Braxton Bragg still sucks

I just finished Failure in the Saddle: Nathan Bedford Forrest, Joseph Wheeler, and the Confederate Cavalry in the Chickamauga Campaign, by David A. Powell.  Powell, a nationally-known expert on the Chickamauga Campaign, also wrote The Maps of Chickamauga.

To make a short story long, the Chickamauga Campaign of the Civil War involved the Union Army of the Cumberland under William Rosecrans maneuvering the Confederate Army of Tennessee under Braxton Bragg out of the critical transportation center of Chattanooga, without fighting a major battle and basically without firing a shot.  The loss of Chattanooga was a major defeat for the Confederacy, which most Confederate officers as well as most historians have blamed on the incompetence and temperament of Bragg. 

Rosecrans pursued the retreating Confederates into northern Georgia, but Bragg managed a counterattack near West Chickamauga Creek.  Because of a(n un)timely mistake in Union communications that opened a major gap in the Union line just as an attack column commanded by James Longstreet, recently arrived from the Army of Northern Virginia, launched an attack in that very spot, the Union suffered a major defeat.  The defeat, however, was a only tactical, not strategic, which most Confederate officers as well as most historians have blamed, again, on the incompetence and temperament of Bragg.
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