Posted on 10/01/2016 9:31:00 AM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
Earl J. Hess’s “Braxton Bragg: The Most Hated Man of the Confederacy” is a thoughtful re-examination of a man who has become, unfortunately and unfairly, the South’s “chief whipping boy.”...
Mr. Hess is a diligent old-school chronicler of battlefield history, producing a stream of studies of lesser-known battles, infantry tactics, and even small arms and field fortifications....
Mr. Hess does provide a fascinating glimpse of Bragg’s prewar friendship with another famously prickly officer, William Tecumseh Sherman....
Mr. Hess attributes Bragg’s execrable reputation to a number of factors: the benefit of historical hindsight; a host of scheming, incompetent subordinates; apocryphal stories of cowardice and cruelty; and what the author calls “the shadowy world of newspaper correspondents and their often venomous attitude toward the general.” The rumor mill, from the firesides of the army to the parlors of Richmond, was particularly unkind to Bragg....
“More depends on a good General than the lives of many privates,” Sam Watkins said in closing his own remembrance of Braxton Bragg. “The private loses his life, the General his country.” And so did Bragg lose his, during the war and ever since. Mr. Hess’s sharp-eyed profile of the general’s dour personality and snakebit career will bring much-needed perspective to future studies of the Confederacy. It may even evoke some measure of sympathy for the general that a Rebel nurse once called “the best-abused man in the world.”
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
“the shadowy world of newspaper correspondents and their often venomous attitude toward the general.”
For later
Still better to be lucky than good. Thank goodness he was an incompetent boob, else my Yankee ancestors might’ve died, and I wouldn’t be here.
Fort Bragg
Some of my kin were captured and held, those that took an oath, NOT TO RETURN TO THE FIGHT,were released!
They had a long walk home!
Kansas to Ohio.
Might be best to keep that quiet!
More than a few Army Posts are named after Confederate Officers.
I would say General Hood could give Bragg a run for his money in the hated department.
General Jackson was pretty much reviled by his troops right up until the actual fighting started. Then they loved him.
Even though he was a Texan, my bet is on John B. Hood. He completely destroyed his army in the battle of Franklin.
The same could be said of Robert E. “Granny” Lee - until he found his stride.
He contributed to the South being defeated
That will be celebrated by most here
The whipping boy is the South not Braxton Bragg
Course now all of White America is pretty much under attack so good works Yankees are getting a taste of their own meds
But given their natural chutzpah and proclivity for hypocrisy I doubt it will sate their cheap virtue addiction on our backs
A very good point!
Just as true today ,or more so as in 1860!
And just who is it, that floggs the many myths; need I ask?
Yes, I've heard that history belongs to the victors.
Bookmark
I thought Longstreet was the most hated Confederate for opposing Lee at Gettysburg...and becoming a Republican after the war.
One of my favorite reads is “Les Misérables”.
The first English translation came out in 1862.
Was very popular, North and South.
“Lee’s Miserables” was a name proudly taken by the men of Army of Northern Virginia.
IIRC the southern version, was less ‘political’.
The whipping boy is the South not Braxton Bragg.
Wardaddy post#11.
Any name associated with the C.S.A., and many will attempt to muddy it up.
I’m not of the south.
That said, many men of HONOR fought for the south.
As was their right.
Sherman grasped something most humans struggle to comprehend. What is the quality of Mercy?
His own troops thought he was one strange bird. As such having your regiment attached to the Stonewall Brigade meant marching almost beyond human endurance. The only saving grace was when your regiment went into battle under Jackson's command you were fairly confident that he had a firm grasp of the situation and soon the Yankees would be reversing direction.
Scorched earth warfare had been dead a long time until he resurrected it.
Any general today acting like him in Iraq of Afgan would have been court martialled.
Sherman was the equivalent of a Nazi Curtis LeMay. He had the knowledge and ability to destroy things, but he did so in a bad cause.
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