“Instead of darkening, the haunted landscape began to brighten. Through the belt of trees beyond the brook shone a strange red light, the trunks and branches of the trees making a black lacework against it. It struck the creeping figures and gave them monstrous shadows, which caricatured their movements on the lit grass. It fell upon their faces, touching their whiteness with a ruddy tinge, accentuating the stains with which so many were freaked and maculated. It sparkled on buttons and bits of metal in their clothing. Instinctively the child turned toward the growing splendor and moved down the slope with his horrible companions; in a few moments he had passed the foremost of the throng, — not much of a feat, considering his advantages. He placed himself in the lead, his wooden sword still in hand, and solemnly directed the march, conforming his pace to theirs and occasionally turning as if to see that his forces did not straggle. (Surely such a leader never before had such a following.)”
In 1898 Bierce could only sigh, after the manner of a Reunion Day Orator, with the veteran’s professional sadness: “God’s great angels stood invisible among the heroes in blue and the heroes in gray, sleeping their last sleep in the woods of Chickamauga.”
It was shortly after this engagement, in fact on October 13th, 1863, that General Hazen wrote a note to Colonel Starling, requesting that M. G. Sherman, surgeon, and Ambrose Bierce, topographical engineer, be allowed to remain on his staff where they had been serving for some time. After considerable meandering, the order was returned with the notation of Starling: “I am instructed by General Palmer to say that he has a high appreciation of both officers named, considering them among the very best in the service, yet entertaining a sincere desire to gratify and accommodate both them and you your request is most cheerfully complied with.” Old Hazen probably chewed his mustache and cursed the “highfalutin” rhetoric of certain “damned smart-alecks,” when he read that order. In any event, his young lieutenant got the order and filed it away among his papers. He was apparently not altogether displeased with its tone.
It is remarkable to observe the accuracy, fine detail, and general competency of the maps that Bierce made during the Civil War. His early training must have been very thorough, or else he picked up the art of cartography with amazing facility after his enlistment. His topographical map of the Battle of Brown’s Ferry, which is the largest and most elaborate of the maps that he saved, reveals the hand of a highly skilled draftsman. His two Civil War notebooks, although meager in detail, are yet remarkably neat, precise and orderly. It is interesting to note that many of the Bierces were engineers. Bierce himself always had a feeling for order, outline and proportion. Engineering met his innate insistence upon precision. He could draw and sketch with considerable skill and his handwriting was always a model of neatness and accuracy. His favorite sciences were astronomy, logic and engineering.
On May 27th, 1864, General Hazen was ordered to lead his brigade through an almost impenetrable forest against a strongly entrenched division of General Johnston’s army. He swore very elaborately to his staff, mentioned the rotten souls of certain jealous rivals, and then ordered his men forward in a charge that he knew was suicidal. The engagement was known as “Pickett’s Mill.” None of the major texts on the war refer to it, and it is just a note in the reports, — yet it was a battle of great fury and vigor. The entire dead numbered fourteen hundred, of whom nearly one-half fell killed and wounded in Hazen’s brigade in less than thirty minutes of actual fighting. Yet of this arduous afternoon, nothing remains, save these scattered notes in the official volumes. Later Ambrose Bierce came to feel that life was a rather futile enterprise, full of mocking events and absurd ideals. He has been charged with being superficial for entertaining such heretical notions. Perhaps an afternoon at Pickett’s Mill might have convinced his specious critics that there was more to his cynicism than the attacks of asthma, or the loss of a sweetheart or two, would explain. Men fought bravely, and honorably, for an ideal. They were snuffed out in a wood to abate the jealousy of an ambitious commander and history forgot their dying. There was really something rather fatuous in the working out of an omnipotent will in this eccentric fashion. “Nothing matters,” Bierce dogmatized, and people actually had the audacity to question him! From his viewpoint, there was no other possible conclusion. Mrs. Bertha Clark Pope, in her introduction to the “Letters of Ambrose Bierce,” published by the Book Club of California, 1922, finds it highly unreasonable of Mr. Bierce to state that “this is a world of fools and rogues, blind with superstition, tormented with envy, consumed with vanity, selfish, false, cruel, cursed with illusions — frothing mad!” It would seem that there would be more cause to wonder about the character of a man who had undergone such experiences and not found life “frothing mad, — cursed with illusions.” This was precisely what life had been for Bierce. The fine tension of the Civil War was succeeded by a flood of miscellaneous filth, a débris of ideas, the flotsam and jetsam of a world broken away from its moorings. Who that fought in 1861 could do other than curse when confronted with the spectacle of Grant’s administration? He could hardly be expected to smile.
The Army of the Cumberland had now routed the Rebels and the campaign that ensued was a duel of strategy between General Sherman and General Johnston. Engagement after engagement followed in which the two wily old foxes tried to cut each other’s throats. For the most part these affairs were sudden, swift, and contested with the perfection in deadliness that came with four years’ training. It was a hundred miles in a direct line from Chattanooga to Atlanta and Sheridan was now en route, marching along in circus style. In May there was a vigorous exchange of arms at Resaca and Bierce saw gallant Lieutenant Brayle meet death in the manner described in “Killed at Resaca.” Years later, Bierce called on a lovely lady on Rincon Hill in San Francisco and presented the Russian-leather pocket-book which had been found among the effects of Herman Brayle. It contained a letter from this charming creature in which she accused Brayle of cowardice. His insane, breath-taking heroism at Resaca had drawn every eye to his figure until he fell mortally wounded. The expatiation was superfluous. The lady attempted to toss the letter into the fire as she noted it was stained with blood! “The light of the burning letter was reflected in her eyes and touched her cheek with a tinge of crimson like the stain upon its page. I had never seen anything so beautiful as this detestable creature. ‘He was bitten by a snake,’ I replied.”
* * *
BIERCE played a rather important part in the famous charge at Missionary Ridge. As topographical engineer, he had surveyed the field and outlined the strategic points of attack. Then, too, as staff officer, he carried the order to Colonel James C. Foy, of the 23rd Kentuckians, in Wood’s Division, to make the charge. A few months previous, Foy had got lost with his command during a minor engagement, and Bierce was sent to locate them. As he told the story: “It was found about one-half mile away, utterly isolated and marching straight to kingdom come. Foy had not the slightest notion of where he was going to. ‘What are you doing here, Colonel?’ I asked, biting my lips to keep from laughing. He looked at me for a moment in a helpless and bewildered way, then pulled on a grave face and replied: ‘Oh, I’m sort o’ flankin”em.’”
As staff officer, Bierce had a splendid chance to observe, at close range, some of the great figures of the war, and it is a pity that he did not write more extensive memoirs. During one battle he was stationed for about six or seven hours at general headquarters. To be seen around camp, on that occasion were General Grant, and Generals Thomas, Granger, Sheridan, Wood and Hazen. These worthies were not entirely absorbed in the study of military strategy. War must have its anodyne and “They looked upon the wine when it was red, these tall fellows — they bit the glass. The poisoned chalice went about and about. Some of them did not kiss the dragon; my recollection is that Grant commonly did. I don’t think he took enough to comfort the enemy — not more than I did myself from another bottle — but I was all the time afraid he would, which was ungenerous, for he
did not appear at all afraid I would. This confidence touched me deeply.” In the same issue of “Prattle,” Bierce summed up his impressions of Grant as follows: “When the nation’s admiration of Grant, who was really an admirable soldier, shall have accomplished its fermentation and purged itself of toadyism, men of taste will not be ashamed to set it before their guests at a feast of reason.”
The Army of the Cumberland continued south in its march of destruction. The enemy crossed its path at Kenesaw Mountain and a battle raged throughout one day in the forests and along the slopes of the hillside. During this engagement, which occurred on the 23rd day of June, 1864, Bierce was wounded. In an affidavit, General Hazen related the circumstances in this manner: “I was ordered by my division commander, Brigadier General Thomas J. Wood, to advance my skirmish line, which I — attempted to do, sending my topographical engineer, Lieut. Bierce, to direct it and cause it to be done. While engaged in this duty, Lieut. Bierce was shot in the head by a musket ball which caused a very dangerous and complicated wound, the ball remaining within the head from which it was removed sometime afterwards. This wound caused Lieut. Bierce to be unfit for and absent from his duties for a considerable period of time, when he joined his command and reported for duty.”
Bierce was dangerously wounded. A bullet had entered the scalp near the temple and had coursed its way around the side of his head. He was carried back from station to station to Chattanooga, where he was confined in Hospital No. I until he was discharged from care, sometime in July, and given a leave of absence. He never forgot the journey of that hospital train back to Chattanooga. They were loaded on flat-cars, covered with tarpaulin and left alone for hours with only the moon to commiserate their agonies. He once told his daughter that he always retained a vivid and unforgettable picture of that trip. Would they never reach the hospital? The skies were overcast at times with clouds, but a turn in the road would reveal the moon shining down with its cold, ageless clarity. The train cautiously made its way over miles of doubtful tracks; it barely managed to keep in motion at times; its movement was almost imperceptible. The journey was made at night and the heavy summer humidity finally condensed in a drizzling rain.
After being discharged from the hospital, Bierce left immediately for Elkhart. Before his enlistment in 1861, while at Elkhart, he had written some romantic lines of verse to one “Fatima,” ending with the phrase:
“Fatima is divine,
For I have kissed her twice
And she is surely mine.”
He had sent them to his love, unsigned, thinking the lovely creature, who probably had freckles, pigtails and a penchant for long flannel drawers, would name the writer with that unerring accuracy born of an immortal affection. On his furlough, he called on the lady and asked if she had received the verses. She replied: “Oh, was it you!” According to the sentimental psychoanalysts, this thwarted passion was probably the cause of his cynicism.
“Gus” Bierce said that Ambrose rode out to his farm one day for a visit. He remembered that his brother’s head “was all tied up” and that soon after the visit he left for the front. Wherever he went he probably did not remain long in Elkhart. He saw the country thereabouts with a new eye. It was flat, and dull, and unbearably warm. The farms were rundown; the towns were deserted; and even a returned hero had a hard time to find amusement. He scoffed at the place very indignantly and left to spend the rest of his leave in more congenial surroundings. He was through with Elkhart; quite finished with Indiana, for, as will be shown in a later chapter, it is doubtful if he ever returned to his home after this furlough. He went back to the front with a feeling rather akin to eagerness. It was better than the unnameable desuetude of an Indiana farm in war-time.
In October, after his return to headquarters, Bierce still complained of his wound. As he wrote: “In truth, I had done no actual duty since, being then, as for many years afterward, subject to fits of fainting, sometimes without assignable immediate cause, but mostly when suffering from exposure, excitement or excessive fatigue.” During the time he was injured, when his head was “broken like a walnut,” he did not draw any pay from the government. There was a period of approximately five months during which the government exacted the last cent for the price of his clothing but refused to pay him a wage. There were, of course, many instances of such oversights during the war. In later years it was proposed by his friends in Washington that he recover compensation for this period of inactivity under the provisions of an Act of Congress permitting such special cases to be investigated and relief granted. The sum to which he would then have been entitled would have been quite a considerable bonus. His reply, addressed to Congressman Hepburn in the basement of the Hotel Willard, was: “When I hired out as an assassin to my country that wasn’t part of the contract.”
When he reported back for service at East Point, Georgia, on September 30, 1864, General Hazen asked W. C. Whitaker, Brigadier-General, again to transfer Bierce to his staff. To this request for transfer is affixed the report of a physician that “from effects of wounds Lieutenant Bierce is disqualified from marching on foot.” Bierce served throughout the remainder of the war with General Hazen, in the command of Sherman, who was sweeping up the Atlantic coast towards Richmond. There are fragmentary notes in Bierce’s war book that one can wish had been amplified into regular diary entries, such as, “Beaufort, S. C. January 21, 1865. Then marched to Whitehall. Ward’s plantation, aristocratic secesh,” or “Guest of plantation — overseer.” He must have seen some interesting sights during these last months of the war.
In October of 1864, after he had rejoined the army a few weeks, he became bored with the tedious nature of life around camp and crossed the Coosa River, in the vicinity of Gaylesville, Alabama, for a look at the enemy. He was captured but finally managed to make his escape, and in November he witnessed the last great battle of his military career at Franklin.
His description of Franklin, published first in “Prattle” and then in his “Collected Works” (Vol. I, page 321), is a good illustration of the association that beauty and horror came to have in his mind. One passage will suffice:
“Sleep was in the very atmosphere. The sun burned crimson in a gray-blue sky through a delicate Indian-summer haze, as beautiful as a day-dream in paradise. If one had been given to moralizing one might have found material a-plenty for homilies in contrast between that peaceful autumn afternoon and the bloody business that it had in hand.”
He was finally mustered out of the army at Huntsville, Alabama, at the expiration of this term of service, on January 16th, 1865. There seems to be a wild divergence of opinion as to this date. Mr. Grattan would have it February 16th, 1865, at Huntsville, Louisiana, but the reliable “Atlas of the World” discloses that Huntsville is not in Louisiana. Dr. Danziger has the place correctly stated, but fixes the date as “June 22, 1867,” which is obviously inaccurate. Bierce was in San Francisco in the spring of 1867. I have been unable to locate any text that would support the statement that Bierce was mustered out of the service in Louisiana or that the date was in 1867. Bierce was brevetted major in August of 1865, by President Andrew Johnson, for “distinguished service during the war,” and the brevet was made, nunc pro tunc, as of March 13th, 1865. The brevet was, of course, purely honorary. The power of appointment in such cases rests with the President, and the rank assigned is merely nominal. On October 22nd, 1866, J. C. Kelton, Assistant Adjutant General, at Washington, signed a commission for Bierce as Brevet Major. The character of Bierce’s service during the war was really “distinguished.” He was mentioned in the dispatches for gallantry about fifteen or sixteen times; I have referred to only a few of the occasions for lack of space. General Hazen, who was not given to egregious praise, always spoke of Bierce as “that brave and gallant fellow.”
Bierce was brought up in a military tradition; his early ambition was to enter the army. General Hazen had taken the place of his uncle, Lucius Bierce, as the ideal type which he desired to emulate. Afte
r he was in the service, he thoroughly relished his soldiering. He took a lively interest in the soldiers under his command and even wrote sentimental pieces for their annual reunion pamphlet. It was the nearest he ever came to a feeling of solidarity with people and, even then, the democratic impulse was checked by a system that admits of little informality. His association with the fellows in his command was always a real pleasure. He once wrote that:
“It was once my fortune to command a company of soldiers — real soldiers. Not professional life-long fighters, the product of European militarism — just plain, ordinary, American, volunteer soldiers, who loved their country and fought for it with never a though of grabbing it for themselves; that is a trick which the survivors were taught later by gentlemen desiring their votes.”
Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics) Page 342