This is a short collection of stories by Stephen Crane taking place in the Civil War. The focus is on those who usually remain nameless (and too this end, many of the characters in the stories are not named) as well as those that history forgets about. A reoccurring them is the sameness or common humanity despite being on different sides of a conflict. It isn’t just the soldiers that Crane draws attention to but those left at home as well. There are several mediations on the meaning of heroism.