Braxton Bragg and Confederate Defeat: Field Command (review)

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS Braxton Bragg and Confederate Defeat: Field Command. By Grady McWhiney. (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1969. Pp. xiv, 421. $10.00.) Few reputations suffer such precarious existences as those of military leaders. The fame of a general may rise or fall at the outcome of a single engagement or at the whim or a writer or critic. Even the greatest generals have drawn sharp criticism from armchair strategists who have refought their battles on drawing boards long after the sounds of conflict and the stench of death have faded from their fields. Still it probably is the general who "is the decisive factor in battle," and on his shoulders rests the victory or the defeat. Like C. S. Forester in his novel, The General, historians also study the military commanders for a better understanding of the campaign or the war. Few wars offer more fertile ground for the study of generals than the American Civil War, and numerous biographies now speak to this particular historical interest. Possibly only three generals in that war deserve to be classified as great commanders—Grant, Lee, and Sherman. Few other generals so well mastered the techniques of leadership in an increasingly technical war or understood the psychology of a changing age as did these three officers. More often than not we study other generals for their involvement rather than for their achievements. Too often their war records speak of faüure and frustration rather than of victory and creative planning. But the Civil War is more than the story of Grant, Lee, and Sherman. Better understanding of this war has come through the studies of lesser men who also played important roles in determining the final outcome of the war, men whose failures were as decisive as the successes of their more illustrous colleagues. Burdens of command bring awesome responsibilities , and North and South alike had to call upon unqualified men to assume these burdens. This war is often a record of their mistakes and failures with disorganized and ül-disciplined troops following untrained if not uninspired generals into battle. From the mediocre so much was expected; from them too little was realized! Braxton Bragg was one of those mediocre officers upon whom the South had to place its hopes for success, and no general in either army missed, more chances for fame or victory. From among the high-ranking commanders in that war only George B. McClellan offered a record of such spotty achievement. And yet no study of the Civil War is complete without an understanding of these two men and others like them. 265 266CIVIL WAR HISTORY Grady McWhiney, already an established authority on the art of war and the Civil War in particular, has added an important biography to our müitary bookshelves with an scholarly updating of the life of General Bragg. The first of his two projected volumes, appropriately titled Braxton Bragg and Confederate Defeat, shows a superb understanding of one of the Confederacy's most tragic figures. The first volume, subtitled Field Command, traces the life of Bragg from his early youth to the immediate aftermath of his bloody engagement with Union General William Rosecrans at Murfreesboro, Tennessee. This volume is neither a blind criticism of the general, nor is it an outpouring of praise for Bragg's record of achievement. In a well-balanced, wellresearched , and clearly-written narrative, the author traces the growth of an important southern officer and the conflict in his life as he attempted to do a job for which he was not qualified. The strengths of this book are many, placing this author in the finest company of Civil War historians and narrators. This is a study of Bragg the man as well as the soldier, and McWhiney dispassionately portrays the ups and downs of his turbulent career, especially as the commander of the "Confederacy's second most important army," an assignment "where he made a major contribution to Confederate defeat." In another role Bragg might have been more successful. Even before the Civil War he anticipated military organizational structures and changes that were not formally accepted by the United States Army until the "managerial revolution" of...