An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (Historical Context)

Historical Context

“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” was published in 1891, though it is set during the Civil War. This war, which was fought from 1861 to 1865, claimed 525,000 American lives, the most American lives ever lost in a war. (Some 400,000 were lost in World War II.) The Civil War was a bloody conflict that began when the states of the American South withdrew from the Union, arguing that the U.S. Constitution gave them the right to do so if they chose. When President Abraham Lincoln disagreed with their decision and was determined to keep the union together, war broke out between the Northern States, still loyal to a single, united country, and the Southern States, which had formed their own confederacy, a loose association of member states.

Because the South had a much smaller population, and thus had far fewer soldiers, a decision was made in 1861 to organize guerrilla warfare against Union troops. These guerrillas would infiltrate camps behind the battlelines to disrupt the enemy’s communications and supplies by blowing up bridges, capturing messengers, and burning stocks of ammunition and food. Civilians were organized into companies of rangers to wage guerrilla warfare against Union troops, while special units of the Confederate Army were created to act as hit-and-run raiders behind Union lines. Besides disrupting Union communications and supply lines, the guerrillas also forced the Union to deploy more troops behind the front, thus easing somewhat the overwhelming manpower advantage the North enjoyed. Among the groups of Southern guerrillas who harassed Union troops was Mosby’s Rangers, a civilian force that struck such fear into the Union government that it was common policy each night to remove the planks from all bridges leading to Washington, DC, so that Mosby’s Rangers could not enter the city. One of the South’s most flamboyant military generals, Nathan Bedford Forrest, became famous for his leadership of behind-the-lines attacks by Confederate cavalry forces in Tennessee and Mississippi during General William Tecumseh Sherman’s March to the Sea.