Davis Bragg Bragg & Davis

gary

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Feb 20, 2005
I've read several books and they all spoke of the reluctance of Davis to remove Bragg from command of the Army of Tennessee. This had given me the impression that they enjoyed a friendship from the ante-bellum period. In reading the memoirs of General "War is Hell" Sherman, I came across this passage:

"I knew that Bragg hated Davis bitterly, and that he had resigned from the army in 1855, or 1856, because Davis, as Secretary of War, had ordered him, with his battery, from Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, to Fort Smith or Fort Washita, in the Indian country, as Bragg expressed it, 'to chase Indians with six-pounders.'"

So, why was Davis so reluctant to remove Bragg when the general officers sought his removal? Or was it because of this history between them that Davis was reluctant to do so? Ideas or suggestions?
 
Gary- interesting quote. That's a new one to me. I'm going to have to look into it more- I do not have my texts with me. I had always gone with the assumption that Bragg & Davis were friends predating the War; they had served together under General Zachary Taylor at the battles of Monterrey and Buena Vista in Northern Mexico.

Bragg resigned from the Army in 1856, which is in the last year of Davis's tenure as Pierce's Secretary of War and Pierce's administration. Surely if he had trouble with Davis at the time of his resignation, he could have waited him out. Furthermore, as a Southern man of Southern sympathies, he would have understood the need to pacify the South West for the expansion of that territory for the inclusion of new slave states to the Union. It may be true that he did not understand or agree with the use of artillery against Indian raiders, but surely would have understood the necessity of manning the forts along the frontier.

It may be also that he was ready to move on, and did not particularly care to make the move out to the wilderness. As it was, he went to Louisiana and settled down as a planter and became I believe the chief engineer to the state of Louisiana.

Anyway, once the Confederate States became established with Davis at its head, he wasted little time in naming Bragg a Brigadier General (the highest rank at which commissions were proffered at the time) and assigning him to a very important duty- that of organizing forces and defenses at Pensacola where there was a considerable and dangerous Federal presence. The date of this appointment being 7 March, 1861, the Confederacy only a month old. Knowing what we know of Davis, in no way is the man capable of naming a commander to an important post in whom he has no faith- or with whom he has been feuding.

Also about Davis, once loyalty was established between himself and another, noone could rend it asunder. It is the very nature of the man; he repaid loyalty and friendship proven with loyalty and friendship unconditional. He kept loyal men in office long past their usefulness to the Confederacy because these men possessed his unswerving trust. The classic example of this is of course General Bragg. Let us not make the error of assuming that Bragg is an *** entire; his opponents Grant and Sherman knew him to be a man of great capacity and vision, and have left statements to this regard. Bragg possessed a remarkable strategic sense. I will site two instances- his removal of the Army of Tennessee from central Mississippi by rail in July '62 after the fall of Corinth to General Halleck after which he proceeded to launch his invasion into Kentucky, thus moving the oppressive federal presence back towards the Ohio River. Again, his pooling and concentrating of his forces after General Rosecrans flanked him out of Chattanooga to pounce on the far-flung forces of Rosecrans and forcing battle at Chickamauga to his decided advantage.

The problem of course with the enigmatic Bragg was not strategy, but tactics, management of his army and commanders, and mercurial decisions under pressure. There was also chronic ill health which tended to make him a bit cross and uppity. The above examples of the Kentucky invasion and the non-pursuit after Chickamauga are just as good illustrations of the down side of Bragg as an army commander.

So Davis stayed true after the debacle of Missionary Ridge, and after time after time of sustaining Bragg as commander of the ill-starred Army of Tennessee, brought him to Richmond to serve in Lee's old role of Military Advisor to the President. In this position, his value as an insightful strategist was of great aid to Davis and the Confederacy. In fact, one can say that it was in this role that he served the Confederacy the best, and would have been well placed there much earlier than he was.

I should say also that I believe Davis was a bit hamstrung with whom he could place as commander of the Army of Tennessee. It was an independent command necessitating a strategist at its head, and it also meant he had to have someone there in whom he could place complete trust. After Sidney Johnston, he did not have many, (meaning really any), suitable men in his mind to handle this great responsibility, other than a proven (again, to him) Bragg. And at different times, he had the confirmation from Generals Beauregard and Joe Johnston endorsing Bragg, as well as that of Lee, acknowledging that if not Bragg, then whom?

I wonder where Sherman came up with this tidbit. Was it Army scuttlebutt? Was it just Sherman surmising? Did the two men meet up while they both resided in Louisiana just before the Great Unpleasantness? It's curious I am. I'll leave off with this quote I found in vol. I of Foote's Trilogy- it is from a letter from Davis to Bragg at the outset of Bragg's Kentucky Invasion, warning him of lances from the rear:


"You have the misfortune of being regarded as my personal friend, and are pursued, therefore, with malignant censure by men regardless of truth, and whose want of principle to guide their conduct renders them incapable of conceiving that you are trusted because of your known fitness for command and not because of friendly regard. Revolutions develop the high qualities of the good and the great, but they cannot change the nature of the vicious and the selfish."

Obviously by this time the union between the two men is cemented. Also fairly apparent is Davis's fine artistry with the King's English, and the us-against-them mindset very characteristic of the man. And no doubts that Bragg is an 'Us.'


(Message edited by Ewc on October 20, 2003)
 
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