Braxton Bragg and Leonidas Polk

My memory may be telescoping things a bit, but as I recall it fairly early on in my Civil War reading I began to think that Braxton Bragg had gotten a bum rap. It's not that I thought he was a reincarnation of Alexander the Great, but it did seem there was a good argument to be made that he wasn't The Worst General Who Ever Lived and utter incompetent that his detractors generally make him out to be. Some of my thoughts on this subject are laid out in a series of posts entitled Was Braxton Bragg Really That Bad?

Since I make no claim to originality, it will come as no surprise that my thoughts on Bragg derived primarily from the writings of Steven E. Woodworth, one of the Civil War historians I admire most, who has defended Bragg and pointed the finger principally at the truly miserable Bishop Leonidas Polk.

I mention all this not to recycle old posts (well . . .) but to shed some light on why I am so delighted with my recent purchase of what would otherwise seem to be a fairly obscure collection of essays entitled Confederate Generals in the Western Theater, Volume 1: Classic Essays on America's Civil War (Lawrence Lee Hewitt and Arthur W. Bergeron Jr., eds.). A little more than half way through, I've encountered at least three essays that touch on the Bragg-Polk issue. All three roundly dump on the Bishop and/or give Bragg at least some credit.

Most predictable, given his prior advocacy, is the essay authored by Prof. Woodward, "Soldier with a Blunted Sword: Braxton Bragg and his Lieutenants in the Chickamauga Campaign." In the essay, Woodward provides an overview of the anti-Bragg conspiracy, headed by Polk, that ate its way through the Army of Tennessee between the Perryville campaign and Chickamauga, culminating in lost opportunities due to what I can only call insubordination in the week before the battle began. (For greater detail on one of these lost opportunities, see Woodworth's essay "'In Their Dreams': Braxton Bragg, Thomas C. Hindman, and the Abortive Attack in McLemore's Cove", in The Chickamauga Campaign, discussed briefly here.)

But Prof. Woodworth is not alone. Grady McWhiney contributes an essay, "A Bishop As General", in which he provides his assessment of Polk - and it ain't pretty. I particularly enjoyed this:

It may be time for historians of the Confederacy to admit that Bragg was not the Confederacy's worst general. Leonidas Polk may not be able to claim that title either, but he certainly was a bad general. Ignorant of military matters, quarrelsome, at times careless, lazy, insubordinate, and conspiratorial, he was dangerous not only because he knew so little about the art of warfare but also because he delighted in using his religious influence as well as his friendship with high government officials, especially the president, to promote himself and to undermine his enemies. Untrustworthy, he hurt every command and every commander with whom he served. The appointment of Polk to high military rank was one of Jefferson Davis's most serious mistakes.

Finally, Lawrence Lee Hewitt awards Bragg high marks in "Braxton Bragg and the Invasion of Kentucky in 1862":

Bragg's campaigning by maneuver should have become the primary Confederate strategy in the Western Theater. Even if the invasions were to fail, the maneuvers would upset Federal plans and would delay their penetration of the Confederate interior. More importantly, Bragg had demonstrated what a single individual could accomplish when charged with the defense of the entire Western Theater. Between June and October of 1862, Bragg had displayed greater ability at grand strategy than did any other Confederate commander during the entire war [take that, Robert E. Lee!]; he had accepted responsibility for key positions hundreds of miles from his headquarters and had successfully held them for the Confederacy.

Was Braxton Bragg Really That Bad? V

Last year, I devoted several posts, entitled "Was Braxton Bragg Really that Bad," to suggesting that he wasn't. (You can find them by clicking on the "Braxton Bragg" label at the right.) The posts were based largely on the writings of Steven Woodworth, who has argued that the common knee-jerk opinion that Bragg was the worst of the worst does not withstand careful review.

Until yesterday, I thought I was alone; I don't think that I had ever seen anyone else in the blogosphere dare to defend poor Braxton. Yesterday, however, I was delighted to discover a like-minded spirit. At Army of Tennessee, Braggophile Lee White, a Ranger at the Chickamauga-Chattanooga National Military Park, has published a number of entries seeking to raise the general's reputation a notch or two. Continue the good work, Mr. White! And thanks for pointing me to Grady McWhiney's talk to the Civil War Round Table in Chicago, Braxton Bragg: Misplaced General, which I had not seen.

Was Braxton Bragg Really that Bad? Part IV

Braxton Bragg was a mediocre general, to be sure. For example, he went into the Perryville campaign without a clear purpose. Bragg should not have allowed himself to get dragged into Kirby Smith’s harebrained and half-baked scheme, at least without (a) thinking through and setting up clear goals and purposes, and (b) clearing up the chain-of-command issue. Likewise, in the campaign itself Bragg probably made a major mistake in failing to go straight for Louisville after Munfordville, rather than diddling around in Eastern Kentucky. Perhaps if Bragg and Kirby Smith had taken Louisville, some of the pro-Confederate Kentuckians might have enlisted and put to use all those extra rifles that the Confederates dragged up with him.

In terms of his conduct during battles, Bragg seems to have gotten worn down and lacked the ability to improvise. At Stones River, when the first day plan came so near to success but fell short, he didn’t know what to do next. At Chickamauga, Bragg seems to have begun the battle dispirited because D.H. Hill, Hindman and Polk had, contrary to orders, missed some of the best tactical opportunities of the War to inflict significant damage on isolated Federal corps on September 10, 11 and 13. Then, particularly when Polk failed to have his men in position to attack the Federal left on the morning of the second day of Chickamauga, Bragg basically threw up his hands in disgust and wrote off the whole mess. Psychologically understandable, but you just can’t do that as commander.

But for all his faults, was Bragg any worse than Joe Johnston? Consider the following:

- Each won one battle (if you give Joe credit for First Bull Run and Bragg credit for Chickamauga);

- Each was responsible for a major debacle (Joe for the loss of Atlanta, Bragg for Chattanooga);

- Each was capable of coming up with good battle plans (Joe at Seven Pines and Cassville, GA [aborted by Hood], Bragg at Stones River and repeatedly on September 10, 11 and 13 before Chickamauga);

- Each executed a masterpiece of transportation logistics (Joe’s transfer of his army to Bull Run, Bragg’s transfer of his army from Northern Mississippi to Chattanooga);

- Each seemed to lose control of battles (Joe at Seven Pines, Bragg as stated above);

- Each had fatal personality flaws (Joe’s almost pathological sense of pride and perfectionism, Bragg’s lack of “people skills”).

Yet even Joe’s detractors usually are willing to admit that there were positives mixed in with the negatives. I find it curious that discussions of Bragg do not involve similar careful weighing and analysis.

I also wonder whether the pummeling that Bragg routinely receives is not connected to the Lost Cause mythology. That mythology consists of a number of discordant trains of thought that can be in tension with one another. On the one hand, the South was ground down by the remorseless weight of Northern men, materiel and technology. On the other, proponents are loath to admit that the South entered a war that it was bound to lose. Maybe, just maybe (so the thinking goes), if the Confederacy had had a decent general in the West, it could have prevailed.

Bragg was the perfect fall guy. He succeeded the (supposedly) brilliant Albert Sidney Johnston, who fell at Shiloh. In contrast to the divine and chivalric Lee, Bragg with his unibrow looks like the villain in a vaudeville melodrama. He was the faithful lapdog of Jefferson Davis. And, of course, he presided over that most humiliating of defeats at Chattanooga.

Such factors, I suspect, account for the fact that such scorn has been heaped upon Bragg, while others such as Joe Johnston, Pierre Beauregard (who basically deserted the Army of Tennessee after Shiloh) and James Longstreet (who was grossly insubordinate and incompetent at Chattanooga) have come in for less criticism.

Was Braxton Bragg Really that Bad? Part III

Braxton Bragg is typically excoriated for the campaign that resulted in Perryville. Here’s my take.

So far as I can tell, the basic problems with the Perryville campaign were two-fold:

First, the major premise of the campaign was that Kentuckians, given the opportunity, would rise up in great numbers and flock to the Confederate Army. If that didn't happen, the entire campaign served no purpose and was doomed to fail, unless it was transformed into a giant raid. But the Confederates weren't prepared to "raid" what they considered their home turf. Bragg may be faulted for this delusion, but then again so should all of the Confederate leadership, from Jefferson Davis and Breckenridge on down.

Second, the command structure was never resolved. Kirby Smith informally agreed to place himself under Bragg, but in practice he never did. Bragg may be faulted for failing to get a directive from Jefferson Davis sorting out the situation before he engaged in such a far-flung campaign. Then again, neophyte generals repeatedly had this sort of problem, naively believing in and relying on non-binding protestations of cooperation. Even Robert E. Lee allowed Jefferson Davis to send him to western Virginia early in the War without clear authority, resulting in a mess.

After Munfordville, Bragg was due north of Buell and could likely have marched straight into Louisville. In retrospect (since what he actually did didn't work), he clearly should have done so. Maybe, just maybe, more Kentuckians would have turned out. In Bragg's defense, it appears that he turned northeast, toward the Frankfort area, for two reasons. First was intensely practical. He wanted to hook up with Kirby Smith, and the only way to do so was for Bragg to go to Smith, since Smith wouldn’t come to him (see the second point above). Second, the hope was that installation of a Confederate governor at the state capital would either produce recruits or at least allow the Confederates to make a colorable argument that the Confederate conscription laws were in force and effect in Kentucky as a Confederate state. That obviously didn't work, but Bragg couldn't have known that at the time.

It’s also worth remembering that Don Carlos Buell wound up moving out from Louisville more quickly and more cleverly than one would have reasonably expected in light of his past performance. As usual, Leonidas Polk performed poorly, providing Bragg with intelligence that was outright misleading.

After the battle of Perryville, I can't blame Bragg for retreating. The previously-made mistakes, identified above, had already borne fruit. There were insufficient recruits: the thousands of muskets that Bragg had brought with him to distribute to Kentuckians remained loaded in the wagons, unused. The supply line was already long and tenuous – if it existed at all. Bragg either had to (a) risk his army in a showdown battle in what was proving to be a distant and unfriendly location, (b) keep moving, raiding and devastating Kentucky as he went, or (c) retreat to Tennessee. So long as the Confederacy was not prepared to execute option (b) (just as Lee was not willing to devastate Maryland in September 1862), it seems to me that option (c) was preferable to option (a), which entailed huge risks.

In all of this, Bragg is by no means blameless. I just don't see, however, that the campaign transforms Bragg from a mediocre general into the absolute pits. I must say that in many respects Bragg's Kentucky campaign resembled Lee's Maryland (Antietam) campaign. Both went into border states under mistaken assumptions and with unformed strategic purposes. Both discovered that it is far more difficult to maintain and fight with an army over attenuated supply lines away from one's native soil. Both fought inconclusive battles. Both concluded that under the circumstances retreat was the best option.

Speaking of Braxton Bragg . . .

Now here's a coincidence: from the "Weird but True" column in yesterday's New York Post, which immediately brought to mind that old story about Braxton Bragg arguing with himself:

Some folks in New Zealand have declared that their local government council has "gone totally insane" after they decided to sue themselves.

Town fathers in Waitakere were informed they may have ordered some home[s] removed from a flood plain without proper purpose.

Their response was to sue themselves in court.

And they were ordered by a judge to pay themselves a $4,800 fine.

Was Braxton Bragg Really that Bad? Part II

One of Bragg’s worst problems was the fact that he was saddled with General Leonidas Polk, undoubtedly the most insolent idiot in high command.Polk was repeatedly insubordinate and worked to undermine Bragg’s plans and convert other generals to his anti-Bragg position: he was openly insubordinate during the Perryville campaign; during the Tullahoma campaign he undermined Bragg’s plan to turn Rosecrans’s right; during the Chickamauga campaign he refused Bragg’s orders to attack Crittenden’s corps on September 13; and on the night after the first day of Chickamauga, he took no steps to comply with Bragg’s orders to prepare for a dawn assault on the Federal left (which was crucial to Bragg’s plan to cut the Federals off from, rather than drive them back toward, Chattanooga).

Unfortunately, although Polk was a terrible general, he was a charmer. After a year of badmouthing and conspiring against Bragg, he had won over many of the other commanders. For differing reasons, when D.H. Hill and Longstreet joined the army they were only too happy to join the anti-Bragg cabal. Hill refused to attack an isolated portion of George Thomas’s corps at McLemore’s Cove on September 10, 1863, claiming that Cleburne was sick and unavailable when that was not the case. Longstreet was responsible for the sector that included Brown’s Ferry and ignored orders and suggestions to guard against Federal movements in that area, leading to the opening of the “cracker line.”

Ironically, for all Bragg’s reputation as a nasty curmudgeon, the argument can be made that his biggest fault was that he tried to be too reasonable and accommodating. Knowing the relationship between Jefferson Davis and Polk, and not realizing the extent to which Polk was poisoning the other commanders, Bragg did not take firm steps against Polk after the Perryville campaign, but instead turned the other cheek. Arguably, he should have brought charges against Polk immediately after that campaign; if Jefferson Davis objected (as he certainly would have), Bragg should have been prepared to say, “Him or me.”

Was Braxton Bragg Really that Bad? Part I

Along with everyone else, I've read a bunch of books that take it for granted that Braxton Bragg was a disaster -- the ridiculous Kentucky campaign resulting in Perryville; Stones River; the "empty victory" at Chickamauga; the disaster at Chattanooga.

The verdict on the web has been the same. Several years ago, North and South Magazine convened a symposium of Civil War historians and experts; all but one (Steven Woodworth -- more about his views later) included poor General Bragg on their "Ten Worst Civil War Generals" lists. More recently, Civil War Interactive conducted a poll, and Braxton was named the absolute worst Civil War General on either side. (Thanks to Blogs 4 History for pointing out the poll, which I had missed.)

I dissent. No one is going to claim that Bragg was a great general. I won't even claim he was a good general. But I do doubt that he was any worse than mediocre -- a C or C-, but not an F, as it were. I'll try to explain why in the post and several to follow.

My doubts about the justice of Bragg's reputation were initially stirred when I read Steven Woodworth's fine book, Jefferson Davis and His Generals: The Failure of Confederate Command in the West, several year ago. In it, Woodworth argued that Bragg, while certainly not a great general, was not terrible. He suggested, among other things,

* that the failure of the campaign that led to Perryville was in large part due to (a) the bad and confusing intelligence that Kirby Smith and Leonidas Polk provided, (b) Polk's insubordination, and (c) the mistaken assumption that Kentuckians would rally to and enlist with the Army, an assumption shared by Jefferson Davis and virtually every other leader in the Confederacy.

* that Bragg's plan at Stones River to assault the Federal right was quite good and almost succeeded, and indeed almost certainly would have succeeded had Davis not stripped the Army of troops.

* that through insubordination Bragg's commanders squandered several opportunities developed by Bragg to defeat the Union army in detail in the days before Chickamauga.

* that the dissention in the Army that was the core reason for the disaster at Chattanooga was caused principally by Leonidas Polk, who was an insubordinate malcontent who conducted a lengthy campaign to undermine Bragg and over time infected the entire army (and then found a kindred spirit in Longstreet). More generally, Woodworth suggested that Bragg, while certainly prickly, responded for some time with (for him) reasonable moderation to blatant provocations by Polk, et al., until he could take it, and almost open insubordination, no more.

As Woodworth summed up his view of Bragg in North and South Magazine's on-line Ten Worst Generals article: He was "an excellent strategist, organizer, administrator, and disciplinarian, and an average tactician. His lack of political skills was a serious flaw, reducing an otherwise good general to the level of mediocrity. Others, including Jefferson Davis, Leonidas Polk, William S. Rosecrans, and Ulysses S. Grant, were far more responsible for the defeats of the Army of Tennessee than was Bragg. He definitely does not belong in the bottom ten."

As I noted above, Woodworth apparently did not convince his fellow "Ten Worst" panelists at the North and South Magazine colloquium, for every one other than Woodworth listed Bragg. However, because of the format they did not directly address Woodworth's arguments. In posts to follow, I will amplify upon them.

A Real Military Problem

A general bursts into his commanding general's headquarters, thrusts an index finger into the commander's face and says:

You commenced your cowardly and contemptible persecution of me [over a year ago], and you have kept it up ever since. . . . You robbed me of my command . . . and gave it to one of your favorites . . . in a spirit of revenge and spite, because I would not fawn upon you as others did. . . . Now this second brigade . . . in order to humiliate, you have taken . . . from me. I have stood your meanness as long as I intend to. You have played the part of a damned scoundrel, and are a coward, and if you were any part of a man I would slap your jaws. . . . You may as well not issue any orders to me, for I will not obey them, and I will hold you personally responsible for any further indignities you endeavor to inflict upon me. You have threatened to arrest me for not obeying your orders promptly. I dare you to do it, and I say to you that if you ever again try to interfere with me or cross my path it will be at the peril of your life.

No, this incident did not occur during the Afghan or Iraqi war. It's Confederate Nathan Bedford Forrest to CSA General Braxton Bragg.

Source: Wiley Sword, "Mountains Touched With Fire: Chattanooga Beseiged, 1863".