Phantoms of a Blood-Stained Period
Subtitle: The Complete Civil War Writings of Ambrose Bierce
By: edited by Russell Duncan & David J. Klooster.
Contributors: Duncan, Russell.; Klooster, David J.
Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
Published: 2002
Place of publication: Amherst, MA
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 352
ISBN-13: 9781558493285
Copyright date: 2002
Subjects: Bierce, Ambrose, -- 1842-1914? -- Correspondence.; Authors, American -- 19th century -- Correspondence.; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Fiction.; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Personal narratives.; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Maps.
Genres: Correspondence.; Fiction.; Personal narratives.; Maps.
Description: Alone among important American writers, Ambrose Bierce fought for four years in the Civil War. The writings he produced about that conflict comprise a body of work unique in American literature. This volume gathers virtually everything Bierce wrote about the war, from letters composed on the field of battle to maps he drew as a topographical engineer, from his masterful short stories to his final bittersweet ruminations before he disappeared into Mexico in 1914.

This collection is organized chronologically, following Bierce's participation in a wide range of battles. His overlapping accounts of these events provide a clear and compelling record of the sights and sounds of the battlefield, the psychological traumas the war induced in its soldiers, and the memories that would haunt survivors for the rest of their lives. In prose that anticipates the work of Ernest Hemingway and Tim O'Brien, Bierce's writings unflinchingly tell the truth about the war.

Writing in the 1880s and 1890s, at a time when both the North and the South were erecting monuments to the heroes and glories of the war, Bierce insisted that his readers confront what really happened. Rather than celebrate causes and comrades, Bierce's fiction and memoirs describe the impossibly brutal realities of the Civil War battlefield.

The volume includes a biographical introduction and comprehensive notes on all the writings and is suitable for classroom adoption and general readers alike.
--back cover
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: title: Acknowledgments --; title: Note on sources --; title: Ambrose Bierce on history, memory, and literature : a sole survivor --; title: Introduction : Fighting and writing the Civil War --; title: Patricide in the house divided, 1861 --; title: Thin blue ghost ; Battlefields and ghosts ; One kind of officer ; Mocking-bird ; Horseman in the sky ; Defending realism I ; Tough tussle ; On a mountain ; Jupiter Doke, brigadier-general ; Two fantastic fables : Equipped for service and The mysterious word ; Professional officer --; title: What war really is, 1862 --; title: What I saw of Shiloh ; Defending General Buell ; Two military executions ; On military executions ; Affair of outposts ; Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge ; Coup de grace --; title: True war story is never moral, 1863 --; title: Stone's river ; Baffled ambuscade ; On military punishments ; Three and one are one ; Affair at Coulter's Notch ; Defending realism II ; George Thurston ; Story of a conscience ; Parker Adderson, philosopher ; One officer, one man ; On Chickamauga ; Chickamauga ; Little of Chickamauga ; More on Chickamauga ; Letter to Colonel Archibald Gracie ; General Wood's command ; General Grant and the poisoned chalice --; title: War is all hell, 1864 --; title: Bierce's map of the battlefield of Resaca ; Killed at Resaca ; Bierce's map of the battlefield of Pickett's Mill ; Crime at Pickett's Mill ; On General O.O. Howard ; On prayer in battle ; My dear Clara ; One of the missing ; Son of the gods : a study in the present tense ; Defending realism III ; Four days in Dixie ; What occurred at Franklin ; On General Schofield ; Body count at Franklin ; Major's tale ; Battle of Nashville : an attack of General Debility ; On black soldiering --; title: Phantoms of a blood-stained period, 1865 and later --; title: Way down in Alabam ; Other lodgers ; Resumed identity ; Nature of war ; Modern warfare ; A'soldiering for freedom ; Hesitating veteran ; Invocation ; Death of Grant ; Contentment ; Death of General Grant ; At a national encampment ; On Jefferson Davis's death ; Confederate flags ; To E.S. Salomon ; Travel letter to George ; Year's casualties ; Bivouac of the dead ; Letter from D.C. ; Fragments from last letters.