A Bivouac of the Dead

by Ambrose Bierce

　　Away up in the heart of the Allegheny mountains, in Pocahontas county, West Virginia, is a beautiful little valleythrough which flows the east fork of the Greenbrier river. At a point where the valley road intersects the oldStaunton and Parkersburg turnpike, a famous thoroughfare in its day, is a post office in a farm house. The name ofthe place is Travelers' Repose, for it was once a tavern. Crowning some low hills within a stone's throw of thehouse are long lines of old Confederate fortifications, skilfully designed and so well "preserved" that an hour's workby a brigade would put them into serviceable shape for the next civil war. This place had its battle -- what wascalled a battle in the "green and salad days" of the great rebellion. A brigade of Federal troops, the writer'sregiment among them, came over Cheat mountain, fifteen miles to the westward, and, stringing its lines across thelittle valley, felt the enemy all day; and the enemy did a little feeling, too. There was a great cannonading, whichkilled about a dozen on each side; then, finding the place too strong for assault, the Federals called the affair areconnaissance in force, and burying their dead withdrew to the more comfortable place whence they had come. Thosedead now lie in a beautiful national cemetery at Grafton, duly registered, so far as identified, and companioned byother Federal dead gathered from the several camps and battlefields of West Virginia. The fallen soldier (theword "hero" appears to be a later invention) has such humble honors as it is possible to give.

　　His part in all the pomp that fills

　　The circuit of the Summer hills

　　Is that his grave is green.

　　True, more than a half of the green graves in the Grafton cemetery are marked "Unknown," and sometimes it occurs thatone thinks of the contradiction involved in "honoring the memory" of him of whom no memory remains to honor; but theattempt seems to do no great harm to the living, even to the logical.

　　A few hundred yards to the rear of the old Confederate earthworks is a wooded hill. Years ago it was not wooded.Here, among the trees and in the undergrowth, are rows of shallow depressions, discoverable by removing theaccumulated forest leaves. From some of them may be taken (and reverently replaced) small thin slabs of the splitstone of the country, with rude and reticent inscriptions by comrades. I found only one with a date, only one withfull names of man and regiment. The entire number found was eight.

　　In these forgotten graves rest the Confederate dead -- between eighty and one hundred, as nearly as can be made out.Some fell in the "battle;" the majority died of disease. Two, only two, have apparently been disinterred for reburialat their homes. So neglected and obscure is this campo santo that only he upon whose farm it is -- the aged postmasterof Travelers' Repose -- appears to know about it. Men living within a mile have never heard of it. Yet other men mustbe still living who assisted to lay these Southern soldiers where they are, and could identify some of the graves.Is there a man, North or South, who would begrudge the expense of giving to these fallen brothers the tribute ofgreen graves? One would rather not think so. True, there are several hundreds of such places still discoverable inthe track of the great war. All the stronger is the dumb demand -- the silent plea of these fallen brothers to whatis "likest God within the soul."

　　They were honest and courageous foemen, having little in common with the political madmen who persuaded them totheir doom and the literary bearers of false witness in the aftertime. They did not live through the period ofhonorable strife into the period of vilification -- did not pass from the iron age to the brazen -- from the era of thesword to that of the tongue and pen. Among them is no member of the Southern Historical Society. Their valor was notthe fury of the non-combatant; they have no voice in the thunder of the civilians and the shouting. Not by them areimpaired the dignity and infinite pathos of the Lost Cause. Give them, these blameless gentlemen, their rightfulpart in all the pomp that fills the circuit of the summer hills.