J. Stoddard Johnston Remembers Braxton Bragg

Lieutenant Colonel J. Stoddard Johnston served for nearly a year on Braxton Bragg’s personal staff as a volunteer aide. Upon the passing of his former commander in 1876, Johnston took to the pages of his own newspaper the Kentucky Yeoman to share some insights into the character of a man remembered by many as the “most hated man of the Confederacy.”  

“In his personal habits and conduct he was thoroughly temperate in both meat and drink, discarding the use of liquor in any form,” Johnston noted. “In person he was tall and spare, but of a lithe and sinewy frame and capable of enduring any amount of fatigue. Though in social converse he was peculiarly mild and agreeable in manner, a peculiar conformation of eyebrows which extended continuously from eye to eye and a cold, steel, gray eye which exhibited much of the white when animated gave him in his sterner moods or when aroused a very ferocious aspect, which made him a terror to all who incurred his displeasure.”

          Colonel Johnston’s memories of General Bragg first appeared in the October 30, 1876, edition of the Tri-Weekly Kentucky Yeoman newspaper.

 

 

The former commander of the Army of Tennessee posed for the above portrait soon after the close of the war. The seizure of his sugar plantation near Thibodaux, Louisiana, in the fall of 1862 by Federal forces under General Godfrey Weitzel and subsequent usage by the Freedmen's Bureau wiped out the family fortune. Braxton would spend the remaining 11 years of his life working in both civil engineering and railroad pursuits. The "peculiar conformation of the eyebrows which extended continuously from eye to eye" gave him in his sterner moods "a very ferocious aspect" is evident in this view.  

          General Braxton Bragg, who died suddenly in Galveston of heart disease on the 27^th ultimo while crossing a street was one of the most conspicuous soldiers both in the Mexican and in the late civil war. A graduate of West Point and an artillery officer under General [Zachary] Taylor, his name became famous from the well-known incident in which the words “a little more grape Captain Bragg” were ascribed to the popular hero of the Mexican war. He had retired from the army and was a successful and wealthy sugar planter on the Lafourche in Louisiana when the late war broke out and early entered the Confederate army.

          His first service was at Pensacola where he distinguished himself as a disciplinarian and whence he was transferred to Corinth shortly before the battle of Shiloh, having the rank of major general. He served with distinction at Shiloh, having been made by General [Albert Sidney] Johnston his chief of staff and shortly after was promoted to a full Generalship and succeeded to command of the Army of Mississippi.

          In the succeeding summer of 1862, he transferred the main body of his command to Chattanooga, planned and executed the Kentucky campaign of that year while at the same time in command of the department embracing the territory between the Mississippi River and the Allegheny range. Notwithstanding the unpopularity which assailed him after the evacuation of Kentucky, he was continued in command and transferred his army in November 1862 to middle Tennessee and on December 31^st of that year fought with 31,000 infantrymen the Battle of Murfreesboro or Stones River. Notwithstanding the superior numbers by which he was opposed under Rosecrans, the victory for a time was his. A bloody repulse of Hardee at the moment when the latter was thought to be giving the finishing stroke to the day and the slaughter which befell Breckinridge’s command two days after compelled him to retreat and yield the ground to his opponent.

          He, however, continued to occupy a great part of Tennessee until the following September when on the 19^th and 20^th he again fought Rosecrans at Chickamauga. Here his victory was decisive as at the close of the second day’s fight he occupied the battlefield and Rosecrans retreated to Chattanooga. Failure to pursue and follow up his victory gave Rosecrans time to fortify and restore the morale of his shattered command and resulted ultimately in Bragg’s defeat at Missionary Ridge on November 25^th, his retreat into Georgia, and his relinquishment of the command of the army to Joseph E. Johnston.

Mr. William Howard Russell of the London Times met General Bragg in the summer of 1861 when he visited Pensacola. He wrote, “the commander of the Confederate States army at Pensacola is a tall, straight-backed man about 42 years of age, of a spare and powerful frame. His face is dark and marked with deep lines, his mouth large, and squarely set in determined jaws and his eyes, sagacious, penetrating, and not by any means unkindly, look out at you from beetle brows which run straight across and spring into a thick tuft of black hair which is thickest over the nose where naturally it usually leaves an intervening space. His hair is dark and he wears such regulation whiskers as were the delight of our generals a few years ago. His manner is quick and frank and his smile is very pleasing and agreeable.” 

          His active military career may be said to have closed here as he was assigned to staff duty at Richmond where he remained until shortly before the close of the war in confidential relation with President Davis as chief of staff of the armies of the Confederacy. Not long before the surrender, he was placed in command at Wilmington, North Carolina and was engaged in several actions. The close of the war found him ruined in fortune, but he went to work cheerfully, following the pursuit of a civil engineer in New Orleans and Mobile until with the past few years he removed to Galveston where death closed his career in his 59^th year.

          The brief sketch which we have given shows that his service in the late war was varied and active and the time during which he was in command from Shiloh to Dalton comprises the most eventful period of the war in the West. Soldiers with whom he left Pensacola marched northward till they came in sight of Cincinnati and fought under him at Shiloh, Perryville, Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, and Missionary Ridge, and the historian who attempts impartially to give the details of his marches and his battles will find, though the net results of his efforts were not summed up in victory, what triumphs over obstacles he achieved through the valor of his men, his skill as an organizer and disciplinarian, and his fertility of resource in matters pertaining to the Quartermaster, Commissary, and Ordnance Departments.

Lieutenant Colonel J. Stoddard Johnston of Kentucky served on the staffs of General Bragg, Buckner, and Breckinridge during the war. He is most noted within Civil War circles as the author of an authoritative history of Kentucky in the Confederacy. 

          The writer is well aware that prejudice attaches to General Bragg in the minds of many who served under him or who lived within the territory embraced in the field of his operations, and it is not our purpose to arouse controversy or to awaken adverse criticism at his grave. We are not his eulogist, but having been personally associated with him at the most critical periods of his active service, we feel that we owe it to him to bear attestation to the unselfish and untiring devotion he always gave to the service in which he was enlisted.

          He was not a soldier of the first rank like Lee, lacking some of the essential grander elements which gave success to a commander in the field; but he possessed qualifications such as, rightly directed, would have made him as great in the Confederate army as Moltke in the Prussian. Sidney Johnston weighed him aright when he assigned him a position hitherto unknown in American warfare but essential to the proper organization of a great army and so recognized by the European powers.

As a commander in the field, Bragg was too much engrossed with the details of moving, disciplining, organizing, and feeding his men to master the broader and more comprehensive duties of a great captain in time of battle. His plans of battles and orders promulgated, as at Murfreesboro and Chickamauga, will be found to evince more ability and to comprehend remarkable accuracy of detail as well as clearness and precision.

          In both the engagements named, he attacked boldly on the flank; at the former on the left and the latter on the right, but in the supreme moment when Lee or Jackson would have made his victory complete, he failed in the power to modify his original plan and lost from his tendency to adhere inflexibly to his predetermined line of action.

Had he at Murfreesboro thrown Breckinridge (to that time inactive) upon the left of Rosecrans’ new line of the railroad cut where Hardee was driving all before him in the cedars, Rosecrans with his army would have been a fugitive or captive in and hour and the best blood of the Confederate army would not two days later have reddened the soil of Tennessee. Had not Hood pierced the Federal center at Chickamauga and Buckner with his corps sustained him by a flank movement from the left, Thomas would have continued to add to the heaps which were piled in front of his breastworks in Bragg’s stubborn endeavor to swing by his right. Those of either army who took part in these battles will understand the scope of our comment and recognize the force of our criticism.

But another element which General Bragg lacked to make him a great and successful commander was his inability to attach his immediate sub-commanders to him. This, coupled with a tendency to controversy, marred greatly his efficiency and contributed largely to his reverses. There was not that affectionate relation between himself and his corps or division commanders which existed between Lee and Jackson or between Lee and Longstreet which led the great commander of the Army of Northern Virginia to weep over his wounded lieutenant at Chancellorsville and wish rather it were himself, or to sustain Longstreet at Gettysburg in the hour of his disaster by assuming the blame for defeat.

For such a general officers and soldiers will brave a thousand deaths and with the knowledge of a magnanimous reception whatever the result of a movement- of praise if victorious or of consolation if disastrous- officers will dare and take extreme risks from which alone sometimes comes victory. But when Hardee and Polk became involved in a sharp controversy with Bragg for imputed failure to carry out commands which led to the loss of Perryville and of Kentucky, and Breckinridge was forced to vindicate himself from censure at Murfreesboro, it followed naturally that other officers high in command should feel restraint under such leadership. And was it not wonderful that before the close of his service as commander of the Army of Tennessee there should have been breaches with Kirby Smith, Buckner, Preston, Longstreet, Cleburne, Cheatham, and others until the lack of cordial cooperation culminated in the disaster at Missionary Ridge and his transfer to other duty?

The writer was at that time on the staff of General Bragg and familiar with the details of all these unhappy controversies but afterwards severed his official relations as a consequence of Bragg’s alienation from General Breckinridge after Murfreesboro. Though never sufficiently disclosed to the public to cause them to be considered as an element of defeat, he cannot but regard that they contributed largely to the ill success of Bragg’s career.

But in the matter in which General Bragg has been most criticized and held up to reproach we think injustice has been done him. That he was strict is true and that he incited fear and alarm by his avowed purpose to enforce discipline at all hazards is also true. That he may have used in some instances extreme measures we may admit; but that his action was inspired more by a sense of the necessity of his situation as an officer charged with the safety of a great army that by a cruel disposition is our firm conviction.

He had been bred in a strict school as a West Pointer and as a captain of an artillery company in actual war knew all the details as well as the necessity of discipline. He was no holiday soldier and had none of the ulterior aspirations of a volunteer to lead him to curry favor with anyone. He therefore exacted of all a rigid performance of duty, a neglect of which fell heavily upon anyone whether high or low. But we were too frequently cognizant of his good deeds of mercy to the delinquents for light offenses and commutations, reprieves, and pardon for capital ones to let him rest under the imputation of a heartless man, or one who wielded his great powers cruelly.

In his personal habits and conduct he was thoroughly temperate in both meat and drink, discarding the use of liquor in any form, and waging ruthless war upon all who made it or sought to supply his men with it. He was untiring in his labors, methodical and systematic in the discharge of business, and early riser, and devout in his attention to his religious duties being a communicant of the Episcopal church. In person he was tall and spare, but of a lithe and sinewy frame and capable of enduring any amount of fatigue. Though in social converse he was peculiarly mild and agreeable in manner, a peculiar conformation of eyebrows which extended continuously from eye to eye and a cold, steel, gray eye which exhibited much of the white when animated gave him in his sterner moods or when aroused a very ferocious aspect, which made him a terror to all who incurred his displeasure.

          The writer recalls with gratitude and pleasure many acts of personal kindness and friendship of which he was the recipient at General Bragg’s hands and for which, despite the occurrence of the circumstances which led to severance of the association, he shall ever hold him in grateful memory. It is proper to add that the estrangement which took place between General Breckinridge and General Bragg after Murfreesboro was healed at Chickamauga and that Bragg afterward manifested his admiration and friendship for Breckinridge in such manner as to close the breach which had existed between them.

          And now, death comes to settle the scores between him and all to whom, either personally or as a political or military opponent, he had made himself obnoxious. The contemplation of this fact and of the numbers of those actors in the same scenes whom he has gone to join reminds us of the rapid flight of time which has remanded to history that which but yesterday was a current event, and makes us now a chronicler of what must go to make up a part of that record of truth.

 

Source:

“The Late General Braxton Bragg,” Lieutenant Colonel J. Stoddard Johnston, Tri-Weekly Kentucky Yeoman (Frankfort, Kentucky), October 30, 1876, pg. 2