4.5
Braxton Bragg
ByPublisher Description
As a leading Confederate general, Braxton Bragg (1817–1876) earned a reputation for incompetence, for wantonly shooting his own soldiers, and for losing battles. This public image established him not only as a scapegoat for the South’s military failures but also as the chief whipping boy of the Confederacy. The strongly negative opinions of Bragg’s contemporaries have continued to color assessments of the general’s military career and character by generations of historians. Rather than take these assessments at face value, Earl J. Hess’s biography offers a much more balanced account of Bragg, the man and the officer.
While Hess analyzes Bragg’s many campaigns and battles, he also emphasizes how his contemporaries viewed his successes and failures and how these reactions affected Bragg both personally and professionally. The testimony and opinions of other members of the Confederate army — including Bragg’s superiors, his fellow generals, and his subordinates — reveal how the general became a symbol for the larger military failures that undid the Confederacy. By connecting the general’s personal life to his military career, Hess positions Bragg as a figure saddled with unwarranted infamy and humanizes him as a flawed yet misunderstood figure in Civil War history.
While Hess analyzes Bragg’s many campaigns and battles, he also emphasizes how his contemporaries viewed his successes and failures and how these reactions affected Bragg both personally and professionally. The testimony and opinions of other members of the Confederate army — including Bragg’s superiors, his fellow generals, and his subordinates — reveal how the general became a symbol for the larger military failures that undid the Confederacy. By connecting the general’s personal life to his military career, Hess positions Bragg as a figure saddled with unwarranted infamy and humanizes him as a flawed yet misunderstood figure in Civil War history.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesBraxton Bragg Reviews
4.5
John Marchetti
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creightonw
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“Most people think of Braxton Bragg in a negative light when it comes to the civil war. He’s considered by many a bad general, but it doesn’t stop there: He’s been accused of executing high numbers of soldiers for breaking rules, he’s accused of being a lackey for Jefferson Davis, and he is scapegoated, in my opinion, for the south’s defeat. For years, people have dismissed Bragg, and have tended to view Joseph Johnston, and others who did worse in a brighter light, as better generals. People criticize Bragg for his corps command at Shiloh, his offensive into Kentucky, his actions at Murfreesborough, his actions during the Tullahoma campaign, and they never give this man a break. After Reading Braxton Bragg: The Most Hated Man in the Confederacy, I feel this man has been wrongly judged, and misunderstood. While he did make mistakes, and had his faults, Bragg overall was not as bad a commander as people portray him, in fact, Robert E Lee committed many similar blunders, but is showered with praise.
Hess discredits the myth of Braggs executions, proving that often times he was lenient, (Also, if you research outside of this book, you’ll find that Robert E Lee, and Joseph Johnston ordered far more executions than Bragg did) but was also weighed down by his subordinate commanders such as Hardee, Longstreet, and Breckinridge. He was not a lackey for Jefferson Davis, Bragg disliked Davis before the war began; as the war reached it’s end, and after the war, Davis and Bragg did develop a friendship. Often times, it seems Braggs negative image was fostered by newspapers and journalists whom Bragg didn’t care to bother with, because he was more focused on his work as a general. Another thing that Bragg gets negativity for is his supposed “defeats” at Perryville and Stones River (Murfreesborough). To give some background, during the civil war, the public had this notion of what it termed as victories and defeats. If two armies clashed, and one retreated from the field, it was a victory for whichever army did not retreat. Bragg retreated from Perryville, and from Stones river, while at both, he battered the union army pretty good.
In my studies of the American Civil War, I generally have tried to keep an objective mindset, and not trying to form negative opinions on generals, because I still have a lot to read and learn, but I didn’t exactly see Bragg in a positive light. I was in a conversation with someone on the internet, and they talked highly about Bragg, and for a long time, I didn’t take them seriously; however, they recommended this book to me. I have heard of Earl J Hess before, and I have quite a few of his books on my Wishlist. I bought this on E-book a year back, but I had to have a physical copy, and I finally got it last week. After finishing another civil war book, I started reading this, and immediately, I felt my perceptions change about Bragg. Hess's work is not a biography, but more or less an unmasking of a truth. History lies in the heart of the debate, and people should know that historians seek to find the fundamental truth of historical events; while they test new theories with old established theories; sometimes an old, established notion about a historical event is no longer true, and it is the job of the historian to champion such a process. This is what Hess has done; he has proved that the old historical notion of Bragg being a bad commander is not true, and through his own analysis, the old historical notions cannot stand up to his.”
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