Braxton Bragg (March 22, 1817 – September 27, 1876) is a career United States Army officer, and then a general in the Confederate States Army—a principal commander in the Western Theater of the American Civil War and later the military adviser to Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

Bragg, a native of North Carolina, is educated at West Point and becomes an artillery officer.

He serves in Florida and then receives three brevet promotions for distinguished service in the Mexican-American War, most notably the Battle of Buena Vista.

He establishes a reputation as a strict disciplinarian, but also as a junior officer willing to publicly argue with and criticize his superior officers, including those at the highest levels of the Army.

After a series of posts in the Indian Territory, he resigns from the U.S. Army in 1856 to become a sugar plantation owner in Louisiana.

During the Civil War, Bragg trains soldiers in the Gulf Coast region.

He is a corps commander at the Battle of Shiloh and subsequently is named to command the Army of Mississippi (later known as the Army of Tennessee).

He and Edmund Kirby Smith attempt an invasion of Kentucky in 1862, but Bragg retreats following the inconclusive Battle of Perryville in October.

In December, he fights another inconclusive battle at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, the Battle of Stones River, but once again withdraws his army.

In 1863, he fighst a series of battles against Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans and the Union Army of the Cumberland.

In June, he is outmaneuvered in the Tullahoma Campaign and retreats into Chattanooga.

In September, he is forced to evacuate Chattanooga, but counterattacks Rosecrans and defeats him at the Battle of Chickamauga, the bloodiest battle in the Western Theater, and the only major Confederate victory therein.

In November, Bragg's army is routed in turn by Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in the Battles for Chattanooga.

Throughout these campaigns, Bragg fights almost as bitterly against some of his uncooperative subordinates as he does against the enemy, and they make multiple attempts to have him replaced as army commander.

The defeat at Chattanooga is the last straw, and Bragg is recalled in early 1864 to Richmond, where he becomes the military adviser to Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

Near the end of the war, he defends Wilmington, North Carolina, and serves as a corps commander in the Carolinas Campaign.

After the war, Bragg works as the superintendent of the New Orleans waterworks, a supervisor of harbor improvements at Mobile, Alabama, and as a railroad engineer and inspector in Texas.