Braxton Bragg (1817 to 1876) was a Confederate general from North Carolina, best known for commanding the Army of Tennessee in the Western Theater of the American Civil War (1861 to 1865). A strict disciplinarian with a short temper, Bragg was generally despised by his troops, and often quarrelled with his subordinate officers. Though he won the bloody Battle of Chickamauga in September 1863, his military track record contained more stalemates and retreats than victories. As such, he was removed from army command in late November 1863, and was instead assigned to the post of chief military advisor to President Jefferson Davis. Today, Bragg is often ranked by historians as one of the worst generals of the Civil War.

Bragg was born on 22 March 1817 in Warrenton, North Carolina, a place described by historian Grady McWhiney as “a pretentious town near the Virginia border” (1). It was an affluent tobacco town of “sharp social distinctions” where nearly half the population was enslaved, and “where citizens of wealth and prominence often disdained their humbler neighbors” (ibid). The Braggs fell into the latter category; indeed, according to rumor, Braxton was born in jail. His mother, Margaret, had been briefly imprisoned after murdering a free Black man for being “impertinent”. Margaret Bragg never stood trial, however, and was released from jail either shortly before or shortly after Braxton’s birth. McWhiney asserts that, other than this rumored episode of racially motivated murder, the Braggs were “law-abiding people” (2).

Braxton’s father, Thomas, was a moderately successful carpenter, who young Braxton apparently admired a great deal - as an adult, Braxton would never mention his mother, but constantly spoke of his father with fondness. Thomas Bragg had big ambitions for his family. He had six sons - one, also named Thomas, would go on to become attorney general for the Confederate States while another, John, would become a politician. While his older sons entered law and politics, the elder Bragg had always envisioned a military career for his younger boy. And so, in 1833, 16-year-old Braxton Bragg was enrolled in the prestigious US Military Academy of West Point, New York. He did quite well, graduating in 1837 fifth in a class of 50 cadets; his fellow classmates included other future Civil War generals such as Joseph Hooker, John Segwick, and Jubal Early.

Commissioned in the US Army as a second lieutenant, Bragg was sent to Florida where he took part in the Second Seminole War. Although he saw no actual combat, the tropical Floridian climate took a toll on his health, and he was constantly sick; he was briefly sent to Philadelphia on recruitment duty to recuperate, but was soon back in Florida. By 1843, he was a company commander in the 3rd Artillery, and was stationed at Fort Moultrie in Charleston, South Carolina. In this post, he proved himself to be a strict disciplinarian, forcing his men to adhere to the exact letter of army regulations.

He also displayed a prickly temper and a fierce sense of honor. Once, when he overheard a fellow soldier refer to his native North Carolina as “a strip of land between two states”, he challenged the man to a duel; he only withdrew the challenge at the behest of his friend, William Tecumseh Sherman. He was also very critical of the army establishment - once referring to General Winfield Scott as a “vain, petty, conniving man” - and wrote several letters urging military reform (quoted in McWhiney, 35).

In 1845, Bragg joined the army of General Zachary Taylor, which had been sent to watch the Rio Grande River amidst a border dispute between Texas and Mexico. This ‘dispute’ - really a provocation engineered by the administration of President James K. Polk - escalated into the, and Taylor’s army began an invasion of Mexico. Bragg was quick to distinguish himself in the fighting; he won a brevet promotion to captain after the Battle of Fort Brown (3 to 9 May 1846) and was breveted to major after the Battle of Monterrey (21 to 24 September 1846).

He soon earned a reputation in Taylor’s army as a disciplinarian, constantly drilling and training his troops. But while this earned him the praise of his superiors, it caused him to be hated by his men; in 1847, Bragg apparently survived two assassination attempts carried out by soldiers under his command. In the second attempt, a 12-pound artillery shell exploded beneath his cot - the cot was destroyed but Bragg escaped unharmed. Though Bragg had his suspicions about who the perpetrators were, he could never produce any evidence, and no one was ever charged.

In February 1847, Bragg won national fame for his actions at the climactic Battle of Buena Vista, where his artillery played a major role in repelling a numerically superior Mexican assault. Bragg also directly supported the Mississippi Rifles, commanded by Colonel Jefferson Davis; the future Confederate president would never forget how Bragg had saved him in the battle. One more anecdote from Buena Vista, which added to Bragg’s postwar fame, was a story that General Taylor himself had ridden over and shouted, “A little more of the grape, Captain Bragg!” (referring to grapeshot, a type of projectile fired from a cannon).

According to the story, Taylor’s encouragement caused Bragg to double his efforts, thereby saving the day. However, according to Taylor’s chief of staff, Colonel Ethan Allen Hitchcock, the tales of Bragg’s heroics were simply overplayed. “The stories of the General in connection with Bragg are all false,” Hitchcock wrote. “ never said, ‘A little more grape, Captain Bragg” (Hitchcock, 349).

Nevertheless, after Buena Vista, Bragg was treated as a war hero throughout the nation. He was presented with a ceremonial sword by the citizens of his hometown of Warrenton, and embarked on a celebratory tour across the country, feted everywhere he went. In 1849, a year after the Mexican-American War had ended, Bragg married Eliza Brooks Ellis, a wealthy woman from Louisiana. He spent the next few years serving in a variety of peacetime military duties before resigning from the army in 1855. Afterward, he and his wife purchased a 1,600-acre sugar plantation in Thibodaux, Louisiana, in which he kept 105 enslaved African Americans.

Throughout the 1850s, the United States found itself in the throes of a heated sectional debate, over whether slavery should be allowed to expand into the 525,000 square miles of Western lands that Bragg and other US soldiers had wrested from Mexico in the last war. The slaveholding states of the South, equating attacks on the institution of slavery with attacks on their sovereignty, began rattling their sabers, threatening to secede from the Union if their ‘rights’ went unrespected.

According to some sources, Bragg initially opposed secession; however, when his adopted state of Louisiana voted to secede in January 1861, Bragg wholeheartedly sided with the secessionists. He was put in command of the state’s militia, a position he held until 7 March, when he accepted a commission as a brigadier general in the Confederate Army. He spent the first year of the American Civil War training Confederate soldiers in and around Florida; it was soon said that his troops were the best-trained soldiers in the entire rebel army.

In February 1862, Bragg and his 10,000 troops went West, to add their strength to the army that Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston was marshaling at Corinth, Mississippi. Shortly thereafter, he commanded a corps under Johnston at the bloody Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee (6 to 7 April). Indeed, Bragg’s corps bore the brunt of the most difficult fighting in the first day of the battle - his men spent hours frontally assaulting a Union salient that would come to be known as the ‘Hornet’s Nest’ for the way the bullets buzzed like hornets. As afternoon approached and the bodies of his men carpeted the ground, Bragg was dismayed to learn that Johnston had been killed, and that his successor, P.G.T. Beauregard, had called off a planned assault. The momentum Bragg felt he had gained was lost as, the next morning, a Union counterattack forced the Confederates to retreat back to Corinth.

On 12 April 1862, Bragg was promoted to the rank of full general, making him one of only seven men to achieve that rank in the history of the Confederacy. A few months later, he replaced Beauregard as commander of the entire western army, now known as the Army of Tennessee. Bragg wasted no time implementing his rigorous discipline – which, in the cases of deserters, meant that they were whipped, branded, and even shot. Sam Watkins, a private in the Army of Tennessee, would later look back on Bragg’s disciplinary measures, asking, “what wonder that General Bragg’s name became a terror to deserters and evil doers? Men were shot by scores…” (31). But even as he enforced discipline, Bragg proved unable to keep his army well-supplied, or fed. Very quickly, his men came to despise him. As Watkins goes on to write:

had no love or respect for General Bragg. When men were to be shot or whipped, the whole army was marched to the horrid scene to see a poor trembling wretch tied to a post and a platoon of twelve men drawn up in line to put him to death, and the hushed command of ‘Ready, aim, fire!’ would make the soldier, or conscript, I should say, loathe the very name of Southern Confederacy…none of General Bragg’s soldiers ever loved him. They had no faith in his ability as a General. He was looked upon as a merciless tyrant. The soldiers were very scantily fed, Bragg was never a good feeder or commissary-general. Rations with us were always scarce…no coffee, whisky, or tobacco were ever allowed to be issued to the troops…these luxuries were withheld in order to crush the very heart and spirit of his troops. We were crushed. Bragg was the great autocrat. In the mind of the soldier, his word was law. He loved to crush the spirit of his men. The more of a hangdog look they had about them, the better was General Bragg pleased. Not a single soldier in the whole army ever loved or respected him (33).

In the summer of 1862, Bragg led his new army out of East Tennessee, in a daring invasion of Kentucky. Though he had doubts about the offensive himself, he was under immense pressure from President Davis to seize control of that border state for the Confederacy. As such, he marched his 16,000 tired and hungry troops into the heart of Kentucky, where he was caught by a numerically superior Union army at the Battle of Perryville (8 October 1862). The fighting was bloody and fierce, with soldiers from both sides desperately trying to gain access to the fresh water held in the creeks and streams to the west of the town. Though the battle resulted in a stalemate, Bragg felt that his position was untenable; worried that his undersupplied army would not be able to withstand an additional day of battle, he decided to cut his losses and withdraw back into Tennessee. Though the decision perhaps saved his army, it cost the Confederates control of Kentucky, which remained in Union hands for the rest of the war.

The following December, a Union army under Major General William S. Rosecrans invaded Middle Tennessee. Rosecrans clashed with Bragg’s army at the Battle of Stones River (31 December 1862 to 2 January 1863); as was his custom, Bragg launched several costly frontal assaults against the Union lines, but to no avail. After losing 11,000 casualties, Bragg once again decided to cut his losses and withdrew from the battlefield. The next summer, Rosecrans outmaneuvered Bragg in the rapid Tullahoma Campaign, forcing him out of Tennessee altogether. By this point, Bragg had fought three campaigns but had lost every one of them - this poor record lost him the respect of his subordinate generals, who were already fed up with his prickly temper. His biggest critic, the bishop-turned-general Leonidas Polk, even wrote a letter directly to President Davis, asking for Bragg’s removal. Still loyal to Bragg for his actions at Buena Vista, Davis refused to fire him; Bragg, however, knew he was on thin ice.

Luckily for him, his ill fortune was about to turn around. On 19 to 20 September 1863, Bragg won a stunning victory over Rosecrans at the Battle of Chickamauga; the battle, which resulted in the rout of Rosecrans’ army, was the most significant Confederate victory in the Western theater of the war. However, it was also the most costly, as Bragg had lost around 18,000 men. Although Chickamauga could have saved his reputation, Bragg failed to exploit his victory, and did not pursue the fleeing Union army. Instead, he laid siege to the Union garrison in Chattanooga, Tennessee; while there, he once again faced dissent from within his own ranks, as his corps commanders clamored for his removal. At the Battles of Chattanooga (23 to 25 November 1863), Bragg’s army was decisively defeated by a Union force led by Ulysses S. Grant. This time, Bragg’s friendship with Davis was not enough to save him. He offered his resignation on 29 November, which was accepted immediately.

Bragg was not entirely sidelined, however. In February 1864, he was summoned to the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, and was appointed chief military advisor to the president. Though he had been a lackluster army commander, in this position, Bragg could utilize his administrative skills to his utmost ability. He improved the Confederate Army’s supply system, streamlined the conscription process, and reduced corruption. President Davis also greatly valued Bragg’s advice; although he did not always agree with his advisor, Davis always sought Bragg’s counsel before making any major military decisions.

In October 1864, Bragg had regained enough favor to take on a new field command, and was put in charge of the defenses of Wilmington, North Carolina. In January 1865, he commanded the Confederate forces in the Second Battle of Fort Fisher - however, he was defeated, and the Union captured the fort, which had held great strategic significance and had been known as the ‘Gibraltar of the South’. In the last months of the war, Bragg commanded a corps in the army of General Joseph E. Johnston, and fought at the Battle of Bentonville (19 to 21 March 1865), one of the war’s last great battles. After the fall of Richmond on 2 April 1865, Bragg met up with the Davis administration when it fled to the town of Abbeville, South Carolina. Unable to countenance surrender, Bragg urged his friend to carry on the fight and rally the remaining Confederate forces. Bragg left Abbeville with his staff, but was captured by Federal forces in Georgia on 9 May.

After the war, Bragg found he could not return home - his Louisiana plantation had been confiscated by Federal troops, and had been turned into a refuge for former slaves. He and his wife, therefore, moved in with his brother. Over the course of the next few years, he worked a variety of civilian jobs, including as an agent for a life insurance company and a railroad inspector. In July 1874, he moved to Texas to take a job as chief engineer of the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe Railway. However, his temperament was still as touchy as it had ever been, and he often argued with the Board of Directors, resulting in his resignation after only a year on the job.

On 27 September 1876, Bragg was walking down a street in Galveston, Texas, when he suddenly collapsed. He was subsequently pulled into a drugstore, but within ten minutes, he was dead, at the age of 59. Bragg left behind a legacy as one of the most cruel, disciplinary, and incompetent Confederate generals, although some scholars have blamed external factors - such as the insubordination of his officers - for his poor performance. In any case, Bragg remains an important figure in the short history of the Southern Confederacy.