who was the Civil War general who was the great tactitioner but by the
time he got around to implementing the battle was over?

There never was such a thing as the 'American civil war'. We had the
American revolution that started in 1775 with the British colonies war
of independence against Great Britain and ended in December 1825 in
the Andean mountains with the defeat of the Spaniard army by the
American forces seeking independence. We had wars among American
nations, we've had civil wars within American nations, but there never
was such a thing as an American civil war.

All proper Southerners call it "The War between the States", which
avoids such problems.
Whoever the general was, he as a Yankee; the Confederate ones were all
much better, just didn't have the men and material to beat the
Yankees.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_H._Thomas