For many, war has a pretty ugly face, but there are those who seem to see war through rose petal shows, hear about its successes in lullabies and talk about its necessity with dripping words. with honey. During the 18th century, a burgeoning literary art took hold of the population, it colored reality in such a way that people “fell in love” with it – romanticism, a term loosely applied to the literary and artistic movements of the end of the 18th century and 19th centuries. According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, Romanticism is: a literary, artistic, and philosophical movement originating in the 18th century, characterized primarily by a reaction against neoclassicism and its emphasis on the imagination and emotions, and marked particularly in English literature through sensitivity and the use of autobiographical material, an exaltation of the primitive and ordinary man, an appreciation of external nature, an interest in the distant, a predilection for melancholy and the use in poetry of older verse forms . During the period when Ambrose Bierce and William Dean Howells lived, war was a part of life. The American Civil War and the Spanish-American War were realities they had to face, and as realists, they set out to highlight the truths of war. Their disillusionment with the romantic approach to war in literature is expressed in their popular works "Chickamauga" and "Editha". Both authors use the “strong” points of romanticism against itself, the use of symbolism as well as the role of gender are present throughout the two short stories. In his book The Ethics of Moral Resistance: Ambrose Bierce and General William B. Haze; author Peter J. Marrone, states "[...] Bierce's main intention in composition...... middle of paper ...... cours and Chickamauga. "Explanator 67.3 (2009): 227. MasterFILE Complete. Web. March 9, 2014. Harris, Susan K. "Vicious Binaries: Gender And Authorial Paranoia In Dreiser's 'SecondChoice', Howells' 'Editha'.." College Literature 20.2 (1993) ): 70. Full Academic Search Web March 10, 2014. .Johnston, Christopher F. "'A Man So Almost Perfect': William Dean Howells' 'Editha', The Spanish-American War and American Masculinity in the Late Nineteenth Century ." Journal Of War & Culture Studies 5.3 (2012): 249. Supplemental Index. Web. March 9, 2014. Morrone, Peter J. "The Ethics of Moral Resistance: Ambrose Bierce and General William B. Hazen." Midwest Quarterly 54.4 (2013): 399-413. Academic research completed. Web. March 9, 2014. “Romanticism.” Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, nd Web. March 9. 2014..