Braxton Bragg: The Most Hated Man of the Confederacy by Earl J. Hess (review)

If there is one thing most military historians of the Civil War can agree upon, it is this: Gen. Braxton Bragg failed as the main Confederate commander in the western theater. Historians may differ as to which trait ultimately sunk Bragg's leadership, whether it be poor operational and strategic command, thin-skinned sensitivity to criticism, overaggressive use of force against deserters, or under-aggressive use of force against the Federal enemy. No matter whether Bragg emerged from specific battles victorious or not, he continually retreated southward—from Perryville, Kentucky, to Murfreesboro, Tennessee; from Murfreesboro to Tullahoma, from Tullahoma to Chickamauga—and then, even after a major breakthrough on that bloody North Georgia battlefield, ignominious defeat at Missionary Ridge in Chattanooga. Bragg had few strategic victories with which to silence his many critics, both inside and outside of the Confederate army. His reputation never recovered.

But is Bragg's universally besmirched reputation justified? Perhaps no historian is better qualified to reassess General Bragg than Earl Hess, arguably the finest historian of the western theater today. Hess brings his typical logical acuity, thorough research and clear prose, to bear in his latest work, Braxton Bragg: The Most Hated Man of the Confederacy. Hess concludes that contemporaries and later historians largely exaggerated Bragg's negative reputation but that Bragg undermined his own case by engaging in quixotic and public critical campaigns against top subordinates after the battle of Stones River in January 1863.

Bragg started his career in the Confederate army auspiciously, moving from Pensacola to Shiloh. Following that devastating loss on April 7, 1862, Bragg helped reorganize and reinvigorate what would be called the Army of the Mississippi (later Army of Tennessee). Riding the rails from Tupelo, Mississippi, to the Gulf and then back up through Alabama and Georgia to Chattanooga, Bragg turned a demoralized Confederate army into a well-disciplined fighting force. He then headed for Kentucky to support E. Kirby Smith's invasion in hopes of securing the Bluegrass State for the Confederacy. The first signs of trouble appeared for Bragg in Kentucky. Criticized for failing to attack Don Carlos Buell's Union forces at Munfordville, Bragg later watched as his top subordinate, Leonidas Polk botched his early attack order at Perryville. Bragg finally rendezvoused with Kirby Smith after Perryville but by then concluded that the campaign was a strategic failure. Not enough in order to survive Union occupation, Kentuckians joined Bragg's army. When Bragg decided to leave for Tennessee, the "Kentucky Clique" around Kirby Smith—including John C. Breckinridge, William Preston, and Simon Bolivar Buckner—grew outraged at Bragg's supposed abandonment of the Bluegrass Confederate dream. But Hess rightly defends Bragg on this point: Buell's army was getting stronger, and the timing to take Kentucky into the Confederacy was poor (partly because of deft management of the emancipation issue in fall 1862, which would later sour Kentuckians on the Union).

At Stones River on December 31, Bragg may have experienced his finest moment as a commander, only to see his hard-earned victory squandered by Breckinridge's division, which ran head on into thundering artillery fire on January 2. Bragg called for retreat toward the Duck River and came in for criticism for yielding what had seemed to be hard-earned ground a few days before. According to Hess, this is when Bragg's prickly personality got the best of him. He engaged in a public "round robin letter" that aired the renamed Army of Tennessee's dirty laundry. It was clear that Bragg's relationship with top corps and division commanders—Polk, William Hardee, Breckinridge, and Hindman in particular—had become poisonous. When Bragg retreated past Tullahoma and then into Georgia, his subordinates continued to pounce, even though they were often to blame for poor battlefield management. Despite a fortuitous breakthrough at Chickamauga—thanks in large part to the timely arrival of James...