Civil War Memories: Lost Tales of the Civil War. Ed. S. T. Joshi. Nashville TN: Nelson, 2000. Print.
This collection of nineteen short stories and two poems is an eclectic representation of stories about the American Civil War written by people who lived through it or were born shortly afterwards. It does give varied views of the war. While some are war stories, more are about the effects of the war on the civilian population or the war’s aftermath. A few are classics, others are long forgotten, and in one or two cases, deserve to remain so.
Although the subtitle of Civil War Memories calls these “lost tales,” a good number are fairly well known to students of the Civil War or of American Literature. Stephen Crane’s “Three Miraculous Soldiers,” Ambrose Bierce’s “Three and Three Are One,” and Louisa May Alcott’s “My Contraband” have all been anthologized and are fairly well known. Mark Twain’s “Lucretia Smith’s Soldier” was hardly lost.
Still, some stories are interesting to note. Possibly the earliest piece of fiction to come out of the war, published in 1862, is “John Lamar” by Rebecca Harding Davis. It is a tightly written story with a solid symbolic quality to it. Davis was a Southerner, but this story has echoes of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” or Lincoln’s Second Inaugural. Davis subtly suggests that God is somehow behind this war, and He is using it to bring justice.
It came as no surprise to me that the longest story in this collection was authored by Henry James. “The Story of a Year” reminded me of his Portrait of a Lady. The tale focuses on a woman whose beau goes off to war and her psychological reaction to things, including another man, in the year he is gone. It has a touch of humor and no small amount of irony. If you like James, you’ll like “The Story of a Year.”
Some stories were very touching. “Bayou L’Ombre” by Grace King and “The Eve of the Fourth” were moving stories about to reactions to war events on the home front, one in the South, and one in the North. “A Wizard from Gettysburg” is a fascinating story by Kate Chopin. Chopin is known today mostly for her proto-feminist The Awakening. “A Wizard from Gettysburg” is very different, though it is also set among the postwar upper class of Louisiana. I believe this story could make a good film, or, perhaps like Bierce’s “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” a great Twilight Zone episode.
A few stories may be curiosities. “The Bloodhounds” by W. C. Morrow is an intense story of a typical deserter who returns to work on his family farm, but in this case he is tracked down by patrollers looking for AWOL soldiers. Ironically, before the war, the “paterollers” would have been looking for escaped slaves.
John William De Forest’s “An Independent Ku-Klux” may be worth skipping. The editor admits he included it as a curiosity. It is supposed to funny—except that it isn’t. De Forest was a Northern carpetbagger who worked hard for the rights of freed slaves, but one might read his story and dismiss him as a racist except that the white people in it are crudely venal.
One of the most moving and optimistic stories here is Sarah Orne Jewett’s “A War Debt.” This story has also been fairly widely anthologized. It indirectly involves a “slender girl, pale and spirited, with a look of care beyond her years” (264) representing the South and Thomas Burton IV who believed “his grandmother was the most charming woman in the world” (259) representing the Yankees. On a symbolic level, it looks to a final reconciliation between North and South. We are all, after all, Americans. E pluribus Unum and illegitimi non carborundum.