Braxton Bragg and Jefferson Davis.

Hear me out.

Instead of exploiting his victory at Chickamauga, he just wasted an opportunity of destroying the Army of the Cumberland. None of his soldiers or officers liked him. The only person who did was Jefferson Davis. Bragg had the Union Army at his mercy, but he did nothing except besiege them and give them time for a new commander to arrive, which lead to his defeat.

Now for Davis.
By only supporting Bragg (even if he had no choice), he was the one who doomed the Army of Tennessee. By only supporting Bragg and having both Nathan Forest and James Longstreet, along with 15,000 men, he weakened Bragg's army and left him vulnerable for Grant to strike.

So you can't just blame the Union's industry. If Davis had stayed out of the war in the west and left it to some of the other generals, Bragg might've still lost the battle, but the price would've been even higher for Grant, Sherman, and Thomas during the fight.

What do you all think?

5946109

Instead of exploiting his victory at Chickamauga, he just wasted an opportunity of destroying the Army of the Cumberland. None of his soldiers or officers liked him. The only person who did was Jefferson Davis. Bragg had the Union Army at his mercy, but he did nothing except besiege them and give them time for a new commander to arrive, which lead to his defeat.

A direct assault on Chattanooga would have been extremely perilous - it would have played to the Union advantages of defensible positions and numbers, while failing to capitalize on their desperate supply situation. The Confederate armies really weren't built for a city slugfest, and with numbers not terribly on their side, they could not have expected to victoriously storm the city.

There's also the notion that he could have crushed them in rout, but this is hard to do in practice (least of all when it's, you know, Bragg). The Union had unrestricted retreat from Chickamauga, and a sizeable force remained fighting in an unintentional rearguard. He could have done better, certainly, but Chickamauga was a victory of blind luck and I can't really have expected it to go better than it did.

Bragg's repeated follies need no introduction, but who would he have been replaced by? Polk, who screwed the pooch worse than Bragg ever did? Beauregard, the douche whiny poser of the Confederacy? Even vaunted Longsteet blew his one independent command. And Forrest was a cavalry general.

For all the modern accolades to its generalship, the Confederacy never exactly brimmed with dynamic army leaders. Bragg was a bad horse who got bet on for way too long, but I'm standoffish to the idea another candidate would have done tremendously better.

For Davis... he's fun. His ongoing support of failed generals remains a large blemish on his record, and not the largest (the self-imposed cotton embargo and support of Polk's invasion of Kentucky were his most fatal errors, IMO). Thus said, he did get the mess of states to fight together as a semi-coherent nation, successfully shoving down needed measures such as conscription and the suspension of Habeus Corpus, and in doing so may have proved a net positive for the Confederacy. I haven't studied him in super great depth, and right now find him too cloudy to cast much judgement on.

So you can't just blame the Union's industry.

Oh - definitely. The Confederates debatably lost more major battles, undebatably lost them more decisively, and made bigger strategic and political mistakes. The rest followed naturally.

5946109 If you need a reason as to why the Confederacy lost the war, look no further than the Atlanta Campaign of 1864. While Joseph E. Johnston was accomplishing the feat of keeping his losses low, a necessity for the South, and managing to bloody Sherman's nose at the same time, John Bell Hood, who was an aggressive fighter and who despised the idea of troops fighting behind fortifications (he believed that this destroyed morale, something he would continue to harp on), was sending letters behind Johnston's back to Davis, who already disliked Johnston for quarreling with him (and Davis quarreled with people - including his own government - a LOT), complaining about the withdrawals Johnston was making and claiming repeatedly that the Army of Tennessee was strong and that Sherman's was weak, if not materially then morale-wise.

Well, eventually Davis decided to send Bragg out to see what was going on. Bragg was friends with the Confederate president... and ONLY the Confederate president. He was mean-spirited and cruel, and in my opinion, biased, especially here, given that Johnston was prone to defying his superiors. After retreating to Atlanta and planning to have militia hold the forts around the city while his army was used as a mobile force to counter Sherman, Johnston was suddenly told that he was relieved of command by Bragg (who had pretended to be on unofficial business) and replaced with Hood, who had been undermining Johnston the whole time.

Hood did what EVERYONE, including his enemies, expected. He fought and lost three major battles in eight days; Peachtree Creek, the battle known as the Battle of Atlanta (though this name is a misnomer, in my opinion, as the battle was NOT fought within the city) and Ezra Church. He inflicted a total of around 6,000 Union casualties while losing somewhere around 18,000 men himself. A few days later, Hood lost again, as Union forces outflanked the city and fought and won the battle of Jonesborough (or Jonesboro), cutting the railroad line supplying the city. Hood finally withdrew from the city; it was that or stay and suffer a siege, which would end in a Confederate defeat anyway.

Hood would later lead his forces in a disastrous campaign to recapture Tennessee and Kentucky late in 1864, with the result of his army being destroyed at Franklin and Nashville. If Johnston had remained in command, he might have held Atlanta, which may have impacted the elections of 1864 and resulted in Lincoln being replaced with McClellan, who was a peace Democrat whose platform was partly based on peace with the Confederacy.

Yes, Davis and Bragg played a hand in the Confederate defeat. When an argument arose between Bragg and his commanders Davis resolved the issue by simply sending away the commanders who had disagreed with Bragg. Bragg himself was hated by his soldiers and subordinates, and after being removed from command after Chattanooga, would advise Davis... poorly, in my opinion. Meanwhile, Davis quarreled with his own government as well as with the various state governments. However, again in my opinion, it was in combination with a dislike for the effective but argumentative Johnston, along with Hood's appointment as his replacement, that doomed Southern chances for success in 1864.

5946589

Bragg himself was hated by his soldiers and subordinates

What was funny is that when Grant arrived at Chattanooga, when he went out to scout, he was in easy firing distance of a Confederate picket line.

Even more ironic, is that they just saluted him instead of killing him. Grant did salute back.

5947293 Yep, pretty ironic, and yet human. I like reading about incidents like this in war.