General Braxton Bragg
General
Braxton Bragg was born on March 22, 1817, in Warrenton, North
Carolina.(dmi.usma) After his
graduation from West Point in 1837, he served under Zachary Taylor during the
war with Mexico. A few years after
rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, Bragg made a brief retirement in the
late 1850’s. Upon the outbreak of the
Civil War, Bragg returned to uniform as a Confederate Brigadier General and
later assumed command of the Army of the Mississippi as Major
General.(ngeorgia) His army, later
renamed the Army of Tennessee, was engaged in campaigns and battles in
Tennessee and Kentucky from 1862-1863, including the Battle of Perryville. His army’s final battle was at Chattanooga
in November 1863, were he was defeated by Union forces led by General
Grant. Confederate president Jefferson
Davis appointed him as his military advisor until late in the war when he was
sent to command a small group in North Carolina to help stop General Sherman’s
“march to the sea.” After the war, he
became a civil engineer until he died in Texas in 1876.(dmi.usma)
·