Jn September 1861, just a few months after the Civil War broke out, nineteen-year-old Ambrose Bierce joined the Union army in Indiana. By the time the war ended in 1865, he had fought in numerous major battles, worked as a military mapmaker, and been severely wounded in the head. He had also stored up enough memories to provide material for nineteen short stories about the war. "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is the most famous of these stories. Despite its unconventional style, this story provided one of the first realistic portrayals of the horrors of the war.
Railroads in the Civil War. Peyton Farquhar, the main character in Bierce's short story, is slated to be hung not for murder, rape, or some other violent crime, but for attempting to destroy a railroad bridge. A civilian, Farquhar hoped to protect Confederate soldiers from attack by tampering with the railroad line. The idea of using railroads to fight a war may seem strange today, but at the time of the American Civil War, tracks and locomotives played an extremely important role in military maneuvers.
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