I’ve read Stephen Crane’s more famous story, “The Open Boat,” as well as his novel The Red Badge of Courage, but I’ve never read this story before. I’ll be very interested to hear what other readers think.
One thing that makes this tale challenging is the Civil War era military terminology.
The National Archives has an interesting historical background piece on regimental units during the Civil War that you might find helpful.
“The Little Regiment: Civil War Units and Commands” by Michael K. Musick
The Author: Stephen Crane (1871-1900) Stephen Crane was the fourteenth and last child of a Methodist minister and a suffragette. His father died when he was nine, and he was raised by an older sister. He went to college for a couple of years, but his education came mostly from the streets. He self-published his first book, Maggie, Girl of the Streets, under a pseudonym in 1893. The book was too graphic in its depiction of the life of a prostitute to be accepted by any commercial publisher. Although he had never been to war, his depictions of the battlefield in his novel The Red Badge of Courage (1895) brought him fame, money, and the chance to actually see battle as a war correspondent. He was sent to Cuba to report on uprising there in 1897, but the boat he was traveling on sank. Although he never got to Cuba, he turned his experience with other men on a lifeboat into one of the most acclaimed short stories in American literature, “The Open Boat.” He also reported on the Greco-Turkish war in 1898. By this time, his health and finances were in ruins. He went to a health spa in Germany in 1900 with his common-law wife, but he died there of tuberculosis. He was only twenty-eight years old.
The Story: “The Little Regiment” appeared in a collection of short stories published the year after his novel The Red Badge of Courage, which was a great critical and commercial success. Below is one of the original reviews of the short stories.
Jeannette L. Gilder. “Stephen Crane’s New Book of Stories.” New York World, October 25, 1896, p. 25
Mr. Stephen Crane is reported to have said that, when he finished The Little Regiment and Other Episodes of the American Civil War, he would write no more war stories. I have just finished reading an advance copy of this book, by the courtesy of the publishers, D. Appleton & Co., and I am compelled to say that if Mr. Crane has turned his back upon the war story he has snubbed his best friend. The Little Regiment and other tales that go to make this book are as much superior to his “slum” tales—Maggie and George’s Mother—as it is possible to imagine. There are tricks of style that show the same hand to have written these stories and the two above mentioned, as well as The Red Badge of Courage, for Mr. Crane is fond of awkward sentences, and he often labors painfully for eccentricity of expression, but at the same time he shows in this book that he can tell a good story when he does not try too hard. Some of his descriptions are remarkably vivid, and they are often more vivid when terse than when he gives more words to them. The story that gives the book its name is of two brothers who belonged to the same regiment, and who, while at heart fond of each other, were apparently bitter enemies.
