Braxton Bragg probably is the only general in the history of any U.S. war to have failed in four consecutive campaigns and have been promoted after every one of them.
Bragg, born in 1817 and raised on a medium-size North Carolina farm, was noted from early childhood for his humorless and tactless personality and an unswerving devotion to duty. Somehow, his surly personality never stopped him from advancing.
He graduated fifth out of a class of 50 at West Point in spite of the fact that he did not check out a book from the library during his academic career.
He was made into an instant hero in Mexico when Gen. Zachary Taylor famously called for “A little more grape, Captain Bragg!” Yet his post-Mexico arguments with Army officials become legendary. In fact, a rumor circulated that when serving in the far West as both post captain and post quartermaster, he had an argument with himself by letter.
Resignation accepted
In spite of Bragg’s contentiousness — he never met an argument he didn’t like — he always found ways to advance, both militarily and personally. In 1849, he married a beautiful Louisiana belle, Eliza Ellis, and stood to inherit major plantation holdings.
He was best friends with another misunderstood officer, William T. Sherman, who also suffered from a mood disorder (probably what today would be called bipolar disorder).
Bragg’s tenure in the Army survived a court-martial and official reprimand, and he did not hesitate to argue even with the secretary of war himself — future Confederate President Jefferson Davis, who also had served in the Mexican War — over matters of Indian policy and war strategy.
Bragg’s better half, Eliza, found life on the western frontier demanding and boring. When Bragg asked for a transfer in 1855 and it was denied, he boldly submitted his resignation. He was outraged and offended when it was accepted promptly. Bragg was then forced to watch the gathering war clouds between North and South from the relative peacefulness of his Louisiana sugar plantation. For a while at least, Bragg’s irascibility was limited to mere domestic matters.
Gifted organizer
When war reached Louisiana, Bragg was not able to keep himself out of it. On Jan. 11, 1861, he led a large group of state volunteer soldiers to Baton Rouge, where they captured the Federal arsenal.
When Louisiana formally seceded, Bragg was named the state commander and promoted to major general. Shortly thereafter, he was appointed brigadier general in the Confederate army by his old comrade-in-arms President Davis.
Bragg proceeded posthaste to the relative backwater of Pensacola, Fla., where he disdainfully took command of a large group of undisciplined volunteer soldiers. (“Sweepings of the streets,” he once called them.) In spite of his negative attitude, Bragg drilled the men, enforced sanitation and supply routines, and produced what at the time were some of the best volunteer regiments in the entire Confederate army.
Bragg did not, however, make any attempt to use these men in an attack on nearby Fort Pickens, the Federal stronghold dominating the area. Though his organizational prowess was unparalleled, he failed even to attempt a change of the status quo in Pensacola.
When his men left — desperately needed in another theater — Bragg left with them and was promoted to major general. His new command included all of Alabama and parts of Florida. Shortly thereafter, he was moved with his men directly under General Albert Sidney Johnston in Mississippi and was promoted to corps commander.
Bragg’s response was to accuse one Confederate general of being a looter and to carp to others about the miserable condition Johnston’s army was in. Though his accusations were accurate factually, he managed to make himself unpopular with his fellow officers.
Everyone else’s fault
When the army battled at Shiloh on April 6 and 7, 1862, Bragg acquitted himself fairly well, though the attacks he directed were piecemeal. Had his corps taken the famous “Hornet’s Nest” sooner, history no doubt would have counted the battle a critical Confederate victory.
When Johnston was killed near the climax of the battle and his successor, Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard, ordered a fallback at the apparent moment of victory, Bragg exploded with fury. “My God!” he cried out. “Was a victory ever sufficiently complete?”
As the army fell back toward Corinth, Miss., Bragg continued to seethe. Beauregard had left the army “without system or order.” The attack at Shiloh should have been allowed to push the Yankees back into the Tennessee River. Bragg failed to see his own responsibility in what turned out to be massive strategic defeat.
When Beauregard took ill and left on an unauthorized leave of absence, Bragg was promoted to take his place. Bragg was now commander of the largest Western army, the Army of Tennessee, the equivalent of Gen. Robert E. Lee in the Eastern theater.
Failure in Kentucky
Bragg immediately transferred the bulk of his army by rail to Chattanooga, the first major move of its type and magnitude in history, and then began to shift northward to threaten all three Union armies in Tennessee. The Union leadership temporarily was thrown into a funk and went on the defensive.
Bragg bypassed Nashville, however, and, accompanied by Confederate Gen. Kirby Smith, entered Kentucky, where he expected loyal Southerners and sympathizers to flock to the cause.
Kentuckians, however, rejected the Confederate call to arms, and in spite of the Confederate state government Bragg briefly set up in Frankfort, the state refused to come into the Southern fold. Bragg, typically, was incensed: Kentuckians’ “love of ease and fear of pecuniary loss” were responsible for their treasonous behavior, he said.
Bragg’s armies in Kentucky came to grief shortly thereafter at the battle of Perryville. His subordinates — chiefly Gen. Leonidas Polk — failed to follow his orders throughout the campaign, and major opportunities turned into an embarrassing retreat.
Bragg’s popularity plummeted after the retreat back to Tennessee, and his own officers began plotting behind his back. Only the solid intervention of Davis, who always stood by his friends, kept the lid on the boiling kettle. Bragg, in the minds of many, should have beaten the Union Army in the race to Louisville and should have united his forces to defeat the enemy at Perryville. His failure was disastrous.
Stunning response
That fall, Bragg turned his attention back to Nashville, which his Army of Tennessee moved to surround and cut off from other Union supports. As before, his inability to command his subordinates, bad luck and hesitation conspired to generate a strategic defeat at Stones River (Murfreesboro).
After the battle, Bragg circulated a letter to his generals asking for approval of his actions and was stunned when they almost universally reported him unfit to command. Still, Davis encouraged him to stay on, and Bragg did, even against his own better judgment.
On Sept. 19 through 20, 1863, reinforced with parts of Gen. James Longstreet’s Corps from the Army of Northern Virginia, Bragg was presented with a brilliant opportunity to defeat the spread-out wings of Gen. William S. Rosecrans’ army. The resulting battle at Chickamauga Creek was a hollow victory that cost 17,000 Confederate casualties.
Though Bragg reported it as “a complete victory over the enemy,” it was a strategic defeat, as his subordinates again failed to obey orders, he failed to lead with inspiration, and the disorganized and demoralized enemy was permitted to escape to Chattanooga without molestation.
Unruly subordinates
Enmity within the ranks became so bad that one Kentucky officer threatened to kill Bragg. Another, Nathan Bedford Forest, the wizard of the saddle, told Bragg (his superior, remember), “If you ever again try to interfere with me — it will be at the peril of your life.” Bragg did not intentionally antagonize people, yet somehow it always happened.
As he maneuvered the army to lay siege to Rosecrans in Chattanooga, Bragg dismissed Polk, sent Longstreet to Knoxville and made other changes in a futile attempt to recover control over his subordinates. Shortly thereafter, however, the Army of Tennessee inexplicably fell apart, routed from a strong defensive position along Missionary Ridge south of Chattanooga. The remains of the army streamed south into Georgia.
Davis had no choice but to relieve Bragg, who by then was referred to in the Southern press as “Boomerang Bragg” because he responded to every near victory by retreating to reorganize. Bragg actually felt a sense of relief when the order arrived, though it wouldn’t last long.
Once again, Jefferson Davis moved Bragg up, bringing him to Richmond to serve as a personal military adviser to the president — essentially an unofficial army chief of staff. Bragg traveled between the war offices in Richmond and around the South to various army headquarters, applying his peculiar genius for organization and efficiency simultaneously with his utter lack of tact or regard for the human consequences of his edicts.
Gen. Joseph Johnston, who replaced Bragg as head of the Army of Tennessee, summed it up succinctly: “[Davis] tried to do what God had failed to do … make a soldier of Braxton Bragg.”
Mentally paralyzed
Late in the war, Davis moved his grumpy general to North Carolina — partially as a result of the complaints lodged about Bragg’s heavy administrative hand and partially out of desperation to save the threatened port of Wilmington. Bragg’s forces repulsed a December assault by Union Gen. Benjamin F. Butler at Fort Fisher, though the victory probably was because of his predecessor’s sound planning and Butler’s ineptitude.
A few weeks later, however, Fort Fisher fell. Bragg was mentally paralyzed during the battle and unable to shuffle reinforcements where they were desperately needed. Wilmington, the next-to-last Atlantic port, fell to Federal forces.
As the war closed, Bragg’s department melted away. He found himself a subordinate under one of his harshest critics — Joseph Johnston, who had trailed Bragg’s old friend Sherman into North Carolina with the small remnant of the Army of Tennessee. When Davis and other members of the Confederate government fled south after Lee’s surrender, Bragg and his wife went with them and eventually were captured in Georgia.
After the war, Bragg worked on various railroad ventures. Inevitably, he feuded with his partners and moved on to another position. In 1876 in Galveston, Texas, he dropped dead in the street at the age of 59.
Telling no lies
What, then, is the casual student of history to make of Braxton Bragg? Many veterans of the Army of Tennessee went to the grave with unfettered hatred of his generalship. Yet no man sacrificed more for the cause.
When founding the Southern Historical Society after the war with other veterans, he refused to contribute any of his own writings. “I dare not tell lies,” he said. Though he might not admit to his own mistakes, he wanted no glory for himself, as did many other would-be Southern icons immediately after the war.
He also suffered from significant health issues during his entire adult life, and perhaps his lack of what are now called “people skills” was linked to a form of autistic spectrum disorder. Like his friend Sherman, Bragg was not understood by his contemporaries.
His critics, on the other hand, did not hesitate to lay blame at his feet during and after the war. “Bragg the unlucky Millstone which Mr. Davis persists in tying around our necks!” “He resembles a chimpanzee as much in character as he does in appearance.” “An army of lions led by an ass.” “There sits Bragg — a good dog howling on his hind legs.”
That’s the enigma of Bragg, who has defied biographers as well. He was a surly rascal, to be sure, but he also was one of just eight men in the Confederate army to hold the rank of full general, and he had at least as much influence over events as any of the others.
• Jack Trammell works at Randolph-Macon College and is finishing his doctorate at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is a frequent speaker at Civil War events and can be reached at jacktrammell@yahoo.com.
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