No open-access location is known for this record yet.
No open-access location is known for this record yet.
CONTROVERSY IN KENTUCKY: BRAXTON BRAGG'S CAMPAIGN OF 1862 Grady McWhiney union ARMncs were engulfing the South in the early summer of 1862. Besides threatening Richmond in the East, the Federals held New Orleans , most of Tennessee, and much of the Mississippi River. The Confederacy 's fate seemed to depend upon the abiUty of two widely separated armies, one in Virginia and the other in Mississippi, to prevent further Union advances. Concentrated at Tupelo after its evacuation of Corinth in May (the latest in a series of retreats that had begun in Kentucky , the Confederate army in Mississippi was badly disorganized. Moreover, President Jefferson Davis had just dismissed its commander, General P. G. T. Beauregard.1 Beauregard's replacement, General Braxton Bragg, a grim martinet with exceptional talent for organizing and training soldiers, had never commanded a large army in the field. He was a sickly man; for years he had suffered from chronic illnesses (rheumatism,2 "dyspepsia," extreme nervousness, and severe migraine headaches ) which had helped to make his "temper sour and petulant."3 Stooped, haggard-faced, Dr. McWhiney is a native of Shreveport, Louisiana, and a graduate of Columbia University, where he studied under David Donald. Editor of a new edition of Lee's Dispatches to Davis, 1862-1865, he is now completing a biography of Bragg and is a visiting instructor in history at the University of California, Berkeley. 1 For an account of the circumstances leading to Beauregard being deprived of command, see T. Harry Williams, P. G. T. Beauregard: Napoleon in Gray ( Baton Rouge, 1955), pp. 155-159; Braxton Bragg to Jefferson Davis, June 19, 1862, Braxton Bragg Papers, Duke University Library; U.S. War Dept., comp., The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, 1889-1901), Series I, Vol. XVII, pt. 2, pp. 599, 601, 606, 614. Cited hereafter as O.R. and, unless otherwise noted, all references are to Series I. 2 Mrs. Bragg to Bragg, October 18, 1861, Mrs. Braxton Bragg Collection, University of Texas Library. 3 Richard Taylor, Destruction and Reconstruction (New York, 1900), p. 100; Irving A. Buck, Cleburne and His Command (New York, 1908), p. 209, GRADY MCWHINEY grizzle-bearded, he looked older tiian his forty-five years. A year before the English reporter WiUiam H. RusseU had described him as an "elderly man." Although "müd and agreeable in manner," Bragg "exacted of aU a rigid performance of duty," punishing officer or private alike foranyneglect. When he was aroused, his cold eyes, set beneatfi bushy, black brows, showed "much of the white" and "gave him ... a very ferocious aspect, which made him a terror to all who incurred his displeasure ."4 "Exacting of others, he never spared himseU," wrote General Richard Taylor, who considered Bragg "the most laborious of commanders, devotingevery moment to the discharge of his duties." Repeatedly his wife admonished him for working too hard. "You are overtasking your mind sitting so closely to your writing—I would write less, & exercise more," sheadvised. Yet his taU, thin body was "capable of enduring any amount offatigue." He rose early, retired late, ate Urrle, and drank less. "He was untiring in his labors, methodical and systematic in the discharge of business," recaUed a former member of his staff.8 A soldier who served under him wrote that "Bragg was industry personified." "Go to him on business," noted a chaplain, "and he promptly gives you a hearing. His manner indicates that you must be brief and speak to the point. If your request is reasonable and your cause is just, he decides for you and dismisses you at once. The promptness of his decision and the abrupt manner of his dismissal, not granting a moment of time to thank him, puts you in an 01 humor with yourself; you feel when you rush out of his presence thatitwould be a reh'efifsomebody would fightyou."6 Bragg faced a mass of difficulties when he assumed command of the forces in Mississippi on June 20. He did not have to meet a new enemy advance immediately, but Confederate morale was low, and many of his soldiers were deserting. How to feed...
Loading…
Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 6 citations exist upstream.
Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.
Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.