Braxton Bragg: Misplaced General
by Dr. Grady McWhiney
©1996 The Cincinnati Civil War Round Table
As the Confederacy was dying, A Georgia girl wrote in her diary: "Generals Bragg and Breckinridge are in the village with a host of minor celebrities. General Breckinridge is called the handsomest man in the Confederate army, and Bragg might be called the ugliest. He looks like an old porcupine."
Braxton Bragg, the fifth ranking Confederate general, was no beauty. Perhaps the kindest remark ever made about his appearance came from a young lieutenant, who thought Bragg looked just like a general you see in pictures. This was very early in the war. Most comments were less favorable. A captain described Bragg as a "tall, slim, rough looking man, with a little round head covered with gray frizzly hair. He has a wild, abstracted look, and pays but little attention to what is passing round him. His mind seems to be in a constant strain. His apparel consists of long, gray hunting shirt, pants stuffed in his boots, and his hard looking head is ornamented with a military cap, to which some white cloth is attached to cover his neck." An English visitor in the Confederacy called Bragg the least prepossessing of all the Confederate generals. And the head of the Confederate War Bureau said Bragg resembled a chimpanzee as much in character as in appearance.
No one can deny that Braxton Bragg had critics. As early as 1862, Generals Leonidas Polk and E. Kirby Smith asked President Jefferson Davis to remove Bragg from army command. General Nathan Forrest is reported to have cursed Bragg, and General John C. Breckinridge considered challenging Bragg to a duel. Generals James Longstreet and D.H. Hill wrote letters ridiculing Bragg. They also signed a petition requesting his dismissal. "I do not doubt General Bragg's loyalty as some have done nor questioned his sanity as others have done," wrote a civilian in 1862, "but, believing him to be both sane and loyal, I concur in the judgment already rendered by the people and the army, that as a military commander he is utterly incompetent." In 1863, a soldier confided to his diary, "General Bragg is not fit for a general. If Jeff Davis will just let him alone, I think Bragg will do us more damage that the enemy, and I believe he is a coward, too. I know one thing, that he is a perfect tyrant, and I never saw a tyrant yet but what was a coward." Even an army surgeon gave his commander an unfavorable diagnosis. Dr. D.W. Yandell wrote, "General Bragg is either stark mad or utterly incompetent. He's ignorant of both the fundamental principles and details of his noble profession, and he has lost the confidence of both his men and his officers."
Today most Civil War historians use Bragg as their favorite whipping boy, their best example of a military bungler. Often, he is described as a sadistic martinet, despised by his troops and his subordinates. I think such a view is unbalanced. Too many scholars have accepted, uncritically, the opinions of Bragg's critics, and, unfortunately for Bragg, his enemies published more than his defenders.
That nosy chronicler of Confederate life, Mrs. Mary B. Chestnut, frequently denounced Bragg as a worthless general. Her popular diary has become a standard source for Civil War writers, and her estimate of Bragg has been cited as the opinion of all Southern civilians. A Mrs. B.R. Blackmore, a native of Tennessee, also kept a diary. Her diary, admittedly, is not as famous as Mrs. Chestnut's nor is it as easy to find in libraries. Yet Mrs. Blackmore, who claimed that Bragg did more with his men and means than any other general, is just as reliable as an authority on Bragg as Mrs. Chestnut. The point is that neither lady served in Bragg's army. Neither knew much about generalship, and neither is a major source for anyone trying to evaluate Bragg.
What I am suggesting is that most Civil War historians have based their evaluations of Bragg upon inadequate resources. If scholars cite Mrs. Chestnut's diary against Bragg, it's only fair that they cite Mrs. Blackmore's diary for him. It is unjust to use only the opinion of Bragg's enemies. Longstreet's memoirs, D. H. Hill's biased accounts in Battles and Leaders, Beauregard's autobiography, ghostwritten by Alfred Roman, Simon B. Buckner's recollections, Basil Duke's reminiscences, and the biography of Leonidas Polk, written by his son, all present unfavorable views of Bragg. Certainly, these are important sources, but they paint only one side of the picture. Scholars should recognize them as biased accounts and use them cautiously.
Throughout the war, Bragg had numerous supporters in and outside the army. Perhaps the purest proof of his popularity was the deluge of letters he received after he retired from command of the Army of Tennessee. These expressions of regret were written by generals as well as by privates, by high government officials as well as by private citizens; and note they came when Bragg was without a command, and it was quite doubtful if he would ever regain one. "I express to you my sense of the loss which the Army of Tennessee has sustained in your retirement," General Joseph E. Johnston wrote Bragg. "Let me assure you, too, of a fellow soldier's appreciation for your high ability and a fellow citizen's admiration of the distinguished patriotism which you have exhibited from the commencement of the war.
Early in January, 1864, Generals Richard Taylor and St. John R. Liddell asked Bragg to take command of the Trans-Mississippi West. "It's the general desire of the army and people of Louisiana that you come to this side of the Mississippi," wrote Taylor. "No one indulges this hope more than myself." In Louisiana, said Liddell, Bragg would be free from all unjust public clamor. "You will know your friends. Everyone will follow you." General James S. Chalmers wrote Bragg about this time, "I have seen no man in this war who looked, talked, and acted on all occasions so much like my beau ideal of a general. You have shown yourself a great military chieftain, and history will give you an everlasting page in the records of the Southern struggle for independence."
On December 10, 1863, just a few days after Bragg had relinquished command of the army, the inspector general of the Army of Tennessee wrote him, "I have just inspected the army, and I find a general regret at your leaving. It is evident, now, to all that the rank and file of this army and the more efficient and honest officers prefer you to any other leader that could be sent here, and they would hail your return with earnest satisfaction." General Philip D. Roddey wrote Bragg, "The news has just reached us that you have been relieved of the command of the Army of Tennessee. You will please pardon this intrusion, but I am so mortified that I cannot, in justice to my own feelings, resist the temptation to say that we can never be as well satisfied with a commander as we have been with you nor do we believe that any officer on the continent could have done more or better with the Army of Tennessee than you have done. I have heard a general expression from the officers and men of my brigade, and without exception, they prefer you as a commander to any officer in the Confederate army." General Alpheus Baker told Bragg his real friends were among the rank and file and the regimental and company officers of the Army of Tennessee. "I find everywhere," said Baker, "the utmost devoted attachment and respect for you among them all, and I have yet to meet the first man who dies not speak of you as a friend."
A civilian reported similar sentiments among the soldiers he met. "I cannot but believe that you will soon be restored to the command of the army you have so long and gallantly led," H.W. Walters of Atlanta wrote Bragg. "I have no doubt but that such a restoration would be hailed by almost every man of the army with pleasure, such is the uniform declaration of all. I meet daily with persons from the army, and I find but one sentiment, that of deep respect amounting to affection for you, and but one wish, that you will again be placed in command." General Joe Wheeler, the cavalry officer, agreed. "I hear from many sources it should be said that they did not like you as a commander," Wheeler wrote Bragg. "I have been serenaded twice in the past few days by Pensacola troops who said they had come to hunt up Genl. Bragg's friends . . . They said the only enemies you had were a few bad Generals and some newspaper editors. They might have included a few soldiers who had been misinformed and influenced by designing men."
One of the editors to whom Wheeler referred was L.J. Dupre of the Atlanta Register. On February 25, 1864 Dupre wrote Bragg,
I was influenced, I must confess, in all that I have written of you to a greater extent than I should have been by the whispered slanders of your enemies. I could not escape this influence, General. It filled the very atmosphere of all newspaperdom. All sorts of influences were brought to bear upon the press I control. My opinions of your generalship were fixed by these influences, but I was misled. I have since learned that I did you injustice. I shall find an occasion to make amends worth more than this tendered apology.
Of the many letters Bragg received at this time from men high and low in the Confederate army, perhaps the most charming was a note from J.H. Fraser of Company F of the 15th Alabama Volunteers. This letter was written on December 2, 1863. "My heart is full of sorrow," said Fraser. "Our whole camp is full of sorrow and sadness, for we had learned to love you as a child loves his father, and the thought of being separated from you, and losing perhaps forever your paternal-like care sends pangs most bitter through our insides. Many of us have followed you with gladness from Mobile up to the present, and the longer we remained with you the more we loved you, and the more confidence we had in your skill and ability as a military chieftain, and we always felt sure that while General Bragg commanded no evil could ever befall us. Your old army was never dissatisfied with you," continued Fraser, "and we love you today better, and can yield a more willing service to your command than we can to any untried leader. But for fear I weary you with the length of my letter, I bid you goodbye for the regiment. We all love you alike. Should you retire from the army entirely, which God forbid, we hope you many find a peace and joy and rest which you so much need, and praying that you may live to see us a free, happy, and independent nation, and that when at last your career on earth shall have ended, you may be received into that heavenly abode, where no vile slanderers are allowed to enter.
The assumption that once a soldier hated Bragg he continued to do so is disproved by the letters of Captain E. John Ellis, whose early dislike of Bragg changed slowly to admiration. In November, 1862, Ellis wrote his father, "We do nothing in this department nor will the matter be mended as long as our poor partisan President keeps this miserable tyrant, Bragg, at the head of affairs." In December of that same year, Ellis wrote his sister, "I wish, I long to come home, but I can't, for old Bragg would rather see a man hung than have a leave of absence; and Bragg is right, for we need every man at his post now." In July, 1863, Ellis happily informed his brother that Beauregard might replace Bragg. "Yet I do not want Bragg taken away from the army," said Ellis. "Let our leaders, and though the present generation will not do him justice, time, the great rectifier, and history will." In October, 1863, Ellis wrote, "Bragg is truly a great man. He metes out justice to the high as well as to the low." And in his last letter home, written in November, 1863, shortly before he was captured, Ellis said, "It was an unbending justice Bragg meted out to his generals, his colonels, his captains, and privates alike that brings the ire of officers high in the rank down upon General Bragg. His men love Bragg," Ellis insisted. "His army has been held together, and has been so disciplined and organized by him as to nearly compensate in efficiency what it sadly lacked in numbers. All this is attributable to General Bragg. The papers say he is incompetent. His career and history gives this the lie. They say the army has no confidence in him, but, as I know the men in this army and my acquaintance extends to many brigades including men from every state, I am prepared to pronounce this, like the former, a lie. No army ever had more confidence in its leaders, and Napoleon's guard never followed his eagles more enthusiastically than this ragged army has and will follow the lead of its gaunt, grim chieftain."
An overwhelming amount of evidence suggests, then, that Bragg was neither as unpopular nor as tyrannical as most historians claim. A soldier said, "Most men knew Bragg only as a chieftain of rough and somewhat forbidding exterior, not only because Bragg avoided giving public evidence of the tender feelings he had for the suffering and unfortunate." A staff officer wrote, "I was too frequently consummate of Bragg's good deeds of mercy on delinquents to let him rest under the imputation of a heartless man or one who wielded his great power cruelly."
Throughout the war, Bragg took a sincere interest in the welfare of his soldiers. He was constantly about their camps, inspecting, questioning, setting things right. Were they getting enough to eat? Do their clothes fit? Do their tents leak? Often, he visited hospitals, and cheered the wounded with his sometimes less than humorous jokes. On one visit, he told some ladies who were comforting the patients that if one of their sweethearts died, "they must hug the harder with the one that was left." The following day, Bragg wrote his wife, "The ladies seemed to enjoy my little jest as much as the men, and all were better for a little diversion."
Actually, Bragg had many military virtues. He was intelligent,, patriotic, and diligent. He rose early, retired late, ate little, and drank less. A soldier called Bragg "industry personified." "He was untiring in his labors, methodical and systematic in the discharge of business," recalled a staff officer. A chaplain said, "Whenever and wherever I have seen Bragg, I've found him at work, night and day, always laboring for the cause, thinking not of self-indulgence or enjoyment, living hard." General Richard Taylor declared he had never known a more conscientious man than Bragg. "Whatever may have been General Bragg's defects," wrote a colonel, "He was conspicuous for one trait, a profound sense of duty."
Bragg, also, was an exceptionally talented organizer and administrator. After taking command of Beauregard's disorganized forces at Tupelo in June, 1862, Bragg developed the second finest army in the Confederacy. "Bragg is beyond doubt the best disciplinarian in the South," a soldier wrote in September, 1862. "When he took command, the army was little better than a mob. Firearms could be heard at all hours of the day. Now a gun is never fired without orders from the brigade commanders. Bragg had one man shot for discharging his gun without orders, and since that time, the discipline of the troops has improved very much! They are not apt to disobey orders when they know that death is his punishment." "As a disciplinarian, Bragg far surpassed any of the other senior Confederate Generals," said General Richard Taylor. And according to Union General L.H. Rousseau, "All the officers who knew Bragg before the Civil War thought he was perhaps the best disciplinarian in the United States Army. . . That is the universal opinion as far as I have heard," said Rousseau, "and I have conversed with a great many of the old Regular Army officers."
In Bragg's way of thinking, discipline occupied a very special place. He once wrote his friend, William T. Sherman, "Where do we find the fewest mutinies, revolts, and rebellions? In the best disciplined commands," argued Bragg. "Human nature is the same throughout the world. Give us all disciplined masters, managers, and assistants, and we shall never hear of insurrection . . ." The entire Confederacy might have used a bit more of the discipline Bragg forced upon himself and his men.
After eighteen months and five major campaigns under Bragg's command, the Army of Tennessee was still one of the most magnificent fighting units ever organized in America. During this same period, Bragg's army suffered 26,000 fewer casualties than its Federal opponents, a remarkable record; matched only by Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. In March, 1863, Joseph E. Johnston wrote his friend, Senator Louis T. Wigfall,
"I think you underestimate Bragg. He has exhibited great energy and discretion in his operations, and has done the enemy more harm than anybody else has done with the same force in the same time. At Murfreesboro, Bragg fought double his numbers, and the enemy's loss was staggering. In the great European battles of modern times, there was no destruction equal to it, in proportion to the destroying force. Thinking that great injustice has been done Bragg by the country, that is to say by the press and by Congress, I should regret very much to see him removed. Since the battle of Murfreesboro, he's brought up his army to its former strength, indeed to a greater strength. This could have been done by nobody else."
For a man who, allegedly, was one of the Confederacy's worst generals, Bragg had a pretty good record. Even so, he was not, in my opinion, an outstanding field commander. He was notoriously inept at getting along with people he disliked, and he had a large number that he didn't like. He completely failed to win the loyalty and support of his chief subordinates. By training and by preference, Bragg was a Regular Army man, ill-suited in many ways to lead a citizen army.
Moreover, he was not healthy enough to command in the field. He couldn't withstand the months of campaigning necessary. Throughout the war, he suffered from rheumatism, dyspepsia, extreme nervousness, and severe migraine headaches. His persistent poor health helped make his temper sour and petulant. Often, he was too sick to command. In the spring of 1863, for example a siege of boils disabled him. At that time, General William J. Hardee said Bragg was too feeble "either to examine and determine his line of battle or to take command on the field." And English Colonel James Freemantle, who was visiting the Army of Tennessee then, wrote in his diary, "He (Bragg) is very thin. He stoops, and he has a sickly, cadaverous, haggard appearance. . ." "During periods of illness and mental depression, Bragg is as much influenced by his enemies as by his friends," said General W.W. Mackall, "and he does not know how to control the one or preserve the other. Sometimes he is blind as a bat to the circumstances surrounding him." Mackall's view was echoed by Dr. J.C. Knott, who told Bragg, "Your best friends admit that your temper is irascible and that, under excitement, you sometimes say harsh things when there is no necessity for it, and sometimes even wound an innocent man."
What I am suggesting is that Bragg's personality prevented him from being more than a mediocre field general. He lacked tactical flexibility. He became unduly excited during battle, and either made hasty decisions or stuck too rigidly to predetermined plans. He was too impatient. He was unable to wait out his opponent. In nearly all of his battles, he was the attacker. He seldom let his army entrench. "General Bragg says heavy entrenchments demoralize our troops," reported President Davis' military aide. Bragg was always too engrossed in the details of moving, disciplining, organizing, and feeding his men to master the broader and more comprehensive duties of a battle leader. Personally, he was courageous. No question about that, but he lacked that quality all great commanders need: the mental strength and will to dominate whatever event or crisis occurs on the battlefield. At Perryville and at Murfreesboro, Bragg lost his nerve. He changed under the strain of combat from a bold aggressor to a cautious retreater.
Because he was not a great battle captain, most writers have made the mistake of dismissing Bragg as an incompetent general. They ignore or minimize his real talents. Besides his administrative ability, Bragg had a good understanding of the South's strategic and material needs. In 1861, he opposed the transfer of the Confederate government to Richmond. Early in the war, he recognized the strategic importance of Georgia. He advocated a crash program of railroad building. He strongly objected to the policy of letting troops elect their own officers. In 1862, he wrote President Davis, "I have not hesitated to express my opinion and to declare I had neither the capacity nor the desire to command troops where the officers were made subservient to the men by this disorganizing and ever reoccurring universal suffrage.
Bragg believed that only a thoroughly unified army, rigidly disciplined, effectively organized, and ably led by young officers could save the Confederacy. In February, 1862, he advised the president that a fundamental change in military policy was necessary. Unless Davis changed his whole strategic thinking, the Confederacy would fail. What Bragg was saying was that Davis was making a mistake in trying to defend every foot of Southern soil. The South must consolidate its forces, and use its interior lines. Along the coast, only a few strategically important points should be held. Bragg advised that Missouri, Texas and Florida be abandoned. He also asserted that the independence of the Confederacy depended upon concentrating Southern forces and destroying a large Union army. Now, all this was sound advice, but Jefferson Davis did not accept it. Instead, he continued his policy of scattering soldiers throughout the South. This satisfied the demands of the various states for protection, but it made the conquest of the Confederacy much easier.
Because of shortsightedness and circumstances, Bragg's greatest talents were never fully used by the Confederacy. Most of his time was spent in the field, where he was unsuited for command. He would have been more valuable to the Confederacy behind the lines, directing and planning operations. Bragg was a "desk" general. Ideally suited to staff work. The problem was that the Confederacy never developed a general staff. As early as March, 1862, General Albert Sidney Johnston recognized Bragg's talent. He made Bragg his army chief of staff, a position, up to this time, unknown in American warfare, but essential to the proper organization and administration of a large army.
Colonel J. Stoddard Johnston, an experienced staff officer, said after the war that Bragg conceived and executed the only truly brilliant strategic move made by the Southern armies during the entire war: the movement of the Army of Mississippi from Tupelo to Chattanooga by rail and the subsequent invasion of Kentucky. In June, 1862, in order to prevent Don Carlos Buell from capturing Chattanooga , Bragg moved 30,000 men from Tupelo to Chattanooga. The journey over six railroads covered 776 miles. It was woefully circuitous. Yet Bragg reached Chattanooga in time to check a Federal invasion of Georgia. His move united two Confederate armies, whose direct line of communication had been severed by the enemy; changed the entire state of war in the West, and provided a splendid offensive opportunity for the South. Moreover, Bragg proved with this move that railroads were now vital factors in strategic planning. Other commanders had used railroads to transport troops and supplies, but Bragg was one of the first generals to use railroads with strategic boldness and imagination.
In Colonel Johnston's opinion, Bragg possessed qualifications which, rightly directed, would have made him as great in the Confederate army as Moltke was in the Prussian army. Congressman Warren Aikens said Bragg should have been Secretary of War. And Generals Beauregard and Howell Cobb thought Bragg should have replaced General Samuel Cooper as adjutant and inspector general of the Confederacy.
Even Bragg's most determined army critic General Polk, believed his commander's ability was being wasted. In March, 1863, Polk wrote Jefferson Davis that Bragg should be transferred "to another field, where his peculiar talent - that of organization and discipline - could find more ample scope. For that kind of service he has, undoubtedly, peculiar talent. His tastes and natural inclinations fit him for it . . . The application of that talent is not always easy or agreeable where it exists, yet there are few armies which would not be benefited by it . . . My opinion is that the general could be of service to all the armies of the Confederacy, if placed in the proper position. Such a position," said Polk, would be that of . . . inspector-general. The whole family of idlers, drones, and shirks, of high or low degree, far and near, would feel his searching hand, and be made to take their place and do their duty."
Instead of immediately adopting Polk's suggestion, Davis waited until after Bragg had failed as a field commander to give him a suitable job. Then, it was too late. By the time Bragg was called to Richmond, in the spring of 1864, as the president's military adviser, Bragg has lost both his military reputation and his self-confidence. He was thoroughly discredited, and he was unable to accomplish anything significant to save the Confederacy.
The irony of his career is that the South desperately needed, but misused, Bragg. He was a great specialist, a man whose genius would have been appreciated and utilized if the Civil War, actually, had been a modern war. Instead, Bragg was a misplaced general, whose talents were squandered.
[A note from the editor. The archives of the Cincinnati CWRT indicate this talk was given to The Civil War Round Table in Chicago, Illinois. Whether or not it was presented to the Cincinnati CWRT is not known . . .]
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