Earl J. Hess0.0 As a leading Confederate general, Braxton Bragg (1817–1876) earned a reputation for incompetence, contentiousness, and for losing battles. This public image established him not only as a scapegoat for the South's military failures but also as the chief whipping boy of the Confederacy. The strongly negative opinions of Bragg's contemporaries have continued to color assessments of the general's military career and character by generations of historians. Rather than take these assessments at face value, Earl J. Hess's biography offers a much more balanced account of Bragg, the man and the officer. Hess presents a compelling biography of Braxton Bragg, the commander of the Confederate Army of Tennessee from the summer of 1862 to the end of 1863.
