Braxton Bragg Military Strategist

Braxton Bragg progressed through a diverse and demanding career to become a military strategist and ultimately General-in- Chief of Confederate States of America (CSA) Armies. General Braxton Bragg devoted over four years, of his life to senior CSA Army leadership positions, mostly in command. He surpassed every general officer in the CSA and Union in holding such a wide range of senior officer responsibilities. Bragg observed closely and operated in and around the operational and strategic environment for the majority of his life. By virtue of his previous duties, assignments, and experiences, Bragg observed, participated in, and influenced hundreds of meetings and decisions that are best described as "strategic art." He developed his strategic competencies through: civilian and military education; an honorable, diverse, demanding, and rare service and assignment history; and, life-threatening experiences that only a few would ever taste. Braxton Bragg strategized with the best experts of his day.

Braxton Bragg progressed through a diverse and demanding career to become a military strategist and ultimately General-in- Chief of Confederate States of America (CSA) Armies. General Braxton Bragg devoted over four years, of his life to senior CSA Army leadership positions, mostly in command. He surpassed every general officer in the CSA and Union in holding such a wide range of senior officer responsibilities. Bragg observed closely and operated in and around the operational and strategic environment for the majority of his life. By virtue of his previous duties, assignments, and experiences, Bragg observed, participated in, and influenced hundreds of meetings and decisions that are best described as "strategic art." He developed his strategic competencies through: civilian and military education; an honorable, diverse, demanding, and rare service and assignment history; and, life-threatening experiences that only a few would ever taste. Braxton Bragg strategized with the best experts of his day.

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.

This assessment of the performance of the southern soldiers in the American Civil War of 1861 deals with every aspect of an army from its senior officer to the lowliest private, following every process as the soldier tried to adapt to military life, train, and overcome the enemy.

Despite the abundance of books on the Civil War, not one has focused exclusively on what was in fact the determining factor in the outcome of the conflict: differences in Union and Southern strategy. In The Grand Design, Donald Stoker provides for the first time a comprehensive and often surprising account of strategy as it evolved between Fort Sumter and Appomattox. Reminding us that strategy is different from tactics (battlefield deployments) and operations (campaigns conducted in pursuit of a strategy), Stoker examines how Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis identified their political goals and worked with their generals to craft the military means to achieve them--or how they often failed to do so. Stoker shows that Davis, despite a West Point education and experience as Secretary of War, ultimately failed as a strategist by losing control of the political side of the war. Lincoln, in contrast, evolved a clear strategic vision, but he failed for years to make his generals implement it. And while Robert E. Lee was unerring in his ability to determine the Union's strategic heart--its center of gravity--he proved mistaken in his assessment of how to destroy it. Historians have often argued that the North's advantages in population and industry ensured certain victory. In The Grand Design, Stoker reasserts the centrality of the overarching plan on each side, arguing convincingly that it was strategy that determined the result of America's great national conflict.

A Selection of the History Book Club. "A controversial book that answers why the Confederates suffered such staggering human losses". -- History Book Club Review

A “fascinating and informative” reassessment of the underappreciated Confederate general’s achievements and ahead-of-his-time military strategy (Midwest Book Review). Lieutenant-General James Longstreet, commander of the First Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia, was a brilliant tactician and strategist. Prior to the Civil War there were many technological developments, of which the rifled musket and cannon, rail transport, and the telegraph were just a few. In addition, the North enjoyed a great advantage in manpower and resources. Longstreet adapted to these technological changes and the disparity between the belligerents, making recommendations on how the war should be fought. Longstreet made a mental leap to adjust to this new type of warfare. Many others didn’t make this leap, including Lee, Jackson, Bragg, Hood, and Jefferson Davis, and Longstreet’s advice went unheeded. In contrast to many southern generals, he advocated for defensive warfare, using entrenchments and trying to maneuver the enemy to assault his position, conserving manpower, resources, and supplies. With the advent of the highly accurate and long-range rifled musket, offensive tactics became questionable and risky. This caused Longstreet to come into conflict with General Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg, and with General Bragg at Chickamauga. Longstreet, a pragmatic and methodical general, was never given full authority over an army in the field. Had his suggestions been utilized there would have been a better outcome for the South. Many historians and biographers have misunderstood Longstreet and his motives, but this work offers a fresh perspective. It takes a new viewpoint of the Civil War and the generals who tailored their designs to pursue the war, analyzes Longstreet’s views of the generals and the tactics and strategy they employed, and examines why Longstreet proposed and urged a new type of warfare.