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Civil War History - The South & Western Theaters Check this forum for all South and Western Theater Questions. Included are the Western, Pacific, Trans-Mississippi, & Lower Seaboard and Gulf Approach Theaters.

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  #1  
Old 06-13-2007, 12:40 AM
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Default Who's worse: Bragg or Hood?

Both would cause me to desert. Bragg was far beyond his ability and Hood was ready to gamble with the lives of his men.
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  #2  
Old 06-13-2007, 01:39 AM
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Default Hood

I think Hood is worse. Bragg's temperment is definitely a problem, but there seems to be at least some rationale to his decisions.

Hood - another general not fully appreciating that this was not a war that favored the attacker. Sherman bears down on Atlanta and Hood's attacking. If it were WWII he might have been as famous as Patton, he certainely was brave enough!
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Old 06-13-2007, 01:39 AM
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At first glance I would say Hood. But looking deeper, Bragg must take that honor. One must look at his near disaster at Chickamuga and his complete failure on Missionary Ridge. If one looks back at his failed '62 Kentucky march and his failure to keep Kirby Smith in line, Stones River etc. Look how far he was pushed by Rosecrans, his failure to take advise from Forrest and others at Chickamuga.

Sure, Hood made a hugh mistake at Franklin but you must consider that he still moved forward to Nashville.
It is possible that if he had not made his blunder at Franklin and had the support needed, he could have made it very uncomfortable for Thomas at Nashville.
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  #4  
Old 06-18-2007, 02:13 PM
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I think Bragg was the best thing going for the Union.
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  #5  
Old 06-18-2007, 03:46 PM
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Default which one?

I believe Hood is the lesser of two evils.Bragg to me was something of a Bufoon. Hood , like Grant was a fighter. If Bragg was in charge instead of Hood, the war in the west would have been over sooner.
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  #6  
Old 06-19-2007, 12:48 AM
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Leave it to gary to ask the tough question. They were both miserable, but in different ways. Bragg was personally impossible -- a fatal flaw in any leader, and he proved incapable of thinking on his feet. Hood may have been a better general than Bragg, but for his apparent propensity to view every objective as a nail that must be hammered.

In view of the difficulty of the question, I will recuse myself as being unable to decide.

Ole
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Old 06-19-2007, 03:50 PM
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Just think about this for a minute, who was Hood's commanding officer? Bragg. Hood needed somebody to pull in his reins, and Bragg wasn't it. So I would have to go with Bragg.

Pinckney
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  #8  
Old 06-19-2007, 04:09 PM
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The illustrious Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard (give or take a few letters) was in command, more or less, of both Hood and Bragg from time to time. Certainly PT was a player in the Tennessee campaign and enough events prior to that to qualify him for exclusion to the western theatre? Is he the worst closet occupant? He, like Lee, was probably a very good engineer whose talents were being tested in a new surrounding: warfare.
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  #9  
Old 06-20-2007, 08:00 AM
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Bragg cared about his soldiers even though his soldiers could not stand him, or respect him, including his subordinate General's; this is one reason he never attacked Chattanooga after his victory at Chickamauga. He was reportedly shocked at the amount of dead laying on the battlefield.
Hood, as we all know, virtually sacrificed his Army at Franklin and Nashville to soothe his anger over a missed oportunity.
Hood gets my vote.

Paul
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  #10  
Old 06-20-2007, 04:54 PM
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Paul,

We actually we don't all follow your train of thought about Hood attacking at Franklin to "soothe his anger..." If you truly believe that Hood attacked at Franklin and then went to Nashville just because he was peeved about Spring Hill you have not read much beyond some of the things that Wiley Sword and James McDonough, for example, wrote in years past. The problem is with that train of thought is that it is based upon PURE speculation and/or conjecture. I guess Lee attacked the center of the Union on July 3, 1863 because he was trying to "soothe" his anger about the first two days of the battle. Hey, on second thought, James Longstreet actually did say just about that very thing.

In closing, I would be careful about following the old train of thought that is rapidly being dispelled. The truth is often much starker - a general making the decision with a clear mind and an objective, for right or wrong, in mind. Hood likely falls into that place and frankly, so does Lee. And Burnside. And Sherman. And Grant. Frontal assaults were the nature of the Civil War beast.
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