from the union soldier in battle: enduring the ordeal of combat, by earl j. hess, published by the university press of kansas © 1997. www.kansaspress.ku.edu. used by permission of the publisher.

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ambrose bierce is a figure who crosses interdisciplinary lines among academic writers. while the body of his work that has garnered the most attention is his fiction, making him a fit subject for literary studies, his civil war experience in the 9th indiana and as a staff member in the army of the cumberland make him an interesting subject for military historians as well.  in the substantial wave of studies about bierce and his writings, the tendency has been to evaluate him within the context of literary studies.  there are impressive publications which set his fiction within the context of war stories, or within the context of his extensive career as a newspaper writer for the san francisco examiner after the war.  while many literary scholars have taken bierce’s war experiences seriously, they nevertheless tend to evaluate his published writings, especially his fiction, from a disciplinary standpoint that places him within the general picture of late nineteenth century american fiction. [1] 

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bierce also crafted his fictional stories in such a way as to show continuity and contrast with the typical soldier’s memoir.  two remarkable features stand out.  first, bierce, like his fellow veteran-authors, accurately described the experience of battle.  he wrote of the difficulties of seeing and hearing while under fire, of battle’s ability to deafen and mask the senses.  he wrote of the imperative of doing one’s duty, of a wounded man committing suicide, of the fear of failing to do one’s duty while under fire, of soldiers falling asleep while on guard duty, of the impact that a beloved officer’s death could have on the battle spirit of his men, of soldiers who deliberately exposed themselves to danger to prove their bravery.  these fictional works were obviously written by one who knew battle intimately.

the other prominent feature of his fiction is the slant bierce gave to all these themes.  unlike the “bits of autobiography,” the short stores are consistently ruthless.  bierce refused to let up in any of them, treating the themes with the most bitter irony possible.  in “chickamauga,” he described a six-year-old boy, a deaf-mute, who wanders through the rear areas of a great battle, unable to comprehend what is happening or to ask questions or communicate in any way with the wounded soldiers he encounters.  the boy, who began the story assuming that this was a game, is turned into something inhuman at the sight of his mother’s body, mutilated by a shell.  “the child moved his little hands, making wild, uncertain gestures.  he uttered a series of inarticulate and indescribable cries — something between the chattering of an ape and the gobbling of a turkey — a startling, soulless, unholy sound, the language of a devil.”



>or characters fail to perceive reality as it is and commit acts that have unintended consequences.  bierce knew that the environment of battle is one of reduced visibility, not just in terms of visual seeing but also in terms of emotionally and psychologically comprehending what is happening.  he knew that the physical environment of the battlefield is threatening, that nature can no longer be considered an eternal, knowable truth, and that on any field of battle, comforting assumptions are no longer valid.  thus he created a fictional field of battle in his short stories where reality was skewed to its most unpredictable, surrealistic margins.  it was a cry of anguish, a profound comment that this horrible experience might have been endured and considered worthy if the north had done a more successful job of winning the peace through radical reconstruction.  without that success, the suffering could not be justified.
throughout all the stories is the common theme of perception.  characters perceive the possibility of danger or failure so strongly that they react in illogical or unreasonable ways.  or characters fail to perceive reality as it is and commit acts that have unintended consequences.  bierce knew that the environment of battle is one of reduced visibility, not just in terms of visual seeing but also in terms of emotionally and psychologically comprehending what is happening.  he knew that the physical environment of the battlefield is threatening, that nature can no longer be considered an eternal, knowable truth, and that on any field of battle, comforting assumptions are no longer valid.  thus he created a fictional field of battle in his short stories where reality was skewed to its most unpredictable, surrealistic margins.  it was a cry of anguish, a profound comment that this horrible experience might have been endured and considered worthy if the north had done a more successful job of winning the peace through radical reconstruction.  without that success, the suffering could not be justified.

bierce was not entirely alone in his attitude toward reconstruction.  other veterans who had served faithfully during the war and participated in the effort to reform southern society came away from that experiment disturbed by the complacency of the northern people.  albion w. tourgee of ohio was one such man.  he had served as an officer during the war and worked diligently to make reconstruction work.  by the 1880s, he too began to write voluminously about it.  in both fictional and factual works, tourgee thoroughly laid out his pleas for a raising of the northern consciousness regarding the postwar south.  he urged people to recall the war not just as a series of campaigns and battles but as a crusade for freedom.  he reminded the northern people of what they had felt about the war, not just what they remembered seeing or doing in it, and he reminded the north that good men had died to set other men free.  the war had changed nothing in southern society, tourgee argued.  unlike bierce, he never interpreted the sacrifice of the war as wasted foolishness, but tourgee certainly warned that the sacrifice was in jeopardy. [9]

unfortunately for tourgee, most northern veterans did not pay much attention to the outcome of reconstruction.  most of them did not share bierce’s disillusionment, or connect the failure of reconstruction with a negative view of the war.  while glorifying what they had done in the conflict, they ignored the reality that the power structure of southern society was still intact, that blacks were still oppressed under a different but equally unjustified system of racial control, and that ex-confederates were winning the battle to interpret the conflict as a “war between the states” rather than a “war for freedom.”

bierce, of course, did not live the life of a typical veteran after the war.  his world was centered around his literary pursuits and he tried to cope with the devils aroused by the twin traumas of war and a sordid kind of peace that did not suit his sense of justice.  in some ways, however, bierce exhibited typical attitudes of many northern veterans.  he was very critical of government civil servants who complained that their salaries were too low.  “not one of them cares a rap for the good of the service or the country,” bierce complained to friend george sterling in 1911, “as we soldiers used to do on thirteen dollars a month (with starvation, disease and death thrown in).  their grievance is that the government does not undertake to maintain them in the style to which they choose to accustom themselves.”  bierce echoed other veterans such as oliver wendell holmes, jr., when he argued that “what this country needs — what every country needs occasionally — is a good hard bloody war to revive the vice of patriotism on which its existence as a nation depends.” [10]

moreover, bierce was drawn to places associated with the civil war even though he had lived much of his post-war life in california.  visiting richmond in 1912, he found the “tragic and pathetic history” of the city overwhelming.  it got on his “nerves with a particular dejection,…making solemn eyes at me.” [11] 

despite everything, bierce made a point of “visiting my old battlefields” as he made his way to texas, intending to visit mexico during a particularly violent phase of the revolution there.  hoping to pass himself off as what he sardonically called an “‘innocent bystander,’” bierce hoped to be able to survive his visit long enough to make his way to south america.  he was never heard from again. [12] 

notes

part time data entry jobs from home without investmentsee for example michael w. schaefer, just what war is: the civil war writings of deforest and bierce (knoxville: university of tennessee press, 1997); donald t. blume, ambrose bierce’s civilians and soldiers in context: a critical study (kent, oh: kent state university press, 2004); david m. owens, the devil’s topographer: ambrose bierce and the american war story (knoxville: university of tennessee press, 2006).

part time data entry jobs from home without investmentthe bulk of this article is taken with permission of the publisher from my book the union soldier in battle: enduring the ordeal of combat (lawrence: university press of kansas, 1997), 172-177.

part time data entry jobs from home without investmentdaniel aaron, the unwritten war: american writers and the civil war (new york: oxford university press, 1973), 184, 189; cathy n. davidson, the experimental fictions of ambrose bierce: structuring the ineffable (lincoln: university of nebraska press, 1984), 16; lawrence i. berkove, “two impossible dreams: ambrose bierce on utopia and america,” huntington library quarterly, 44 (autumn 1981): 283-92; lawrence i. berkove, “the heart has its reasons: ambrose bierce’s successful failure at philosophy,” in critical essays on ambrose bierce, ed. cathy n. davidson (boston: g. k. hall, 1982), 137.

part time data entry jobs from home without investmentambrose bierce, the collected works of ambrose bierce, 12 vols. (new york: neale publishing, 1909-1912), 4:115-18.

part time data entry jobs from home without investmentibid., 1:225-33, 279-78, 297-327.

part time data entry jobs from home without investmentibid., 1:254, 269.

part time data entry jobs from home without investmentibid., 1:279-96.

part time data entry jobs from home without investmentibid., 2:15-26, 46-104, 197-208, 218-29.

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part time data entry jobs from home without investment albion w. tourgee, an appeal to caesar (new york: fords, howard and hulbert, 1884), and the veteran and his pipe (chicago: belford, clarke, 1888), both passim.

part time data entry jobs from home without investmentbierce to george sterling, february 15, 1911, in bertha clark pope, ed., the letters of ambrose bierce (new york: gordian press, 1967), 170.

part time data entry jobs from home without investmentbierce to sterling, april 25, 1912, ibid., 185.

part time data entry jobs from home without investment bierce to lora, november 6, 1913, ibid., 197.

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