Episode Details

Braxton Bragg was born in 1817 in Warrenton, North Carolina, the son of a carpenter who grew wealthy, and grew up amid unproven local rumors that his mother had been jailed for killing a free Black man. He graduated fifth in his West Point class of 1837 largely through memorization. In the Second Seminole War he wrote anonymous articles attacking Winfield Scott and was court-martialed, and in 1847 one of his own soldiers lit a 12-pound artillery shell under his cot. Bragg walked out of the wreckage unhurt.

His artillery at Buena Vista made him a national hero through a quote Zachary Taylor's staff said was never spoken. He left the Army in 1856 to run a Louisiana sugar plantation with more than 100 enslaved people, opposed secession, then organized Louisiana's troops in 1861. At Shiloh he ordered repeated frontal assaults on the Hornet's Nest, and he took command of the western army when P.G.T. Beauregard left on unapproved sick leave. Retreats from Perryville and Stones River turned his generals against him, and after Chickamauga they petitioned for his removal before Grant routed him at Chattanooga.

• A widely told story has Bragg, as company commander, requesting supplies and then refusing them as quartermaster.
• After Stones River he asked his generals to confirm in writing that they backed the retreat, and they called for his resignation.
• Joseph E. Johnston, sent to investigate, found the army well organized and declined to replace him.
• Jefferson Davis traveled to the front to quell the generals' revolt after Chickamauga.
• After the war he lost a string of jobs and died suddenly on a street in Galveston in 1876 at age 59.