Excellent revisionist but balanced review of Bragg’s Civil War Service. ( )

In this effort to get into the mind and perceptions of the controversial Confederate soldier, while Hess finds a man who was probably more sinned against than sinner, and certainly not lacking in humanity, there is no denying that Bragg was also his own worst enemy. To a large degree it would seem that Bragg had two great lacks. One was a chronic lack of imagination that resulted in a rudimentary sense of operational art, that sense of what battles would contribute to winning a campaign in the end; however, it's not as though Bragg was the only Civil War general to be challenged on that quality. More serious was a bad lack of social intelligence that contributes to creating the sense that Bragg was no great judge of human quality and had little talent for building better relationships; while Leonidas Polk may have been the center of the corrosive feelings that predominated in the Army of Tennessee, the reality is that Bragg handled Polk's insubordination very poorly. To put it another way, and a feeling that I've had for awhile, the Confederacy would have been better served had Bragg been chief of staff or senior subordinate to a more charismatic field commander who could have harnessed the man's real talents to better impact. ( )