Braxton Bragg: The Most Hated Man of the Confederacy

By Earl J. Hess

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Release date: Sep 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9781469628769

Earl J. Hess

Earl J. Hess is Stewart W. McClelland Chair in History at Lincoln Memorial University and award-winning author of many books on the Civil War, including, most recently, Fighting for Atlanta: Tactics, Terrain, and Trenches in the Civil War.

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Chapter 1: The Making of a Southern Patriot

Braxton Bragg came from a successful middle-class family in the Upper South. His father Thomas Bragg owned slaves and made a living by contracting the construction of various buildings in the state. Born in Warrenton, North Carolina, on March 21, 1817, Braxton had eleven brothers and sisters. The eldest, John, graduated from the University of North Carolina and served in the U.S. Congress and as a judge in his adopted state of Alabama. Thomas Bragg Jr. graduated from Captain Partridge’s Military Academy in Middleton, Connecticut, and later served as governor of North Carolina and attorney general of the Confederate government. Brother Alexander was an architect, Dunbar was a merchant in Texas, and William, the youngest son, was killed in the Civil War. Thomas Bragg Sr. fathered six daughters as well.¹

A tragic incident accompanied the family history. Braxton’s mother, Margaret Bragg, shot and killed a free black man who apparently spoke impertinently to her one day. She was arrested and held in jail for a while before being acquitted in a jury trial. The exact date of this incident remains unclear, leading some historians to speculate that she may have been pregnant with Braxton at the time. Moreover, historians have also speculated that the incident made an impression on the young Braxton when he became old enough to understand it. Grady McWhiney states that this unquestionably affected Braxton. Consciously or subconsciously he may have been ashamed of his mother’s jail record, McWhiney continued, even though there is no evidence to support such a conclusion. This incident seems the only explanation for Bragg’s sensitivity and fierce resolve to prove his standing in society, in McWhiney’s view.²

One ought to be able to support such a conclusion with documentary evidence, but there simply is none to use in this argument. Bragg’s many battles with other men throughout his life do not need such a hypothetical explanation, for there are many other ways of interpreting that part of his contentious personality.

THOMAS BRAGG SR. A builder and contractor in North Carolina, Bragg fathered five sons and six daughters. One son, John Bragg, served in the U.S. Congress; another, Thomas Bragg Jr., was governor of North Carolina and attorney general in the Confederate government; and Braxton Bragg was a full general in the Confederate army. (Bragg Family Photographs, ADAH)

Bragg’s lot in life was a military career; it suited him professionally and temperamentally, and he became a superb soldier. After graduating fifth in a class of fifty cadets from the U.S. Military Academy in 1837, the very year that the Second Seminole War broke out, his first assignment was in Florida to fight Native Americans as a second lieutenant in the 3rd U.S. Artillery. The next year he became seriously ill and never fully recovered from the effects of malaria. In fact, the young lieutenant was given a sick leave in 1838 to recuperate before returning to duty.³

Although Bragg saw no combat in Florida or during his participation in Indian Removal, his professional advancement was impressive. He served as adjutant of his artillery regiment and was promoted to first lieutenant on July 7, 1838, captain eight years later, major in 1846, and lieutenant colonel dating from the battle of Buena Vista in 1847.⁴

But Bragg’s rise was not without trouble. His contentious personality came to the fore within the context of soldiering. Because he had a strong tendency to analyze the army’s system and find it wanting, he often wrote testy letters to officers as well as politicians who might be interested in reforming the military establishment. While serving at various posts, Bragg became acquainted with many other officers and developed friendships with some, including William T. Sherman. But he also rubbed many other colleagues the wrong way. Erasmus D. Keyes remembered Bragg from their mutual service in South Carolina as ambitious, but being of a saturnine disposition and morbid temperament, his ambition was of the vitriolic kind. Keyes recognized that Bragg was intelligent and the exact performance of all his military duties added force to his pernicious influence.⁵

Keyes also recalled that Bragg had already developed into a fierce defender of his native region by the mid-1840s. He could see nothing bad in the South and little good in the North, although he was disposed to smile on his satelites and sycophants wheresoever they came. Keyes failed to get along with Bragg because the Northerner was not disposed to concede to his intolerant sectionalism. Forty years later, Sherman recalled an incident wherein he mediated to prevent a duel between Bragg and a correspondent of the Charleston Mercury. The newspaperman disparaged North Carolina while making a toast at an Independence Day banquet in 1845, calling it a strip of land lying between two States. Bragg challenged him to a duel. Friends asked Sherman and John F. Reynolds to stop it, and Sherman was able to convince the correspondent to "admit that North Carolina was a State in the Union, claiming to be a Carolina, though not comparable with South Carolina." Sherman recalled this incident with a good deal of sardonic humor, but it is obvious that Bragg’s hotheaded defense of his home state nearly resulted in bloodshed.⁶

Bragg was ready, in short, to take on all comers. He certainly had no hesitation in taking on the U.S. Army. The young officer wrote a series of nine articles that were published in the Southern Literary Messenger in 1844–45, all of them highly critical of army administration and organization. He did not spare certain high-level individuals as well. Although Bragg signed these articles A Subaltern, it soon became common knowledge that he was the author. The person targeted for the most criticism was Winfield Scott, general-in-chief of the army. Many of Bragg’s suggested reforms were needed, but the tone of his articles was very unkind and unprofessional. That tone brought nothing but trouble. Bragg applied for a leave of absence, being deliberately vague about its purpose, and used it to travel to Washington, D.C., in March 1844. There he lobbied various congressmen regarding his proposed army reforms. When the adjutant general learned of this, he ordered Bragg to leave, but the ambitious young man refused and continued his lobbying efforts, testifying before a congressional committee. Bragg was arrested, tried, and found guilty of disrespect. Unfortunately, he was given a light punishment, and it failed to instill any sense of regret or repentance.⁷

Grady McWhiney has aptly written of Bragg’s distinction as the most cantankerous man in the Army. He had been court-martialed and convicted; he had been censured by the Secretary of War, the Adjutant General, and the Commander of the Eastern Division. No other junior officer could boast of so many high ranking enemies.⁸

The Mexican War offered Bragg a distraction from his obsession with military reform. He commanded one of only two light batteries in the army, joining Zachary Taylor’s field force in southern Texas in 1846. His unit participated in Taylor’s capture of Monterey in September of that year, but the battle of Buena Vista on February 23, 1847, created national fame for the young officer. Outnumbered three to one, Taylor’s army of mostly untried volunteer troops was sorely pressed. If not for the steadiness of the few regular units, the American position might well have collapsed. The widely circulated story that Taylor encouraged Bragg by telling him to fire a little more grape is certainly apocryphal. Bragg himself later told acquaintances that Taylor really said, Give them hell!⁹

Buena Vista marked the beginning of Bragg’s relationship with Jefferson Davis, whose Mississippi regiment did well in the battle. In his official report, Davis praised Bragg’s handling of the guns: We saw the enemy’s infantry advancing in three lines upon Capt. Bragg’s battery; which, though entirely unsupported, resolutely held it’s position, and met the attack, with a fire worthy of the former achievements of that battery, and of the reputation of it’s present meritorious commander. In fact, Davis moved his Mississippians to support Bragg and helped the artillery drive away yet another Mexican attack.¹⁰

Bragg praised Davis’s regiment as one of the few reliable volunteer units with Taylor’s army. In general, his criticism of volunteers was deep and intense. Humphrey Marshall had graduated from West Point but commanded volunteers in Mexico. He was at Buena Vista, Bragg told his brother John, where his regiment did some fine running & no fighting, as all mounted volunteers ever will do. He is a great humbug and a superficial tho fluent fool.¹¹

The fame accorded Bragg at Buena Vista did not turn the officer’s head. He continued to serve dutifully even though suffering two severe attacks of malaria in the summer of 1847. During this time period one of Bragg’s artillerymen tried to kill him, but the motive remains obscure. Samuel B. Church placed a loaded and fused twelve-pounder shell outside Bragg’s tent on August 26, 1847. Although exploding only two feet from the sleeping officer, the shell failed to injure him. At the time no one knew who planted the bomb, and Church was free to try another in October 1847 but failed again. He later deserted the battery and was hanged as a horse thief.¹²

ELISE BRAGG. Commonly known as Elise, Eliza Brooks Ellis was born in Mississippi and lived on the family’s Evergreen plantation near Thibodeaux, Louisiana. She and Braxton Bragg married in 1849. (Confederate Veteran 4 [1896]: 103)

Buena Vista fame translated into social advancement for Bragg. He was greeted as a hero in many Southern cities after the war, and it was during one such reception that he met his future wife. Eliza Brooks Ellis, more familiarly known as Elise, was the oldest daughter of Richard Gaillard Ellis and Mary June Towson Ellis. She had been born in Mississippi and was for a time a schoolmate of the future Mrs. Jefferson Davis. The family estate, a sugar and cotton plantation called Evergreen, was located in Terre Bonne Parish, Louisiana. Elise met Bragg at a ball given in his honor at Thibodaux, forty miles west of New Orleans. The couple was married on June 7, 1849.¹³

Soon after her marriage, Elise confided to a correspondent that she initially believed Bragg was a bit too reserved and cold, but she had been attracted by his strong character and commitment to the truth. Now that she had come to know him better, Elise was surprised by the depth of affection that lay behind such an exterior—he is an ardent & devoted husband. Bragg fully reciprocated her feelings. He wrote of his longing for her upon leaving to attend court-martial proceedings six months after their wedding. My first thought is for you . . . what in this world can make a man so happy, especially when he possesses such a wife.¹⁴

Bragg’s army career after Mexico became more complex, and he was shifted around to a number of army posts largely along the frontier, causing numerous separations from Elise. He continued to criticize high-level administrators in the army and in the executive branch of the national government and pushed for army reform, hoping for a time that his brother John could capitalize on his tenure in the U.S. Congress to aid the cause. As with the Subaltern articles, his ideas made sense. Now, however, he pursued them with more tact and less bristle. Bragg also proved loyal to trusted subordinates and colleagues. He wrote glowing letters of recommendation for George H. Thomas and Daniel Harvey Hill, both of whom had served in his battery. Given the bitter controversy that erupted between Bragg and Hill growing out of the Chickamauga campaign, it is interesting to see that Bragg referred to him as my young friend in 1848. He praised Hill as without a superior for gentlemanly deportment and high moral character. Bragg also thought very highly of Henry J. Hunt, another friend of the post-Mexico era, who, like Thomas, would fight in the Union army.¹⁵

Numerous partings with Elise were hard to bear. I am lost without you, dear wife, he wrote from Fort Leavenworth in June 1853. Bragg often complained that he rarely heard from his numerous siblings. What Bragg called "my old Florida complaint of the liver continued to trouble him. Every summer I have these attacks, and I can . . . only keep about by almost living on Mercury (Blue Mass & Calomel). No constitution can stand it, he told his friend Sherman. An undated prescription for Chronic Chill & fever," written in Bragg’s hand but coming from a doctor in North Carolina, probably relates to this time period in the officer’s life.¹⁶

By the mid-1850s Bragg’s army career reached a crisis point. Jefferson Davis, as secretary of war in the Franklin Pierce administration, instituted significant army reforms. One of them involved introducing rifled artillery and phasing out light batteries. Bragg was devastated by the decline of efficiency in his battery, and he was ordered to join a cavalry regiment on the frontier. The distant but respectful relationship between Bragg and Davis now became bitter, with the officer sarcastically referring to the secretary as our friend in his correspondence. Bragg resigned his commission in the U.S. Army on January 3, 1856, disgusted & worn down as he told a correspondent. Davis was "absolutely bent on substituting long range rifles for Light Artillery, though nominally keeping it up at a heavy expense. As a result, my command was destroyed, my usefulness gone. . . . The finest battery I ever saw was destroyed in two years at a cost of $100,000."¹⁷

As Grady McWhiney has indicated, Bragg was possibly motivated to resign because he was nearly forty years old and looking for other avenues to keep Elise in the comfort she had grown accustomed to in her father’s house. He became interested in using Elise’s inheritance to purchase a sugar plantation in Louisiana. In fact, Bragg had been looking for a good bargain as early as the summer of 1855. He found one called Greenwood, only three miles north of Thibodaux, and purchased it on February 8, 1856, only one month after leaving the army. Title to Greenwood, which contained 1,600 acres of land and 105 slaves, catapulted Bragg into the elite ranks of the slave-owning aristocracy with the stroke of a pen. Of the 330 estates along the left bank of Bayou Lafourche, only 10 others were more valuable than Greenwood. Bragg renamed the plantation Bivouac, reminiscent of his recent army career.¹⁸

Sugar Plantation along Bayou La Fourche. This Civil War–era photograph of an unnamed sugar plantation in the Bayou La Fourche region is a good indication of what Bragg’s Bivouac might have looked like. (Marshall Dunham Photograph Album, Special Collections, LSU)

Two days after finalizing the purchase, Bragg informed Elise what he had done. The estate had been purchased two years before by J. Sherman Shriver from a Creole owner named Pierre Loria. In fact, in assessing the place, Bragg called all the buildings on it "Creole (inferior) but habitable. Sugar House tolerable. . . . Stock tolerable. Cows enough for the present, 40 or 50 sheep. Fair lot of fruit trees, some sweet oranges at the overseers. Much of the furniture is good—for creole. As far as his slaves were concerned, Bragg found them a fair lot, the children very fine and of a pretty age just getting to the field."¹⁹

Bragg threw himself into managing Bivouac with enthusiasm and detail, learning the sugar industry from the ground up. My army experience is of infinite benefit to me, he told Sherman. The planting & cultivation is nothing, management is everything in a business wielding such capital. It took several years of improvement to make Bivouac profitable but Bragg applied himself to the task. By the fall of 1859, he proudly reported that his net profit for that year was $30,000 from an outlay of $45,000 for the season. Bragg admitted that he worried over every detail of his plantation affairs, but that was his nature, not having been accustomed to manage my business by a proxy. Yet he hoped to arrange for a two-month vacation to the mountains in the summer of 1860. Meanwhile, Elise filed a will in 1858, leaving everything to my most kind & beloved husband, who also was named executor.²⁰

Somewhat reluctantly, Bragg allowed himself to be drawn into a variety of civic duties, imitating the role of large planters all across the South. He served as levee inspector and school director in his locality and permitted his name to be placed in nomination by the Democrats for commissioner of the board of public works in the fall of 1859. It was a new position, designed to combine the posts of land commissioner and engineer for the state of Louisiana. Bragg had no great enthusiasm for the job but was urged by many, especially state senator Richard Taylor, to embrace it. Bragg was impressed by Taylor, the son of his much-respected commander in the Mexican War. He is a very plain, strait forward man, Bragg wrote of the future Confederate general, of great independence; candid, honest, and clear headed. There was no one running against him for the position, so it was a certainty he would have to shoulder its responsibilities in 1860. Those responsibilities involved handling improvements such as levees and drainage canals valued at more than $1 million and dealing with corruption. The position contrasted sharply with his two parish jobs of levee inspector and school director, positions that Bragg called trifles its true. He vowed to do his best as state commissioner but expected much criticism to attend his work.²¹

The project that drew most of Bragg’s interest was the creation of a state institution of higher learning. He was involved in the conception of what today is Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge, but in 1859 it was called the Louisiana Seminary of Learning and Military Academy and was located at Alexandria. Tension among the founders as to whether it should be a traditional college with a classical curriculum or a true military academy led to its convoluted name. In fact, if it had been created as a true military academy, Bragg would have been very interested in becoming its superintendent.²²

Bragg supported the appointment of Claudius W. Sears, who currently was a professor of mathematics at what would later be called Tulane University, as superintendent of the new state college. But William T. Sherman was hired instead. Bragg was very pleased at the choice, although he had not known that Sherman was an applicant. As Sherman was careful to point out in his memoirs, his selection for the post was not due to his friendship with Bragg.²³

Louisiana needed an institution of higher learning that emphasized a military style of discipline coupled with intense scientific and technical instruction, according to Bragg. He thought the state had enough High Literary Institutions and was convinced that no class of people on the face of the earth are more dependent on Science and discipline for success than the Southern planters. After the seminary opened on January 1, 1860, Bragg strongly supported Sherman in his attempts to discipline unruly students. It was important, in his view, that Southern young men learn they had to become something other than an aggregation of loafers charged with the duty of squandering their fathers legacies and disgracing their names.²⁴

Seminary matters allowed Bragg to indulge in one of his favorite trains of thought, the importance of discipline in a successful life. Discipline to amount to anything must be firm, decisions prompt, and their execution immediate and irrevocable, except in very extraordinary cases, he told G. Mason Graham, a Mexican War colleague who also was deeply involved in seminary affairs. Hard cases arise under all laws, and it is better to do some injustice than to break down from laxity. This duty is the more difficult and trying from the very loose system which prevails in our southern society, and which has reduced parents to a subordination to children. Bragg pushed to have the administration of the college veer strongly toward military discipline rather than "University theories," as he called them.²⁵

Deeply immersed in his plantation, Bragg was willing to encourage and support but hesitated to take a more active role in the affairs of Sherman’s institution. He was not interested in serving on the board of visitors. I have done my share of public duties in this life, he informed Graham, and seek no more of them for honor or profit. Yet I am always ready to do my share in the advancement of a good cause and to fill my station as a good citizen. Sherman was pleased when he learned that Bragg had been invited to give a speech at the seminary. He writes, as you know, well and can speak his thoughts clearly and with emphasis, Sherman told Graham; still I don’t think he has an ambition to be styled an orator. Bragg also tried to get the guns of his old Buena Vista battery donated to the seminary, but that did not happen. The weapons were stored in Washington, D.C., and were considered national trophies that could not be issued to the state government of Louisiana.²⁶

The relationship between Bragg and Sherman was never so close as during the few months that the latter ran the seminary, and Bragg often wrote long letters to his friend expressing his views on Southern life. We have a large class of our population in subordination—just & necessary, he wrote of slavery. Give me well disciplined masters, managers and assistants, and we shall never hear of insurrections. Like most Southerners, Bragg considered the peculiar institution of slavery to be not so peculiar after all. Human nature is the same throughout the world, he concluded.²⁷

The large Southern plantation was a fit venue for applying Bragg’s theories of discipline and success. He viewed every estate as "a small military establishment—or it ought to be. By military, I don’t mean the old fogy notion of white belts, stiff leather stocks, and ‘palms of the hands to the front’—but discipline—by which we secure system [and] regularity: methods securing of time, labor, and material, this all tends to secure better health, more labor at less exertion, and with infinitely less punishment. More comfort and happiness to the laborer, with more profit & pleasure to the master."²⁸

Bragg found his fit venue in the Louisiana sugar plantation culture. It was a more demanding task to run one of these complex operations than a cotton plantation because processing the raw cane into usable sugar required specialized equipment and a rigid work regimen from October to January of each year. The slave laborers often engaged in eighteen-hour days, working in shifts, during those months. They used iron rollers to squeeze the juice out of the cane, boiled the juice until it crystallized, cooled it, and stored the result in large hogsheads. The liquid that continued to drain out was later made into molasses. Larger, better-organized, and more efficiently managed sugar plantations had a higher chance of producing a profit.²⁹

Successful sugar planters tended to be effective businessmen as well as managers of their labor force. They also became aggressive promoters of the most industrialized sector of southern agriculture, in the words of historian Richard Follett, seeing themselves both as slaveholders and as thoroughly modern businessmen. While the sugar masters sometimes extolled the paternalistic nature of their role as slave masters, they more often spoke of economic efficiency and managerial skill in a world view that embraced both business enterprise and human slavery. Many of them led the secession wave in 1861 to protect the profitable world they had created for themselves.³⁰

Braxton Bragg in civilian clothes. The first known photograph of Bragg, taken sometime just before the outbreak of the Civil War by Theodore Lilienthal at his studio, 102 Poydras Street, New Orleans. (Goelet and Buncombe Family Papers, Southern Historical Collection, UNC)

Bragg bought into this world of the Louisiana sugar planter, both figuratively and literally. Given his huge personal investment in slavery, he reacted harshly to any sign that the North threatened the plantation system of the South or encouraged the freeing of its slaves. He applauded the caning of Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner on the floor of the U.S. Senate in May 1856 by Preston Brooks, a South Carolina member of the House of Representatives, for making remarks derogatory of the South and of Brooks’s cousin in the wake of turmoil over slavery in Kansas territory. Brooks nearly killed Sumner, and the senator took several years to recover before resuming his political career. Bragg callously remarked that old Sumner [was] severely chastised for his impertinence. You can reach the sensibilities of such dogs only through their heads & a big stick. The place was probably injudiciously chosen, but the balance was well, and were I in the House I should certainly propose a vote of thanks to Mr. Brooks. According to a family friend, Bragg’s only hope for the future lay in the influence of Northern Democrats, for he thoroughly distrusted the Republicans to take Southern interests into consideration.³¹

The election of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860 propelled South Carolina out of the Union and aroused the spirit of secession across the Deep South. In Louisiana, Bragg offered his advice regarding the creation of a state military force for self-defense. He thought the existing militia system was inadequate and distrusted the rush of volunteer spirit that initially appeared, arguing that all volunteers wanted to be mounted. From his Mexican War experience, Bragg was convinced that putting a volunteer on a horse was giving him an excuse for running away from battle. In his own parish around Thibodaux, nothing is doing, our leaders are incompetent, and a large portion of our population are unreliable. Bragg was deep in plantation problems, his crop almost a failure, yet he was willing to do something to prepare the state for possible conflict.³²

With the start of national disintegration, Bragg came to accept secession as the only viable course for the South. The Union is already gone, he told Sherman in late December, 1860. "The only question now is, can we reconstruct any government without bloodshed. I do not think we can. Bragg sympathized with Sherman, a Northerner in charge of a semimilitary academy in the Deep South, and understood that he would probably resign and head back home. A similar duty on my part may throw us into an apparent hostile attitude, Bragg confided to his friend, but it is too terrible to contemplate, and I will not discuss it."³³

Even before Louisiana seceded, events propelled Bragg into action. Governor Thomas Moore was anxious to secure Federal property in the state and called on Bragg for help. The Mexican War hero was in New Orleans on January 8 when he received the governor’s telegram and left that evening for Baton Rouge. Moore decided to act the next day. Leading a handful of state troops, Bragg talked the commander of the U.S. arsenal in Baton Rouge, a personal acquaintance, into giving up the place without resistance on January 11. Then Bragg worked hard to create a strong state army. His brothers in Alabama and North Carolina read of his leading role in these stirring events and concluded that Braxton was acting, virtually, as Sec’y of War of Louisiana, and is rapidly organizing her military force. Louisiana seceded on January 26, and Bragg was named major general of the state forces. We hope this course will lead to a peaceable solution of the matters, Bragg told Sherman. A separation is inevitable—nothing can prevent it now. Why should there be any strife over it?³⁴

Moore’s seizure of the arsenal and of Federal forts in Louisiana, with Bragg’s help, was the turning point in Sherman’s view; he decided to resign as superintendent of the academy and leave the South. Sherman counted Bragg among his most intimate friends and often dined with him and Elise while spending time in New Orleans to wrap up business attending the seminary. One day at tea, Elise brought up her husband’s relations with Jefferson Davis, who by then had been selected provisional president of the Confederate government. Sherman knew that Bragg hated Davis bitterly and had resigned from the army because of his policies.³⁵

Braxton Bragg in Louisiana State uniform. Bragg held a commission as major general and commander of the forces of his adopted state for a couple of months early in 1861, during which he engineered the takeover of the U.S. Arsenal at Baton Rouge and the raising of three regiments for state service. The face in this image is exactly the same as in the photograph depicting Bragg in civilian clothing. (Library of Congress, LC-DIG-cwpb-07427)

Sherman recalled in his memoirs that, during the 1840s, Bragg had often ridiculed the idea that South Carolina might secede from the Union. But that had all changed now. During his dinners with the Braggs in New Orleans during those few days in February 1861, Bragg was an enthusiastic defender of the South’s right to secede. In fact, according to Sherman, Bragg thought it was best for everyone that the South leave and form a new nation because the possibility of a successful effort was yearly lessened by the rapid and increasing inequality between the two sections, from the fact that all the European immigrants were coming to the Northern States and Territories, and none to the Southern.³⁶

Bragg now filled a prominent role in Louisiana’s history, and friends and family members were keenly aware of it. As he set about to organize three regiments for the state army, Sherman was convinced he would succeed brilliantly and train those troops to a high state of efficiency. Bragg was troubled by an outbreak of boils on his hand at this time but used home remedies to treat them and simply put up with the inconvenience. His position as major general and commander of the state forces of Louisiana compelled him to be in touch with the new Confederate government at Montgomery, Alabama. Federal troops who gave up their forts in Texas were passing through the state in late February and Bragg telegraphed Confederate secretary of war Leroy P. Walker for instructions on how to handle them. Walker passed the question on to Davis, who told Walker to inform Bragg that he had entire confidence in your discretion and prudence to handle the situation so as to protect the interests of the new Southern government and avoid an outbreak of violence at the same time.³⁷

In fact, far from holding any grudge against Bragg, Davis was interested in bringing him into Confederate service. There was even talk of Bragg filling a post in Davis’s cabinet, but a military appointment seemed more appropriate. On March 7, 1861, Walker telegraphed Bragg proposing the rank of brigadier general in the provisional Confederate army. Bragg accepted without hesitation.³⁸

A Southerner by birth, Braxton Bragg had become more than that by the late 1850s. His service in the U.S. Army represented a career spent in national, not just regional, service. But his disenchantment with the army changed his life. Bragg moved into the planter class where he became a thorough Southern patriot, protective of the institution of slavery and determined through the seminary to instill a higher degree of efficiency in the younger generation of Louisiana. He embraced and promoted the secession of his state, acted to seize Federal property even before the secession ordinance was passed, and then organized and commanded the state’s military forces. Bragg was not enthusiastic about his visible role in secession and the drift toward war, but he certainly did not regret it or shun the responsibility offered him to be an important part of state and Confederate national affairs. He was convinced it was the right thing for his section and for himself to do.

Chapter 2: Pensacola

When Bragg received the offer of a commission in the Confederate army, he rushed to respond. Making arrangements to leave New Orleans immediately for his assignment at Pensacola, he could not return to Bivouac and say goodbye to Elise in person. The new brigadier wrote a letter to her explaining the need for haste and then rushed to finish his business in the city before leaving on March 8.¹

What is to become of all this I do not see except war, Bragg told Elise. Mr. Lincoln says he will not recognize our government, and if he does not we must take the Forts in our limits: To do that is war, and when it commences it will rage from one end of the country to the other. Bragg went from believing that secession would be a peaceful process to expecting a bloody conflict to erupt from it, but he was confident. Our course is just, and we must triumph. I deplore the necessity, but neither you nor I could wish me out of it. Come what will I must be in it.²

Davis assigned Bragg to one of the Confederacy’s hot spots: control of volunteer troops assembling at Pensacola where the U.S. government held a coastal defense called Fort Pickens. Bragg would be the first Confederate officer to take charge of affairs at Pensacola. Florida had seceded on January 10, 1861, and the Federals had evacuated their mainland posts at Pensacola the next day. The state government decided not to attack Fort Pickens, which was located near the west end of Santa Rosa Island with Pensacola Bay separating that island from the mainland. The Federal garrison had agreed not to accept reinforcements if the Florida troops allowed mail to be delivered to the fort and refrained from attacking Santa Rosa Island. As Confederate troops moved in during February, they replaced state forces at Fort McRee and Fort Barrancas on the mainland as well as at the U.S. Navy Yard and the small village of Warrington. The situation was similar to that at Charleston, South Carolina, where a small Federal garrison continued to occupy Fort Sumter on a sandbar at the entrance to the harbor although confronted on three sides by Confederate mainland fortifications. Davis assigned trusted generals to these two flashpoints, relying on Pierre G. T. Beauregard to handle the military resources at Charleston.³

Braxton Bragg in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. Bragg became one of the very few Confederate generals to have his portrait printed in a Northern illustrated newspaper. The editors chose to reproduce the Lilienthal photograph of the future general in civilian clothes. (Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, June 22, 1861, p. 91)

When Bragg reached the area on March 10, 1861, he found 6,804 men organized into four brigades. This became the nucleus of the Army of Pensacola. The men who commanded these brigades, James R. Chalmers, S. A. M. Wood, H. B. Tyler, and John K. Jackson, became some of his warmest supporters. He later consolidated these four brigades into two under Daniel Ruggles and Richard H. Anderson.⁴

If Bragg worried that his old feud with Davis would create difficulties, he was wrong. The president of the Confederacy treated him with respect and confidence. Given the significance of Pensacola, Davis communicated freely with his new general about Fort Pickens. I wish you to regard this not as a letter of the President, he told Bragg on April 3, but of your old comrade in arms, who hopes much, and expects much for you, and from you. Bragg wanted to know from Secretary of War Leroy P. Walker whether he had authority to attack the Union fort. He fully understood that this was a political as well as a military matter, for it could propel the South into war. From a military standpoint, he believed his men could do it by distracting the small Federal garrison and then scaling the walls at a different point. Bragg believed that the ardor and ignorance of my troops would be strong elements of success, but reported that only a few of his officers could handle their men well. Bragg also communicated directly with Davis on this matter, admitting that a siege of the fort was impossible for many reasons. Walker informed Bragg that the Confederate government wanted possession of Fort Pickens, but Bragg had to make his own decision as to whether an attack was likely to succeed. Bragg decided to act with caution, readying his troops and requesting more equipment and material for his ill-supplied regiments. When the men became unruly because of the availability of liquor in town, Bragg declared martial law and closed the grog shops. I captured enough to have kept the Army drunk two months, he told Elise.⁵

Bragg’s Civil War

Bragg continued to handle affairs at Pensacola so as not to provoke violence. When informed by the Federal naval commander that he had imposed a blockade of the coast near Pensacola, Bragg told him he considered that an act of aggressive war and even a virtual acknowledgment of our national existence and independence. He received well-meaning advice from a variety of civilians who thought they had a good idea for taking Pickens with minimal loss, or who warned Bragg of some imminent Yankee move they detected from reading newspaper reports. He filed these messages but of course never acted on them. The firing on Fort Sumter in mid-April and the consequent start of open hostilities between the Confederate and Federal governments did not change the situation at Pensacola. Bragg continued to act cautiously. When Davis requested reinforcements to protect Richmond, however, Bragg quickly sent 2,500 of his own troops, one-third of his available manpower. Davis also was pleased that Bragg praised the work of his nephew, Joseph R. Davis, at Pensacola. He/Genl. B./is not inclined to praise, Davis told Joseph, and is in no degree a courtier.⁶

The shortage of competent officers at Pensacola made Bragg even more pleased than usual to see Richard Taylor in late May 1861. Taylor yet held no position in the Confederate army but agreed to serve as a volunteer aide on Bragg’s staff until he was elected colonel of a Louisiana regiment early in July. Bragg regretted his departure. He had become almost a necessity to me, he told Elise. He is cool, sagacious and devoted to the cause & to me. Bragg relied on former U.S. Army officers who had joined the Confederates to instill a high degree of training and discipline among the state volunteers who made up his command. He also complained to Richmond when many of his best subordinates were passed up for promotion in favor of other, less qualified candidates. Bragg specifically noted that Mansfield Lovell was named to command the area around New Orleans rather than Daniel Ruggles. That command includes my home and fireside, he told the new secretary of war, Judah B. Benjamin, and all that is dear to me in life. I can appreciate the feeling of sullen dissatisfaction which pervades my neighbors.⁷

Elise visited her husband in early July to find Bragg in good health. The officers of the 1st Louisiana Regulars, a regiment Bragg had organized, hosted a ball in honor of Elise on July 23 in the Navy Yard. It so happened that a message from Davis relating to the Confederate victory at First Manassas arrived in time for Bragg to read it to the assembled partygoers, capping the festivities.⁸

Bragg was promoted major general in the Confederate army to date from September 12, 1861, an appointment that was confirmed by the Senate in November. September also brought warlike activity to Pensacola. The Federals raided the Navy Yard with three boats and burned an armed patrol boat on the night of September 13. Bragg authorized a retaliatory strike against Santa Rosa Island that took place on the night of October 8–9. The raid included 1,000 Confederates who landed on the island by boat, surprised and captured a camp occupied by a portion of the 6th New York, but did not directly attack Fort Pickens. In fact, the Confederates had to retreat for fear of being cut off by a Union force sent from the fort. Bragg praised the commanders, but they lost eighty-seven men, while the Federals suffered only sixty-seven casualties.⁹

Braxton Bragg as a Confederate general. Bragg appears in this photograph, apparently taken early in the Civil War, with a full beard and mustache. (Bragg Family Photographs, ADAH)

In the wake of this raid on Santa Rosa Island, the Richmond authorities more properly defined Bragg’s command. They extended his area of responsibility to include the entire state of Alabama and named it the Department of Alabama and Western Florida. His staff members included many officers who would follow him through the war. Brother-in-law Towson Ellis served as an aide-de-camp, Hypolite Oladowski as Bragg’s chief of ordnance, Surgeon A. J. Foard as his medical director, and Harvey W. Walter as his judge advocate. Bragg conducted an inspection tour of his enlarged department by visiting Mobile, a vital port city on the Alabama coast in need of enormous resources for its defense. Jones Withers commanded 4,200 men there, and Bragg decided to send him a handful of his own competent subordinates because too many of Withers’s officers were sadly addicted to drinking. By mid-November 1861, Bragg could count on 7,000 troops around Pensacola, 9,000 at Mobile, and the completion of a rail link between the two cities.¹⁰

Bragg’s ability to administer a sizable department was evident to Davis and his advisers. That is why they seriously considered sending him to the Trans-Mississippi, where Confederate forces were outnumbered, ill-led, and undersupplied. The fiery leader of Missouri’s State Guard, Sterling Price, was constantly at odds with the regional commander of Confederate forces, Benjamin McCulloch. Cooperation between the two neared the breaking point, and the Federals who controlled key areas of central and eastern Missouri were determined to strengthen their tenuous hold on this border slave state. The pro-Confederate governor of Missouri, Claiborne F. Jackson, suggested that Bragg come west to take command and settle the squabbling between McCulloch and Price.¹¹

JEFFERSON DAVIS. Bragg had a long and shifting relationship with Davis. He fought alongside him at Buena Vista, resigned from the U.S. Army because of him, held a grudge against him for many years after, but gradually realized that Davis had always respected and admired his talents. Davis, in fact, relied heavily on Bragg throughout the Civil War, supporting him in numerous confrontations with subordinates, and the two developed a friendship by the end of the conflict that lasted the rest of their lives. (Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-26716)

Davis and Benjamin agreed that Bragg was the only high-ranking general they could send, but Benjamin made it clear that it was Bragg’s decision. The secretary of war laid out the basic problem: Price’s Missourians were brave but nearly a rabble as far as organization, training, and discipline were concerned. The cause needed a mastermind capable of shaping this rough material into a real army. Davis and Benjamin could find no one but yourself on whom we feel we could rely with confidence.¹²

More than a week later, Bragg responded to this offer with care and consideration. An ambitious and risk-taking man would have leaped at it, but Bragg had little desire to take such a chance. He admitted that his efforts had converted raw troops into good soldiers at Pensacola, but he also told Richmond that the situation in the Trans-Mississippi was most gloomy and far less promising of success than operations east of the river. Yet he was willing to go if ordered, conceding that [I would] offer myself (as a sacrifice, if necessary) to the great cause in which we are engaged. If he did so, Bragg insisted on taking a few of

Reviews for Braxton Bragg

[shrike58 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In this effort to get into the mind and perceptions of the controversial Confederate soldier, while Hess finds a man who was probably more sinned against than sinner, and certainly not lacking in humanity, there is no denying that Bragg was also his own worst enemy. To a large degree it would seem that Bragg had two great lacks. One was a chronic lack of imagination that resulted in a rudimentary sense of operational art, that sense of what battles would contribute to winning a campaign in the end; however, it's not as though Bragg was the only Civil War general to be challenged on that quality. More serious was a bad lack of social skills that contributed to creating the sense that Bragg was no great judge of human quality and had little talent for building better relationships; while Leonidas Polk may have been the center of the corrosive feelings that predominated in the Army of Tennessee, the reality is that Bragg handled Polk's insubordination very poorly. To put it another way, and a feeling that I've had for awhile, the Confederacy would have been better served had Bragg been chief of staff or senior subordinate to a more charismatic field commander who could have harnessed the man's real talents to better impact.