Was Bragg's offensive into Kentucky a waste of time and resources?

Kentucky Derby Cavalier.

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Oct 24, 2019
For sometime I have wondered this, what was the thinking behind the offensive into Kentucky by Bragg and others? It seemed like a tactical blunder from my point of view. Wouldn't it have made more sense to be fighting around Vicksburg as to prevent it's capture?

Thoughts?
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Stoddard Johnston and Kirby Smith had Davis and Bragg convinced (with some wishful thinking) that they could raise 25,000 troops, and “liberate” an occupied state…….all while feasting on the fat of the Bluegrass.
Actually the Confedracy did raise 25k Confedrate troops vs the Union braised 50k
Noe’s account of Perryville states Bragg picked up around 1500 Ky recruits.
Plus there were Confedrate guerrllas although the guerrlla threat was greatly over by late 1864 and Unionist Homeguards. There was a book published a few years ago on guerrlla warfare in Kentucky. William Clarke Quantril was killed by a state sanctioned special counterinsurgency unit.
Leftyhunter
 
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I am wondering if the weather in northern KY had an effect on Braggs plans. The area was very dry and water is in short supply.
YES, my recall is that water shortage was a big problem, esp during the long retreat post-Perryville, and also a problem for Kirby Smith effort to hook up with Bragg's troops around Lexington?
 
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Bragg takes a lot of licks- I get it.
But I have to say the way he moved his army from northern Mississippi to Chattanooga- via Mobile- was an epic undertaking. And then juked Buell back into Nashville, while he dashed for Kentucky.
I think a pretty solid performance.
Well said. And it put the fear of God into Lincoln and the Northern press forcing the detachment of many more troops to protect the rear than might have been done otherwise. This raid was brilliant, politically, strategically, if not so much tactically. Only someone with Bragg's skill set could have pulled off the logistics required to concentrate that many men in Chatt quickly to flank the Yanks at Corinth and Nashville to boot! During the raid, the taking of the sizeable Yank detachment at Murfreesboro was probably not worth the delay and extra effort, but the campaign pulled the North north from upper Mississippi & Alabama to Nashville and Kentucky, regained all of middle TN for the rebs for nearly another year, and delayed the fall of Vicksburg and Chatt as well for another yr or so. (Remember, when this raid began in Sep 62, a large detachment of Yanks, marching from Corinth, were w/i 50 mi or so of Chattanooga, which they wouldn't do again until Sep 63, & not get past Chatt until May of 64.) This grand raid, coming at the same time as Lee's raid into MD and another reb raid into MI in Sep, changed the entire complexion of the war, 180º, from what it looked like just 3 months earlier, in Jun, post-Shiloh, post-Fair Oaks & post-Pea Ridge in Arkansas!
 
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Tactically I wouldn't really call it a blunder. If successful it would bring Kentucky into the Confederacy at most, and at least draw Buell out of Tennessee and give relief to the State from war right at harvest time, a big consideration.

Politically it was a sensible maneuver. It was right at the same time as Lee's offensive into Maryland, and though delayed a bit, the same time as Hindman's offensive into Missouri, (which got stopped at Prairie Grove in Arkansas and stayed behind schedule not happening till late Nov. early Dec.), and all that on paper would make the CSA look to be in the ascendant, and almost unstoppable in the press, thus potentially gaining politically in Europe. The Confederacy on the offensive everywhere at once, in theory winning, and thus looking to win the war at best, giving a temporary respite from Yankees to farms and other producers right when food and material is needed at most at the worst.

I'd say it was a sound gamble, that really could've gone either way in Kentucky till Perryville. Vicksburg still looked impregnable at this stage of 1862, I think it would've been felt it could even help the situation in Mississippi and probably did.

I think the bad part of the equation was Bragg, who given a choice between winning and losing, was gonna chose losing.
I have often made the statement that Bragg was the only general in the history of warfare whose men would rather lose a battle rather than win one where he would get the credit.
 
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I have often made the statement that Bragg was the only general in the history of warfare whose men would rather lose a battle rather than win one where he would get the credit.
Then you have often made an inaccurate statement about poor Mr Bragg. If u think Bragg's troops weren't thrilled with Chickamauga, ur sadly mistaken.
 
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Then you have often made an inaccurate statement about poor Mr Bragg. If u think Bragg's troops weren't thrilled with Chickamauga, ur sadly mistaken.
Unfortunately for those poor troops, that particular day was the only day in the entire war that any of Bragg's troops had ANY occasion to rejoice. Period.
And even then success had nothing to do with Bragg or Longstreet. It had everything to do with the incredible blunder committed by Rosecranz. Without his blunder, the federal troops might well have suffeered temporary tactical defeats which they could have negated by consolidating just a mile or two down the road. They could have stopped the Confederate advance and rebegun their own advances.
 
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Bragg takes a lot of licks- I get it.
But I have to say the way he moved his army from northern Mississippi to Chattanooga- via Mobile- was an epic undertaking. And then juked Buell back into Nashville, while he dashed for Kentucky.
I think a pretty solid performance.

Think Bragg's organizational abilities, at least at the start, are underrated by some.
 
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The indecisive Bragg allowed himself to be influenced by political pressures (and Kirby Smith) to launch an offensive into Kentucky, in the hope of liberating it. He was led to believe that the slave state of Kentucky was largely pro-Southern and widely supportive of the Confederacy, with a growing number of men there willing to join his Army. However, this was not the reality of the situation in that state.

Bragg would have been better to deploy his forces elsewhere (it's easy to be wise in hindsight though).
 
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