Rifles, but all that remains of his fellow townsmen are his friend Jack Bishop, three of their officers, a chaplain and a member of the band who believes himself to be the Archbishop of Canterbury. Bushrod Carter, a graduate of the University of Mississippi and ''a veteran of all the campaigns of the Army of Tennessee since Shiloh,'' has survived with his comrades to this late stage of the war. The rest of the book takes place after the battle at a plantation house that has been turned into a field hospital. His characters immediately confront ''the black flower'' (as, we are told, Hawthorne called death) when they begin their assault acrossĪ broad plain on an entrenched Federal line. Short book keeps him moving chronologically through a period of about two days. Although Bahr sometimes goes back and forth in time, the swift pace of this fairly ''The Black Flower'' follows a group of Confederate soldiers from Cumberland, Miss., into battle at Franklin, Tenn., on the last day of November 1864. And at moments it's almost too good to support them. Bahr's novel is too eccentric and too uneven Forget Margaret Mitchell, Shelby Foote and even Charles Frazier. ''The Killer Angels,'' the film ''Glory'' or a certain public television documentary. Like that surprising best seller, is, as its subtitle reminds us, ''A Novel of the Civil War.'' Let me promise right now not to compare Bahr's bold effort with ''The Red Badge of Courage,'' The success of ''Cold Mountain'' certainly has something to do with this, since ''The Black Flower,'' Now appearing in paperback, it's being republished as if it were new. Oward Bahr's first novel was published in hardcover last year by a small press in Baltimore, but despite being nominated for several awards it escaped the attention

This novel, which depicts Confederate soldiers in late 1864, insists on the malignity of war.

The Black Flower by Howard Bahr