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Braxton Bragg (March 22, 1817 – September
27, 1876) was a career U.S. Army officer and a
general in the Confederate States Army during the
American Civil War.

Bragg was born in Warrenton, North Carolina, the
brother of future Confederate Attorney General
Thomas Bragg and the future brother-in-law of
Union army | Union general Don Carlos Buell. He
graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1837
and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the
3rd U.S. Artillery.

Bragg served in the Second Seminole War in Florida
and took part in the occupation of Texas. He won
promotions for bravery and distinguished conduct
in the Mexican War, including a brevet (military)
| brevet promotion to major for the Battle of
Monterrey and to lieutenant colonel for the Battle
of Buena Vista.

Bragg had a reputation for being a strict
disciplinarian and one who adhered to regulations
literally. There is a famous story about him as a
lieutenant commanding a frontier post where he
also served as quartermaster. He submitted a
requisition for supplies, then as quartermaster
declined to fill it. As company commander, he
resubmitted the requisition, giving additional
reasons for his requirements, but as the
quartermaster he denied the request again.
Realizing that he was at a personal impasse, he
referred the matter to the post commandant, who
exclaimed "My God, Mr. Bragg, you have quarreled
with every officer in the army, and now you are
quarreling with yourself!" It is alleged that some
of his troops attempted to assassinate him on two
occasions in August and September 1847, but he was
not injured either time. In the more serious of
the two incidents, one of his soldiers exploded a
12-pound artillery shell underneath his cot.
Although the cot was destroyed, somehow Bragg
himself emerged without a scratch.

In 1856, Bragg resigned from the U.S. Army to
become a sugar planter in Thibodeaux, Louisiana.
He also served as Commissioner of Public Works for
the state.

Before the start of the Civil War, Bragg was a
colonel in the Louisiana Militia and was promoted
to major general of the militia on February 20,
1861. He commanded the forces around New Orleans,
Louisiana, until April 16, but his commission was
transferred to be a brigadier general of the
Confederate States Army on March 7, 1861. He
commanded forces in Pensacola, Florida, and the
Department of West Florida and was promoted to
major general on September 12, 1861. His command
was extended to Alabama, and then to the Army of
Pensacola in October 1861.

Bragg marched his forces to Corinth, Mississippi,
where he participated in the Battle of Corinth I |
siege of Corinth and the Battle of Shiloh. After
the Confederate commander, General Albert Sidney
Johnston, was killed at Shiloh, General P.G.T.
Beauregard assumed command. On that day, April 6,
1862, Bragg was promoted to full general, one of
only eight in the history of the Confederacy, and
assigned to command the Army of the Mississippi.
Beauregard soon departed on account of illness and
Bragg was appointed his successor as commander of
the Confederate Army of Tennessee | Army of
Tennessee in June 1862.

In August 1862, Bragg invaded Kentucky, hoping
that he could arouse supporters of the Confederate
cause in the border states and drive the Union
forces under his brother-in-law, Don Carlos Buell,
beyond the Ohio River. He marched his army to
Chattanooga, Tennessee, and moved out to the north
from there, in cooperation with Lt. Gen. Edmund
Kirby Smith, who was commanding a separate force.
He captured over 4,000 Union soldiers at Battle of
Munfordville | Munfordville, and then moved his
army to Bardstown, Kentucky | Bardstown. On
October 4, 1862, he participated in the
inauguration of Richard Hawes as the provisional
Confederate governor of Kentucky. Bragg met
Buell's army at Battle of Perryville | Perryville
on October 8 and won a tactical victory against
him, but he withdrew his army back to Knoxville,
Tennessee | Knoxville, representing a strategic
failure for his invasion of Kentucky.

Bragg next prepared a campaign into central
Tennessee. At the Battle of Stones River, he
fought Union Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans to a
draw, but withdrew his army from the field to
Tullahoma, Tennessee, so that the Union had some
justification for declaring a victory. Jefferson
Davis empowered Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, commander
of all Confederate forces in the Western Theater,
to relieve Bragg of command, but Johnston visited
Bragg and decided to retain him. Bragg was then
driven from Tullahoma to Chattanooga and into
Georgia (U.S. state) | Georgia during Rosecrans's
Tullahoma Campaign | Tullahoma and Chickamauga
Campaign | Chickamauga campaigns.

On September 19–September 20|20, 1863, Bragg
turned on the pursuing Rosecrans in northeastern
Georgia and defeated him at the Battle of
Chickamauga, the greatest Confederate victory in
the Western Theater during the war. After the
battle, Rosecrans's Army of the Cumberland
retreated to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where Bragg
laid siege to the city.

Despite nearly succeeding, the siege ultimately
failed, when Union Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant
relieved Rosecrans. In November, Grant and William
T. Sherman decisively defeated Bragg at the Battle
of Chattanooga III | Battle of Chattanooga and
lifted the siege. Things came to a boil in the
Confederate high command. Bragg's subordinate
generals, Leonidas Polk, James Longstreet, and
William J. Hardee all expressed their lack of
confidence in Bragg's abilities to Jefferson
Davis. Despite the close personal relationship
that the Confederate president had with Bragg,
Davis relieved him of his command and replaced him
with Joseph E. Johnston, who would command the
army in the Atlanta Campaign against Sherman.

In February 1864, Bragg was sent to Richmond,
Virginia; his official orders read that he was
"Charged with the conduct of military operations
of the Confederate States", but he was essentially
Davis's military advisor without a direct command,
a post once held by Robert E. Lee. Later in 1864,
having proved ineffective at that position, he
commanded in turn the defenses of Wilmington,
North Carolina, the Department of North Carolina
and Southern Virginia, the defenses of Augusta,
Georgia, the defenses of Savannah, Georgia, the
defenses of Charleston, South Carolina, and in
January, 1865, the defenses again of Wilmington.
His disappointing performance in the Second Battle
of Fort Fisher caused the loss of the latter city.
Near the end of the war he served as a corps
commander (although his command was less than a
division in size) in the Army of Tennessee under
Joseph E. Johnston in the Carolinas Campaign
against Sherman and fought at the Battle of
Bentonville. After Lee's surrender at Appomattox
Court House, Bragg accompanied Jefferson Davis as
he fled through South Carolina and into Georgia.

After the war Bragg served as the superintendent
of the New Orleans waterworks and later became the
chief engineer for Alabama, supervising harbor
improvements at Mobile, Alabama | Mobile. He moved
to Texas and became a railroad inspector. 

Bragg was walking down a street with a friend in
Galveston, Texas, when he suddenly fell over dead.
He is buried in Magnolia Cemetery,Mobile, Alabama.

Fort Bragg, a U.S. Army base in North Carolina, is
named in his honor.

==References==
*Eicher, John H., & Eicher, David J.: Civil War
High Commands, Stanford University Press, 2001,
ISBN 0-8047-3641-3.
*Shelby Foote|Foote, Shelby, The Civil War, A
Narrative: Fort Sumter to Perryville, Random
House, 1958, ISBN 0-394-49517-9.