Braxton Bragg and Confederate Defeat: Volume 1. By Grady McWhiney. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1969.

     Braxton Bragg, the longest serving commander of the Confederate Army of Tennessee, earned the dubious distinction of being perhaps the most hated of all Confederate generals, a position he occupied both during and after the war. In Braxton Bragg and Confederate Defeat: Volume I, celebrated Southern historian Grady McWhiney recounts the amazing meteoric rise of Bragg to command of the army and his subsequent, equally sudden fall from favor. This volume examines Bragg’s early life and career until early 1863, after his controversial defeat at Murfreesboro, Tennessee. A second volume, written by historian Judith Lee Hallock, continues Bragg’s biography throughout the rest of the war and his later life. 

     McWhiney’s study is well researched and utilizes a number of primary and secondary sources that depict in detail the numerous strengths and fatal flaws of Bragg’s character. In his work, McWhiney illustrates Bragg’s early life and childhood in North Carolina, where Bragg’s family endured harsh treatment from more affluent families, to his solid West Point career and Mexican War record, where he distinguished himself in a number of actions, most notably at the battle of Buena Vista. After returning from the Mexican war as a national hero, Bragg earned a reputation as being one of the most capable and quarrelsome officers in the antebellum army. Personally brave and dedicated, Bragg possessed no patience for those who did not measure up to his high standards of duty, regardless of whether they were subordinates or superiors. Brutally honest and forthright, Bragg waged fierce bureaucratic battles with his enemies, including then Secretary of War Jefferson Davis. However, Bragg also made a number of close friends during his frontier service, including future Union Generals George H. Thomas and William T. Sherman. After resigning from the military in 1856, Bragg became a successful sugar planter in Louisiana, where he remained until the secession crisis of 1861.

     At the outbreak of the war, Bragg commanded Confederate forces besieging Fort Pickens in Pensacola Florida, where he established himself as one of the finest drillmasters and disciplinarians of the undisciplined Southern volunteers. Transferred to Albert Sidney Johnston’s Army of the Mississippi, Bragg performed valuable service reorganizing the chaotic Confederate concentration at Corinth, Mississippi, and despite tactical errors, capably commanded a corps at Shiloh. In June 1862, After Johnston’s death in battle and P.G.T. Beauregard’s incapacitating illness, Bragg received appointment as the commander of the renamed Army of Tennessee, whereupon he embarked on one of the most daring Confederate offensives of the war by outmaneuvering the opposing Union Army and invading Kentucky. Repulsed at the battle of Perryville, Bragg retreated to Tennessee, where he fought a vicious and nearly successful counteroffensive at the battle of Murfreesboro. After another disappointing retreat, Bragg found himself severely criticized by subordinates and nearly removed from command, but was ultimately retained by President Davis. This period of the war marks the end of McWhiney’s volume, which is completed by Hallock’s sequel.

     Although possessing many valuable traits and skills for administration that the South desperately needed, Bragg proved himself unfit for tactical command of the Army of Tennessee. In the end, McWhiney declares that one of the “great ironies of Confederate military history is that Jefferson Davis, who prided himself so on his knowledge of the capabilities of those former regular army officers who fought for the South, failed early in the war to assign Bragg to a position where his talents could be used best” (391-392). Instead of appointing Bragg to duties where his dedicated attention to detail and natural talent for organization could be best utilized, McWhiney concludes that “the President had placed and retained Bragg in a post—as commander of the Confederacy’s second most important army—where he made a major contribution to Confederate defeat” (392).

Than Dossman