“Civil War Reenacting”

~ Taken from the article ~ by Clint Johnson ~

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“To those who do not do it”, reenacting may seem like an odd hobby: spending weekends reenacting a war that killed upwards of 3 quarters of a million people when the United States’ population was just 31 million.

Reenactors do not dwell on the terrible human cost. That part of history cannot be changed. What reenacting does is give men and women a chance to walk in the footsteps of those people who came before us just a little over 150 years ago. What did the Gettysburg artillery barrage sound like? Can one really hear a Civil War era term – ‘the rattle of musketry’? How do your feet feel after marching 22 miles in a single day in thin-soled brogans? How did my ancestors survive battles, disease, and prison camps on far away battlefields then return home to produce me?

It was I who asked historian Shelby Foote 20 years ago: “Is there anything about the War you don’t know?” I got a quick answer: “I don’t know how they did it.”

That is what reenacting is all about: trying to live for a weekend like a Civil War soldier or civilian to figure out how they did it.