Quote of the Day (Ambrose Bierce, on Dying Civil War Soldiers Reaching for a Last Drink of Water)

“Possibly his impressionable mind was half conscious of something familiar in its [an unfamiliar form] shambling, awkward gait. Before it had approached near enough to resolve his doubts he saw that it was followed by another and another. To right and to left were many more; the whole open space about him were alive with them--all moving toward the brook.

“They were men. They crept upon their hands and knees. They used their hands only, dragging their legs. They used their knees only, their arms hanging idle at their sides. They strove to rise to their feet, but fell prone in the attempt. They did nothing naturally, and nothing alike, save only to advance foot by foot in the same direction. Singly, in pairs and in little groups, they came on through the gloom, some halting now and again while others crept slowly past them, then resuming their movement. They came by dozens and by hundreds; as far on either hand as one could see in the deepening gloom they extended and the black wood behind them appeared to be inexhaustible. The very ground seemed in motion toward the creek. Occasionally one who had paused did not again go on, but lay motionless. He was dead. Some, pausing, made strange gestures with their hands, erected their arms and lowered them again, clasped their heads; spread their palms upward, as men are sometimes seen to do in public prayer.”—Civil war soldier (and later journalist-satirist) Ambrose Bierce (1842-1913?), “Chickamauga,” in Tales of Soldiers and Civilians: And Other Stories (1891)

Memorial Day originated in the wake of the Civil War. Just how harrowing the conflict was can be glimpsed through the life and work of a Union soldier who went on to win considerable fame—and, because of his mysterious disappearance a half-century later, just as much notoriety—as a writer: Ambrose Bierce.

Bierce felt that a noncombatant simply couldn’t understand what a veteran had experienced on the battlefront. Nevertheless, whether through a sense that he ought to bridge this gulf in comprehension or as an exorcism of the torment he had experienced, he wrote a collection of stories based on what he’d seen, Tales of Soldiers and Civilians.

Trained as a topographical engineer, Bierce missed few if any details about landscapes and spaces, as seen here. I have not been able to find as many photographs in the “Western theater” of the conflict (where Chickamauga—the second-bloodiest battle of the whole war—took place) as battles in the East such as Antietam and Gettysburg. Bierce’s verbal account, then, will have to stand for the images that never were visually recorded and sold, but continued to haunt survivors for the rest of their lives.

This Day in Civil War History (Battle Gives Rise to “Rock of Chickamauga”)

September 19, 1863—The bloodiest two days of the Civil War began as Union forces under General William Rosecrans clashed with Confederates under Braxton Bragg at the Battle of Chickamauga in northern Georgia.

By the time the battle ended, 35,000 men had been killed, wounded or missing, depleting each army by one-third. It could have been far worse for the Union—its Army of the Cumberland was saved from annihilation only by the heroic stand of perhaps the greatest unsung commander of the war on either side: General George H. Thomas.

One of the best things about writing this blog—in my opinion, anyway—is the opportunity to spotlight a person or event that deserves more notice. General Thomas is a classic example.

It was Thomas’ misfortune to be consistently underestimated, even by otherwise intelligent leaders who should have known better. Underneath his seemingly phlegmatic exterior beat a formidable intelligence joined to an indomitable heart. They didn’t call him “The Rock of Chickamauga” for nothing.

Soliders assigned even more nicknames to Thomas than the normally high number that commanders earn. One of his earliest (and most enduring) was “Slow Trot.” One explanation for this one was that Thomas urged his equestrian students at West Point to treat their much-put-upon animals more gently. The nickname also hinted at his even, unflappable temperament.

But Thomas’ size – two hundred-plus pounds in a six-feet frame that, a soldier said, “gradually expands upon you, as a mountain which you approach--testified to something else about the man—enormous force held in reserve—and God help you if he used it against you.

The most telling anecdote I ever read about Thomas—I believe it was in John Bowers’ article in Military History Quarterly in the early 1990s—is this: At West Point, some fool made the mistake of taunting the young cadet. The wretch continued this tomfoolery until the burly object of his scorn, without saying a word, suddenly got hold of his tormenter, lifted him by the ankles, and held him out the window. Word soon got around—you didn’t mess with Thomas.

In the Civil War, Thomas proved it over and over again by never losing a battle. Even Grant and Sherman, the friends and Thomas superiors who gain the lion’s share of historians’ attention, couldn’t claim the same thing.

The problem was that Thomas was the Union Army’s answer to Robert E. Lee: a slaveholding Virginian faced with the decision on where to stand in the war. Lee’s decision earned him no opprobrium from his neighbors; Thomas’ earned him nothing but that. Even his sisters wouldn't speak to him again.

Many in the North questioned his loyalty. His old classmate, Sherman, had to vouch personally for him with Lincoln. Later, the President—who, as the war went on, became an increasingly shrewder judge of ability--even struck his name from a promotion list, saying, “Let the Virginian wait.”

Over the course of the war, at Munfordville and Stones River, Thomas would save inferior commanders from their worst mistakes. He’d win important victories at Kenesaw Mountain, and, in independent command, at Franklin and Nashville, where he defeated John Bell Hood so soundly that the latter’s army ceased to exist as a fighting unit.

Particularly in the last couple of battles, Thomas’ extremely methodical approach nearly led to his removal by Grant, who had actually written a telegram replacing him before he got the news that the Virginian had given Hood a master class in command of armies.

But nowhere was Thomas’ brilliance more needed than at Chickamauga. The battle was fought amid dense woods and thick underbrush, making it hard for generals to monitor their men or the course of battle.

On the second day of battle, his commander, William Rosecrans, had become so unnerved when James Longstreet tore through an open hole in the Union line that, like General Horatio Gates at the Battle of Camden in the American Revolution, he abandoned the field of battle. Thomas not only had to cope with the steep losses in killed and wounded, but another portion of the army that had fled with Rosecrans.

The entire Confederate Army was bearing down on Thomas at this moment—an even more desperate situation than Oliver Hazard Perry had faced in the Battle of Lake Erie, when the entire British fleet on the lake had come after his flagship. His men were low on ammunition and, midway through the second day, exhausted and fearful.

Knowing that one of the Confederacy’s best generals, Longstreet, was facing him, Thomas personally rode among his enlisted men, quietly but firmly steeling them for what lay ahead. “This point must be held,” he told one of their leaders, Col. Emerson Epdycke. The latter knew what was required: “We will hold this ground, or go to heaven from it.”

On Snodgrass Hill, Thomas formed a line. Again and again, the rebels threw everything they had at him—seven times. Each time Thomas fought back until, toward the end of the day, he made an orderly retreat that allowed the Union to limp back to Chattanooga where it could lick its wounds.

Chickamauga is an Indian word for “River of Blood,” and seldom has a place so lived up to its billing. But it had also given rise to one of the greatest examples of imperturbability in the face of disaster ever witnessed by the U.S. Army.

Even Lincoln came around. His post-battle assessment had become characteristically pungent and wise. Rosecrans needed to be replaced because he had acted “confused and stunned, like a duck hit on the head.” This was in direct contrast to Thomas: “It is doubtful whether his heroism and skill, exhibited last Friday afternoon, has ever been surpassed in the world.”