"I have a better sense of who I am when I take a little walk with Great-granddaddy," said John Hare, a computer specialist from Springfield, Virginia, who was dressed as a Confederate officer and was a participant in a Civil War reenactment. Hare's great-grandfather served under Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, one of the great heroes of the Confederacy. Hare says time spent in that sort of reverie helps answer a question he asked his father when he first viewed a Civil War battleground as a lad: "Which ones were the Americans, Daddy?"
The Civil War as an event is vague in the minds of many Americans today, but for some, it's as alive as if it were fought yesterday. In fact, they are still fighting it.
My first encounter with Civil War reenactors--ordinary people who dress up as soldiers, musicians, tradespeople, and camp followers of that era--was in 1984 at Antietam battlefield in northern Maryland, where 23,110 men were killed or wounded in a bloody battle on September 17, 1862. It is said the lead flew so thickly at Antietam that a man who raised a finger could expect to lose it. In the killing ground that had been a cornfield, men moaned, screamed, prayed, and cursed into the night. Why would anyone want to relieve that horror?
Part of the mystique that draws folks to participate in reenactment scenes, sometimes as many as 10,000 strong, is their attempt to understand what happened, why father turned against son, and brother against brother.
"It was the only time Americans killed Americans," said Dave Morse, a biomedical photographer born in Detroit. He leads the Eighth Virginia Volunteer Infantry Regiment. "We have to keep it alive, we have to keep it in mind."
Morse said his group stages encampments for schoolchildren, and they often ask, "What was it about? Why were they fighting?"
He explains to them that the war was about states' rights. Many people believe that the war was about slavery, but Morse said, "It wasn't about slavery until after Antietam," when President Lincoln took up the abolitionist cause.
Colin McDonald, commander of the Twenty-eighth Massachusetts Infantry, shares the view that part of the reason for reenactments is to remind others of the horror of war on home ground. "We'd better not forget it," he said. "Don't ever forget how this nation was divided."
The Spirit Of The War
McDonald also mentions the camaraderie as part of the allure. "It brings a lot of people together, they get into the spirit of it. This was the last cavalier war, and there was a lot of patriotism and color."
He also sees his participation as a path to a simpler life. "We have complicated our lives so much. Few people who visit our encampments even know how to start a fire with wet wood.
"You find a pine tree. Get down into it and gather the natural turpentine from the base. It's flammable. Or you cut a piece of candle and put it
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