March 22, 1817–September 27, 1876
HIGHEST RANK:
Confederate General
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN:
Aries
WORDS TO REMEMBER:
“In many efforts, I believe I never made but one successful speech—and that was, in a few words, when I courted my wife—the result then being due less to any merit either in the speech or the speaker than to an unfortunate habit with young ladies of deciding more from impulse than reason, by which, as in my case, they are too apt to be unfortunate.”
Of all the Americans who acquired national fame in the Mexican War, few emerged with a greater reputation than Braxton Bragg. A stickler for drill, detail, and discipline, he had earned a reputation as something of a martinet. But on February 23, 1847, he got a chance to show the world that he was also one hell of an officer.
On that day, near a hacienda named Buena Vista, General Zachary Taylor’s ambition got him into trouble. Irate over the fact that the Polk administration had stripped his units to build up Winfield Scott’s army for the climactic march on Mexico City, Taylor—ordered to sit on his hands at Monterey—decided instead to march his much-depleted force south to scare up a fight. He got one in spades at Buena Vista, where a much larger force of Mexicans prepared to cut his little command to ribbons. In the spirited clash that followed, Bragg moved his “flying battery” of horse artillery with an alacrity that few, except him, thought possible. After racing all the way to the far left from his position on the far right, Bragg helped defeat a determined Mexican flanking attack. He then unlimbered all but the essentials and ran his battery toward the center of the front line where another Mexican attack appeared imminent. There, deprived of infantry support and looking at a determined mass of enemy troops bearing down on him, Captain Bragg calmly instructed his men to load and fire their guns as quickly as they were able, using deadly canister to decimate the enemy ranks. With remarkable self-control, they waited until the Mexican infantry was practically within spitting range before opening up on them. From there they kept up a destructive tempo, savaging their assailants and completely blunting the attack with but three pieces of field artillery. It was an unforgettable spectacle of sheer nerve.
During the War with Mexico, an irate colleague placed an eight-inch shell under Braxton Bragg’s bunk—and then ignited the shell with a trail of gunpowder. The mattress was destroyed, but Bragg walked away without a scratch.
A legendary exchange was purported to have taken place between Bragg and his superior, Taylor. After asking for support, Bragg is supposed to have been told by Old Zach that there was none to give and that he should “double shot your guns and give ’em hell!” For reasons that are lost to history, Taylor’s rustic command was twisted by the popular press and imagination into “Give them a little more grape, Captain Bragg,” a phrase that was not only inaccurate but disturbingly affected for a guy whose nickname was “Old Rough ‘n’ Ready.” Other accounts insist that Taylor shouted simply, “Stand to your guns and give ’em hell!” Still another asserts that an adjutant delivered the message from Taylor, which was “Tell him to give ’em hell, God damn him!” (This option, with a maximum of mild vulgarity, is probably correct, given Zachary Taylor’s penchant for colorful speech.)
In fact, it is entirely possible that no such exchange occurred at all. But it helped determine the fortunes of the two men involved. Zachary Taylor, an apolitical soldier who nevertheless opposed the regime of President Polk and General Winfield Scott, rode into the White House partly because voters have a soft spot for leather-faced war heroes who shout stuff like “hell,” “Goddam,” and “double-shot.” And as for Bragg: well, it wasn’t long at all before parties back home were toasting the man who had dashed those Mexican devils with “a little more grape”—parties that relied on wine to provide a double entendre that was impossible to resist.
The most celebratory of those fetes were thrown in his hometown of Warrenton, North Carolina. And that was a little awkward, because the society folks of Warrenton had never looked favorably upon the Braggs, who were widely dismissed as lowborn trash. Braxton Bragg, the son of a carpenter, had come home a virtual Caesar to be lauded by the aristocratic jackasses who used to laugh at him. In fact, he was better educated than most of them. Schooled at the excellent local academy for the entirety of his youth, he received his free education at West Point and graduated fifth in a class of fifty. Stationed in Florida during the Seminole Wars, Bragg went on to a series of frontier postings before finding fame, and three brevets, in the War with Mexico. Bragg exerted himself in the postwar army as a supreme disciplinarian and malcontent—a man whose adherence to the book, and disputatiousness on its behalf, earned as many foes as it did admirers. This, unfortunately, was to become a major part of his legacy.
But not until the nation tore itself apart. Long before then, Bragg—now a married man—left the army for richer pursuits. He became a sugar planter in Louisiana and managed to secure the position of commissioner of public works for the state. But like so many who left the army for brighter pursuits in those days, he was on a hiatus without knowing it.
In the mounting sectional crisis, Louisiana, in which Bragg lived and did business, understood his worth as a soldier in case of war. In January 1861, Bragg, appointed a major general of state troops, accepted the surrender of the Baton Rouge armory—his first bit of official business as a secessionist officer. By September 1861, he was a major general in the Confederate army, placed in charge of the Department of Alabama and West Florida. There he exercised what was his greatest gift: an ability to turn recruits into soldiers through adherence to discipline and endless drilling. By the time he left the department, his troops were easily some of the finest in the Rebel army.
They would have to be, too, because they were headed for some of the toughest fighting of the war. Bragg led them up to Mississippi, where Confederate forces were strung out and divided under a confusing command structure that would never get much better and that would essentially doom Rebel efforts in the West. At Corinth, Bragg contributed his excellent troops to the army gathering under Albert Sidney Johnston for a strike at Pittsburg Landing, where forty thousand of Ulysses Grant’s troops were waiting to be joined by reinforcements. Johnston, determined to bring structure to his hodgepodge host, made P. G. T. Beauregard his second-in-command. Bragg, appointed chief of staff and given command of a corps, set about training, equipping, and organizing Johnston’s army, a Herculean task for which, all agreed, he was ideally suited. Time was of the essence, however, and the army marched toward the enemy before Bragg was able to complete the job to his satisfaction. Now in charge of his corps, he would fight the ensuing battle at Shiloh as a combat general, not as chief of staff. And if he excelled at administrative responsibilities, he was adequate at best at tactics. While Bragg and his fellow commanders managed to whip the Yankees on the first day of the struggle, their overtaxed and disorganized troops were shoved back off the battlefield the following day by Grant. Relying on outdated frontal assaults (Bragg, like many of his contemporaries in both armies, maintained a glassy-eyed love affair with the bayonet), the Confederate commanders had thrown away many of the men Bragg had toiled so hard to turn into soldiers. The Rebels, having finally massed their disparate armies for a concentrated strike, had blown it.
They had also lost Albert Sidney Johnston. Beauregard took his place, but wilted from a bout of interminable illness. The Confederates soon lost Corinth and Beauregard as well—he went on sick leave without permission and brought down the wrath of President Davis. Bragg, having already been promoted to full general, was now in charge.
Starting off with a bang in August 1862, Bragg invaded Kentucky to draw Union attention away from Western Tennessee, to get his army fat on the bounty of the bluegrass state, and to recruit all the pro-South men he was convinced awaited him there. After capturing a Union force at Munfordville and moving on to Bardstown, Bragg watched with pride as Richard Hawes was inaugurated the provisional Confederate governor of Kentucky.
Then things started going south—literally. Turned back by Federals under Buell at the Battle of Perryville, Bragg was compelled to retreat back into Tennessee. There, the following December, he fought a larger force under William Rosecrans at Murfreesboro in what could have been a stunning victory. But ill-advised assaults and the mishandling of troops by Bragg and his subordinates resulted in a bloodbath for both sides that achieved little except to convince Bragg that he should withdraw again. The Kentucky dream was dashed.
And so was confidence in Braxton Bragg. From newspaper editors to government officials to officers and men in the Army of Tennessee itself, derision was heaped on the man who had become a symbol of Rebel failure in the Western theater. One of his division commanders, Franklin Cheatham, vowed he would never serve under Bragg again, while at least two of his corps commanders begged the president himself to replace Bragg. General John Breckinridge, former vice president of the United States and now one of Bragg’s principal subordinates, came close to challenging Bragg to a duel. Stunned by the widespread acrimony, Bragg formally asked his staff and corps commanders to give their honest opinions on whether or not he should be relieved. Almost to a man, they agreed that he should.
How had things come to such a pass? To be sure, Bragg’s Kentucky campaign and its aftermath had been poorly directed. Many in the Confederacy believed that neither Perryville nor Murfreesboro were bad enough to retreat from; indeed, both were widely regarded as tactical victories that Bragg had simply thrown away. And he continued to use battle tactics that were simplistic, outdated, and unwise by turns. But plenty of his subordinates had made mistakes as well.
In fact, it wasn’t just Bragg’s leadership failures that were driving everyone nuts. It was also his personal failures. Bragg was a disputatious, curmudgeonly, irritable tyrant—qualities that seemed to find physical manifestation in the black, bushy eyebrows that met seamlessly atop his merciless gaze. He could not learn to set aside feelings for those he didn’t like, and he lacked the charisma to secure the loyalty of those he did. His temper was legendary, as was his insistence on doing everything by the book, a supremely impractical trait when leading an army of citizen volunteers. He led by forcing, shoving, and yelling, rather than by example. He was devoid of the personal touch, and the widening gap between him and his subordinates served only to make him harsher and more difficult to get along with. When added to a growing belief that the general lacked imagination and grit in the face of the enemy, it is hardly surprising that Bragg’s command was in a lather.
But he wasn’t going anywhere, at least not yet. General Joseph Johnston, sent by President Davis to investigate the Army of Tennessee, did not conclude that its commander should be replaced, despite the fact that several of Bragg’s lieutenants begged Johnston to take his place. William Rosecrans came after him again, driving him from Tullahoma to Chattanooga and ultimately to Georgia. By this time some of Bragg’s subordinates simply began ignoring his orders, making his subsequent triumph at Chickamauga the following September a minor miracle. Reinforced by troops under James Longstreet, Bragg whipped “Old Rosey” in two days of hard fighting, forcing the Federals back into the confines of Chattanooga. Bragg, having determined to take the city at all costs, invested it and settled into a siege.
That was probably a bad idea. His increasingly worn-out army was in no position to force the Federals to do anything, especially after sending part of it away with Longstreet to lay siege to Knoxville. Flagrant disobedience amongst his officers had grown to outrageous levels. Besides, Ulysses Grant soon showed up and began turning the Chattanooga forces around. He struck in November, breaking Bragg’s siege—and his army—in a series of brilliant strikes. The Army of Tennessee was a mess.
Even Davis, who had stood by Bragg for so long, had had enough. As for Bragg himself, he was finished as a commanding general. Always more sensitive than he let on, he was exhausted—emotionally and physically—from the hostility toward him that he struggled to understand and ameliorate. After tendering his resignation (which Davis accepted with disturbing rapidity), the irascible North Carolinian went into temporary retirement, and then was brought back to Richmond in a classic example of being “kicked upstairs.” There he acted as the president’s military advisor, much as Robert E. Lee had once done. Though certainly a better position for Bragg than that of army commander, it did little to better the man’s reputation. Bragg tackled the government’s embattled supply, recruitment, and administrative systems, but with mixed results. Ineffectual in the face of circumstances that made the government’s cause seem increasingly hopeless, Bragg was reassigned to a series of field commands, from Virginia to Georgia to the Carolinas.
His professional fortunes were soon as bad as those of the country he served. In the summer of 1864, Bragg, as Davis’s advisor, had sacked Joseph Johnston, the general who had replaced him as commander of the Army of Tennessee. Now back in the field, Bragg found himself coming under the jurisdiction of Johnston, whom Robert E. Lee, newly appointed general in chief of all the Rebel armies, had put back at the head of the Army of Tennessee (or, to be precise, what remained of it). Such turns of fate would be humiliating to anyone. But to a haughty fellow like Bragg, they cut to the bone. He was back with Davis and the government for the flight south and exile, then, with his wife, took a separate course. They were caught in Georgia on May 10.
Bragg went on to better, if not bigger, things in the wake of the war that had annihilated his reputation and nearly destroyed his health. He served as superintendent of the New Orleans waterworks and secured the post of chief engineer of the state of Alabama. Bitter and argumentative, Bragg never forgave either side in the war: the North for doing what it did, and the South for letting it happen. “The war is over, but there is no peace, and never can be between two such people.” Not long after moving to Galveston, Texas, he fell dead in the street while walking with an associate. He was just fifty-nine years old, though he looked much, much older.
JAILBIRD
According to biographer Grady McWhiney, Braxton Bragg never mentioned his mother once in all the countless letters of his that have survived. Perhaps it’s because she did time in a North Carolina prison for murder. While pregnant with Braxton, Mrs. Bragg was convicted of killing a free African American. It is not known how long she spent behind bars—indeed, some sources contend that Braxton was born in jail, though it seems likely that his mother was released just in time to give birth. At any rate, Braxton—already conscious of his lower-class standing in the Warrenton community—must not have appreciated the added infamy of a mother who had been an imprisoned killer.
STICK THAT IN YOUR SUGGESTION BOX
While stationed outside Monterey during the War with Mexico, Braxton Bragg was left in charge of the camp by his superior, who preferred to stay in the city. As commander, Bragg soon galvanized his reputation as the finest disciplinarian in the army—a distinction that earned him at least as many detractors as supporters. “I am somewhat obnoxious to a few,” he wrote in a letter, a dramatic understatement. That someone was willing to bring his reign of terror to an end was brought violently home when two attempts were made on Bragg’s life. Though little is known about the first, the second was certainly dramatic, if nothing else. Someone managed to place an eight-inch shell underneath the authoritarian’s bed while he was asleep, then set if off by way of a trail of power that led out the door. The ensuing explosion, though tremendous, did more damage to Bragg’s mattress than anything else. Incredibly, he walked away from the incident with little more than a ringing in his ear.
Nobody was ever caught for the crime. And as for Bragg, he never lost his ardent belief in stern discipline.
SICK AND TIRED OF BEING SICK AND TIRED
In 1837 Bragg was stationed in Florida to fight Seminole Indians. Within a very short time he was requesting sick leave, having succumbed to the prolific climate and its numerous pathogens. Worse, he never actually recovered. Bragg’s ill health seemed a physical manifestation of his sour, spiteful personality. The two fed on each other; in fact, his biographers assert that his symptoms may have been psychosomatic. If some people wore their heart on their sleeves, Bragg seemed to wear his on his skin, temples, joints, and stomach. From boils to migraines, dyspepsia to rheumatism, Bragg sank with time into a vicious round-robin of ailments, a cycle that always increased in intensity when the burdens of his command became greatest. By 1863 he looked like a veritable ghoul. “He is very thin,” reported one observer. “He stoops, and has a sickly, cadaverous, haggard appearance.” And with doctors prescribing mercury and opium as palliatives, Bragg was likelier to feel worse than better. Under these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that some of his officers and men spoke of Bragg’s habit of getting muddle-headed in combat.