Wikisource has original text related to this article:

The Private History of a Campaign That Failed

The Private History of a Campaign that Failed is one of Mark Twain's sketches (1885), a short, highly fictionalized memoir of his two-week stint in the pro-Confederate Missouri State Guard.^[1] It takes place in Marion County, Missouri, and is about a group of inexperienced militiamen, the Marion Rangers, who end up killing a stranger in panic. (In 1887, he claimed before Union veterans that he had been in one battle in which a stranger had been killed in the summer of 1861.^[2] In fact, Twain saw no action; he quipped that during his service he spent more time retreating while being hunted than fighting.)^[3][4]

Television film

In 1981, a made-for-television film adaptation of The Private History of a Campaign that Failed was broadcast on PBS starring Edward Herrmann, Pat Hingle, Joseph Adams, Harry Crosby and Kelly Pease. The film also adapts Twain's short story "The War Prayer".

Cast

• Edward Herrmann as The Stranger
• Pat Hingle as Col. Ralls
• Joseph Adams as Capt. Tom Lyman
• Harry Crosby as Cpl. Ed Stevens
• Kelly Pease as Cab
• Gary McCleery as Second Lieutenant
• Roy Cockrum as Sgt. Bowers