“Chickamauga” is a short story that belongs to the category of war literature. Not only does the story explore the effects of war (as soldiers and civilians become casualties), but it takes place during an actual Civil War battle, the Battle of Chickamauga. Bierce himself fought in this battle on the side of the Union and wrote stories like “Chickamauga” in order to process and share his experiences. In this way, the story likely has some autobiographical elements.
Given the combination of realistic elements and also exaggeratedly horrifying ones, the story can be seen as straddling the line between realism and horror. The realism comes across in Bierce’s attention to detail, as he takes time to accurately capture the flora and fauna of the forests in northwestern Georgia and also references the specific sorts of materials Union soldiers would genuinely have carried with them (“an occasional blanket, tightly rolled lengthwise, doubled and the ends bound together with a string,” “a heavy knapsack here,” etc.).
The horror, on the other hand, comes across in Bierce’s grotesque descriptions of the shattered and bloodied bodies of the soldiers, who, when they first appear, come across more as zombies than as humans:
They crept upon their hands and knees. They used their hands only, dragging their legs. They used their knees only, their arms hanging idle at their sides. They strove to rise to their feet, but fell prone in the attempt. They did nothing naturally, and nothing alike, save only to advance foot by foot in the same direction.
The descriptions of the soldiers “dragging their legs,” their “arms hanging idly,” and doing “nothing naturally” all contribute to the haunting, horrific quality of the story. By combining realism with horror, Bierce highlights the genuinely horrific nature of war.
