“The Private History of a Campaign That Failed” (1885)

Wikipedia describes this piece as “one of Mark Twain’s sketches, a short, highly fictionalized memoir of his two-week stint in the pro-Confederate Missouri State Guard.” While it has many comical passages about the group’s incompetence, “memoir” is indeed probably the better way to think of it, with its turn to the solemn or even tragic with one incident. It was written 20 years after the end of the Civil War, 25 years after the incidents it recounts. This band of some 15 “Marion Rangers,” roams the Missouri countryside responding to rumors that the enemy is nearby, usually by retreating (ha ha). They barely can control their horses and mules (ha ha), let alone their firearms. They eventually encounter a stranger and shoot him dead. It’s never certain he was an enemy combatant and seems likely he wasn’t. This is sobering for Twain, the memoirist, and for us as readers too. After a short time—it feels longer than two weeks but not by much—the group disbands and Twain evidently never participates in the war again. The piece has something of the feel of a confession—that he deserted his military obligations, that he participated in killing an innocent man, or both. The humor of the early part of it feels at odds with the rest. The things he might be confessing to are serious breaches and in retrospect the humor seems out of place. It’s also interesting as a look at how the war was experienced early, before battle lines were drawn and the conflict fully engaged. It feels less like desertion when they return home and more like a false alarm about war, although Twain mentions that some of his comrades on these escapades later fought and died in the war. To me it feels like an antiwar piece, though also conflicted about duty. The death of the stranger is no kind of victory in any way. It’s a moment of shame and contrition. Combined with the ineptitude of the group as well as that of the greater war effort, Twain seems torn between something like his own shame and the malevolent lunacy of war. I often find Twain’s humor enjoyable, but I think I like this side of him best—the one who is outraged and sickened by the stupidity of humanity.

Mark Twain, Humorous Stories & Sketches
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