both in the press of the day and in contemporary historical accounts.

Grant and Thomas also had a cool relationship, for reasons that are not entirely clear, but are well-attested by contemporaries. It apparently started when Halleck placed Thomas in command of most of Grant's divisions after the Battle of Shiloh. When a rain-soaked Grant arrived at Thomas's headquarters before the [[Chattanooga Campaign]], Thomas, caught up in other activity, did not provide dry clothes for several minutes until Grant's staffer intervened. Thomas's perceived slowness at Nashville—although necessitated by the weather—drove Grant into a fit of impatience, and Grant nearly replaced Thomas. In his ''Personal Memoirs'', Grant minimized Thomas's contributions, particularly during the Franklin-Nashville Campaign, saying his movements were "always so deliberate and so slow, though effective in defence."<ref>Grant, chapter LX.</ref>

Grant did, however, acknowledge that Thomas's eventual success at Nashville obviated all criticism.{{citation needed|date=August 2017}} Sherman, who had been close to Thomas throughout the war, also repeated the accusation after the war that Thomas was "slow", and this [[Damn with faint praise|damning with faint praise]] tended to affect perceptions of the Rock of Chickamauga up to the present day. Both Sherman and Grant attended Thomas's funeral, and were reported by third parties to have been visibly moved by his passing. Thomas's legendary [[bay (horse)|bay horse]], Billy, bore his friend Sherman's name.

Thomas was always on good terms with his commanding officer in the Army of the Cumberland, [[William Rosecrans]].  Even after Rosecrans was relieved of command by Grant and replaced by Thomas, he had nothing but praise for him.  Upon hearing of Thomas' death, Rosecrans sent a letter to the [[National Tribune]], stating Thomas' passing was a "National Calamity... Few knew him better than I did, none valued him more."<ref>{{cite book |last=Cozzens |first=Peter |date=1992 |title=This Terrible Sound |publisher=University of Illinois Press |isbn=0-252-01703-X |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/thisterriblesoun0000cozz }}</ref>

In 1887, Sherman published an article praising Grant and Thomas, and contrasting them to Robert E. Lee. After noting that Thomas, unlike his fellow Virginian Lee, stood by the Union, Sherman wrote:{{quote|During the whole war his services were transcendent, winning the first substantial victory at Mill Springs in Kentucky, January 20th, 1862, participating in all the campaigns of the West in 1862-3-4, and finally, December 16th, 1864 annihilating the army of Hood, which in mid winter had advanced to Nashville to besiege him.<ref>{{cite journal |first=W. T. |last=Sherman |title=Grant, Thomas, Lee|date=May 1887|pages=437–450|volume=144|issue=366|journal=North American Review|jstor=25101219 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/25101219.pdf}}, pp. 445.</ref>}}Sherman concluded that Grant and Thomas were "heroes" deserving "monuments like those of [[Lord Nelson|Nelson]] and [[Duke of Wellington|Wellington]] in London, well worthy to stand side by side with the one which now graces our {{sic|capitol|hide=yes}} city of 'George Washington.'"<ref>{{cite journal |first=W. T. |last=Sherman |title=Grant, Thomas, Lee|date=May 1887|pages=437–450|volume=144|issue=366|journal=North American Review|url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=chi.22084553&view=1up&seq=445}}</ref>

<gallery widths="155" heights="200">
File:George Henry Thomas Buttre portrait.jpg|J. C. Buttre's 1877 engraving of Thomas, based on a photograph by George N. Bernard<ref>Cleaves, p. 277.</ref>
File:"Gen. George H. Thomas" (Union).jpg|Woodcut by [[Thomas Nast]]
File:Statue of Major General George H. Thomas at Lebanon, Kentucky.jpg|General George H. Thomas' life-size statue by sculptor [[Rodolfo Ayoroa]], located at Civil War Park, [[Lebanon, Kentucky]]
File:Major General George Henry Thomas Statue Washington DC.png|The bronze equestrian [[Major General George Henry Thomas|statue of Thomas]] by [[John Quincy Adams Ward]], located at [[Thomas Circle]] in Washington, D.C.
File:22-22-269-thomas.jpg|Painting of Thomas at [[Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park]]
</gallery>