Cecily Zander

Hey, John, it's great to be back.

Unfortunately, I think I've spent most of my career studying these guys and not the good ones.

So, yeah, I'm absolutely ready.

It's a great question.

I would sort of put maybe sort of two related issues forward things that that tend to hold back military officers.

I think one is inability to put ego aside.

I think we're going to talk a lot about a lot of guys who had really big egos and thought they knew best and in a related fashion.

didn't feel the need to consult anyone else or to get along with anyone else and i think something that makes a great general is the ability to get along with superiors and subordinates and we have a list of guys today who really failed to do that and often sometimes even actively tried to undermine their superiors and in so doing undermined the national war effort

Braxton Bragg had a lot of problems, not least of all his single eyebrow, which I think, you know, as sort of, you know, and again, I encourage our listeners to just Google and admire.

I mean, he truly looks like a Muppet more than a human being.

But, you know, Braxton Bragg,

He didn't have a lot going for him.

He was, while he was a West Point graduate and had a good deal of military experience coming into the war, he was someone who, in a sort of typical 19th century fashion, suffered from a variety of ailments.

I don't think he ever felt very well in his life.

I don't think he ever woke up and sprang out of bed.

He sort of woke up and longed for the invention of ibuprofen.

I mean, he had aches and pains and all this turmoil.

But he also had a personality that just made him absolutely impossible to get along with.

There was a famous story in the old army, and it shows up in memoirs, people like Porter Alexander, Ulysses S. Grant, where Bragg, for some reason, was doing several administrative roles at an army post in the American West.

He was both the quartermaster and acting commander of the post, and he made a requisition as quartermaster for some supplies, and he sort of