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_______________________________________CIVIL WAR BIERCE
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AMBROSE BIERCE AND THE CIVIL WAR
Bierce, a member of the Ninth Regiment, Indiana Volunteers, during the Civil War, won the temporary rank of major by the war's end. He was seriously wounded during the battle of Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia. He also fought at Philippi, Girard Hill, Shiloh, Stones River, Cornith, Missionary Ridge, and Pickett's Mill. His Civil War adventures resulted in the finest, some say the only, fiction to emerge from the Civil War -- and all of it remains in print.
Lt. A.G. Bierce, age 21
1862
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Artist Tom Redman based his portrait
on photo to left
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CHICKAMAUGA
Chickamauga. Click picture to view more Bierce art by Tom Redman
Above. Bierce fought at the battle of Chickamauga in Georgia, September 1863. Many years later he wrote one of his most compelling Civil War stories, Chickamauga. It's about an innocent child who stumbles into unspeakable horror during the battle.
KENNESAW MOUNTAIN, GEORGIA
Photo of Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield by Don Swaim
Bierce was wounded in the head at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia, near Atlanta, by a Confederate sniper on June 23, 1864. He was evacuated to a military hospital in Chattanooga, and did not return to his brigade until the following September.
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After the war, Bierce served as a Treasury agent in Alabama. Hoping to win an officer's commission in the peacetime army, Bierce accompanied his former commanding officer, General William Hazen, as an engineering attache and mapmaker on an expedition through Indian territory. In San Francisco, Bierce's application for captaincy denied, he took a job as night watchman at the U.S. Branch Mint and turned to writing. Many of his finest Civil War stories were published by the San Francisco Examiner, and included in his brilliant 1891 collection, Tales of Soldiers and Civilians, retitled in Britain as In the Midst of Life.
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Many of Bierce's Civil War stories posted at Classic Reader
Bierce's Collected Works, including his Civil War writing, available at Project Gutenberg
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TWO FILMS BASED ON BIERCE WAR STORIES
Produced and directed by Don Maxwell, with Campbell Scott as Bierce, Ambrose Bierce: Civil War Stories made its screen debut in Kansas City on September 8, 2006. Its DVD release was November 7, 2006. Independently produced in Kansas City as a trilogy, the film includes a truncated version of Michigan filmmaker's Brian James Egan's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," which is integrated seamlessly into the Maxwell film[see below]. For details about Maxwell's film with additional pictures, go to: Market Wire.
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click to enlarge
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 click for info about film |
First screened before a small audience in Lynchburg, VA, this film based on the Ambrose Bierce Civil War masterpiece formally premiered at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor in 2003. NOTE: Now part of the film trilogy Ambrose Bierce: Civil War Stories, although truncated. [see above].
Read the original version of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridgea psychological
drama of a man who sees his life flash before him as Union troops hang him as a spy from a railroad bridge.
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 The October 2005 issue of Civil War Times features two pieces by Bierce, one fiction,
the other non-fiction, plus an article on Bierce's Civil War years by Allen Guelzo
 Bierce in middle age and as an older man remembering
the battles of the Civil War. By Tom Redmond.
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