The Life of Jefferson Davis

by Frank H. Alfriend

When Rosecrans advanced into Georgia, after his occupation of Chattanooga, the aspect of affairs was exceedingly threatening, and it became necessary to strengthen Bragg sufficiently to enable him to give battle, and thus check the advance of the enterprising Federal commander. With this view the corps of Longstreet was temporarily detached from Lee, and sent to Bragg. This accession to his forces gave General Bragg the opportunity of winning one of the most brilliant victories of the war. The signal defeat of Rosecrans was followed by his precipitate retreat into Chattanooga, closely pressed by Bragg.

For weeks the Federal army was besieged with a good prospect for its ultimate surrender. The imperiled position of Rosecrans had the effect of relieving the pressure of invasion at other points, forcing the concentration, for his relief, of large bodies of troops withdrawn from the armies in the Mississippi Valley and in Northern Virginia. General Bragg made an able disposition of his forces in the neighborhood of Chattanooga, and awaited with confidence the surrender of Rosecrans. He subsequently said: “These dispositions, faithfully sustained, ensured the enemy’s speedy evacuation of Chattanooga for want of food and forage. Possessed of the shortest road to his depot, and the one by which reënforcements must reach him, we held him at our mercy, and his destruction was only a question of time.”

The situation fully justified this statement. So crippled was Rosecrans by his defeat at Chickamauga, that an attack upon Bragg was out of the question. The alternative of starvation, or retreat, seemed forced upon the Federal army. The roads in its rear were in a terrible condition, and the distance over which its supplies had to be drawn, was sixty miles. At this critical moment, General Grant, whose command had been enlarged, after his success at Vicksburg, and now embraced the three main Federal armies in the West, reached the field of operations. Grant immediately executed a plan of characteristic boldness, by which he effected a lodgment on the south side of the Tennessee River, and secured new lines of communication, thus relieving the beleaguered army. General Longstreet, to whom the holding of this all-important route was confided, made an unsuccessful night attack designed to defeat Grant’s movement.

Having relieved the Federal army of the apprehension of starvation or a disastrous retreat, Grant now meditated operations, which, however hazardous, or however in violation of probability may have been their success, were fully vindicated by the result. Waiting until he thought his accumulation of forces sufficient to justify an assault upon the strong positions of the Confederates, Grant finally made a vigorous and well-planned attack with nearly his entire force. The result was a disastrous defeat and retreat of Bragg’s army. General Grant claimed, as the fruits of his victory, seven thousand prisoners and nearly fifty pieces of artillery.

There were circumstances attending this battle peculiarly discouraging to the South. These circumstances were thus commented upon by President Davis:

“After a long and severe battle, in which great carnage was inflicted on him, some of our troops inexplicably abandoned positions of great strength, and, by a disorderly retreat, compelled the commander to withdraw the forces elsewhere successful, and finally to retire with his whole army to a position some twenty or thirty miles to the rear. It is believed that if the troops who yielded to the assault had fought with the valor which they had displayed on previous occasions, and which was manifested in this battle on the other parts of the line, the enemy would have been repulsed with very great slaughter, and our country would have escaped the misfortune, and the army the mortification of the first defeat that has resulted from misconduct by the troops.”

With this disastrous battle terminated the connection of General Bragg with the army, which he commanded during a large portion of its varied career. Fully acknowledging his defeat, General Bragg candidly avowed to the Government the extent of a reverse, which he declared disabled him from any serious resistance, should the Federal commander press his success. At his own request he was relieved, and, seeking recuperation for his shattered health, was not assigned to duty until February, 1864, when President Davis ordered him to the discharge of the duties of “Commanding General,” at Richmond, the position held by General Lee before his transfer to the command of the Army of Northern Virginia.

No commander was more harshly criticised than Bragg, and the unfortunate career of the Western army, under his command, was an inexhaustible theme for diatribe and invective from the opponents of the Confederate administration. Bragg was often declared to be, at once the most incompetent and unlucky of the “President’s favorites.” Yet nothing is more certain than that an impartial review of his military career will demonstrate General Bragg to have been a soldier of rare and superior merit. It certainly can not be claimed that his campaigns exhibited the brilliant and solid achievements of several of those conducted by Lee, or of the Valley campaigns of Jackson. The great disparity of numbers and means of the two sections, enabled few Confederate commanders to achieve the distinction of unmarred success, even before that period of decline when disaster was the rule, and victory the exception with the Confederate forces.

But Bragg can not justly be denied the merit of having, with most inadequate means, long deferred the execution of the Federal conquest of the West. At the time of his assumption of command, in June, 1862, the armies of Grant and Buell, nearly double his own aggregate of forces, were overrunning the northern borders of the Gulf States, and threatening the very heart of the Confederacy. His masterly combinations, attended by loss altogether disproportioned to the results accomplished, recovered large sections of territory, which had been for months the easy prey of the enemy, and transferred the seat of war to Middle Tennessee. Here he maintained his position for nearly a year, vigorously assailing the enemy at every opportunity, constantly menacing his communications, and firmly holding his important line, in the face of overwhelming odds, while the Confederate armies in every other quarter were losing ground. Finally, when forced back by the concentration of Federal forces, released by their successes elsewhere, Bragg skillfully eluded the combinations for his destruction, and, at an opportune moment, delivered Rosecrans one of the most timely and stunning blows inflicted during the war. No fact of the war is more clearly established than Bragg’s exculpation from any responsibility for the escape of the Federal army from the field of Chickamauga. His positive commands were disobeyed, his plan of battle threatened with entire derangement by the errors of subordinates, and the escape of Rosecrans secured by the same causes. But still more cruel was the disappointment of Bragg’s well-grounded expectation of a successful siege of Chattanooga. So clear is his exculpation in this case, that no investigation of facts, severely reflecting upon others, is required.

While the controversy between Bragg and Longstreet was pending, some disposition was manifested to censure the former for his rejection of a plan of campaign proposed by Longstreet after the victory of Chickamauga. The latter officer suggested crossing the Tennessee above Chattanooga, and then moving upon the enemy’s rear, with a view to force him back upon Nashville. The pregnant criticism of General Bragg quickly disposes of the suggestion. Said he: “The suggestion of a movement by our right, immediately after the battle, to the north of the Tennessee, and thence upon Nashville, requires notice only because it will find a place on the files of the department. Such a movement was utterly impossible for want of transportation. Nearly half our army consisted of reënforcements just before the battle, without a wagon or an artillery horse, and nearly, if not quite, a third of the artillery horses on the field had been lost. The railroad bridges, too, had been destroyed to a point south of Ringgold, and on all the road from Cleveland to Knoxville. To these insurmountable difficulties were added the entire absence of means to cross the river, except by fording at a few precarious points too deep for artillery, and the well-known danger of sudden rises, by which all communication would be cut off, a contingency which did actually happen a few days after the visionary scheme was abandoned.” General Bragg continues a recitation of cogent considerations in support of his objections to a plan which he declares utterly wanting in “military propriety.”