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Title details for Braxton Bragg by Earl J. Hess - Available

Braxton Bragg

The Most Hated Man of the Confederacy

by Earl J. Hess
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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.

  • Creators

  • Series

    Civil War America

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    September 2, 2016

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

      • ISBN: 9781469628776

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781469628769
      • File size: 4453 KB

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781469628769
      • File size: 4453 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Library Journal

      July 1, 2016

      In his latest work, Hess (history, Lincoln Memorial Univ.; The Battle of Ezra Church and the Struggle for Atlanta) presents a study of the Civil War career of Braxton Bragg (1817-76). Graduating from West Point in 1837, Bragg served in the Second Seminole War and the Mexican-American War. When the Civil War began in 1861, Bragg, then a Confederate general, was assigned to the coastal defense of Florida. He was promoted after the Battle of Shiloh and began organizing an attack through Tennessee and Kentucky, which would ultimately be a failure, as would the Battle of Stones River. While Bragg found victory at Chickamauga, his continued efforts to break the Union forces failed, leading him to resign his position in the army and become a military advisor to Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Bragg's devotion to strict military discipline, his acerbic personality, and his inability to cultivate favorable relationships with other officers and the press caused him immeasurable difficulties--and resulted in his infamous reputation. Hess analyzes Bragg's military campaigns and how his contemporaries viewed him as well as providing historians' opinions. VERDICT Well-documented, Hess's examination of Bragg is balanced and fair and will interest all Civil War aficionados.--Patricia Ann Owens, formerly with Illinois Eastern Community Colls., Mt. Carmel

      Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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