Alfred Burnett’s Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive is a collection of sketches and anecdotes drawn from the American Civil War. Ranging from the comic to the heartbreaking, the pieces capture the mingled absurdity and tragedy of life in wartime as observed by a popular entertainer of the era.
Burnett gathers scenes of camp humor, the suffering of the wounded, the partings of soldiers and families, and the small dramas of a nation at war. The variety of tone, signaled in the subtitle, reflects the emotional range of the conflict itself. As a contemporary record assembled from firsthand impressions, the book offers an informal, human-scale view of the Civil War alongside the grand narratives of battles and campaigns.