Should Civil War re-enactments be abandoned?

The Patriot-News ^ | July 7, 2013 | Donald Gilliland

[2ndDivisionVet]

Civil War commemorations and re-enactors are practically synonymous, but as the Gettysburg hoopla began last week, the Director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College said very publicly the commemoration would be better without all the men in blue and gray pretending to be soldiers.

On June 29, the Wall Street Journal ran a story that said, "Peter Carmichael, a professor of history at Gettysburg College, calls re-enactments an 'unfortunate distraction' from a deeper understanding of the Civil War, including the motivations of those who fought and its legacy."

Later that same night, Carmichael quoted himself to me at the media reception in Gettysburg sponsored by the college: "unfortunate distraction."

Across town, in a field of canvas dog tents next to the Pennsylvania Monument, Tom Downes told me, "A lot of guys in this camp have probably done more research than a lot of academics - they just haven't written a book: they wanted to know what kind of cartridge box was used in 1862 in Virginia."

Downes, 63, has been re-enacting for 33 years. He's the founder of the 8th Ohio re-enactment group and leader of the National Regiment, one of the two re-enactment organizations the National Park Service asked to do Living History demonstrations on the battlefield during the July 1-3 commemoration.....

[3catsanadog]

My cousin has participated in these reenactments for many years. When the film Gettysburg was being filmed, they used many of these participants in the film. Some of them provided details that corrected things in the film. My cousin got a bit part holding General Lee’s horse for him.

[LibLieSlayer]

I have friends that are involved in both camps... they have some great lifelong friendships out of it and they volunteer to care for these places and they do not segregate.

LLS

[Darnright]

> the Director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College said very publicly the commemoration would be better without all the men in blue and gray pretending to be soldiers.<

Well, then. Obviously, an individual with such a lofty title must know far more than a bunch of amateurs. .

[barefoot_hiker]

He’s probably afraid of all those muzzle-loading assault weapons.

[CodeToad]

Nope. Re-enactments help show history. Books don’t do it justice. I’ve been to a few of these events and it is all done in good fun and interest.

[CodeToad]

P.S. Much of known history has come from these re-enactors studying history to get it all right. They talk to people, research families, etc. They have been valuable in digging up history.

[rockrr]

Actually I'm kinda surprised that some environmentalist hasn't pitched a bitch about all those knuckledraggers trampling the grass and whatnot.

/s

[Sherman Logan]

Do you mean slave labor was the standard across the world at the time?

[donmeaker]

I figure he is jealous. Rather than develop an understanding of how historical weapons work, what it took to load, fire, carry them, understand their lethality, he wants people to spend their money on his latest book that will tell them what he as an historian has determined they should know about that subject.

Some people think history is a study of the past. Marxists think history is what they tell people.

[jmacusa]

Using this morons logic there shouldn’t be a Hollywood either making period films from every and any period in history.

[nathanbedford]

There is unquestionably an academic conceit which despises the study of warfare. Invariably the liberal professors will conduct courses about the causes leading up to war and the consequences and aftermath but almost never will they discuss the battles themselves.

With reference to the Civil War, you are perfectly right, the weapon technology of the time dictated tactics and tactics dictated strategy. And so we have the tactics of men lining up to mass firepower causing huge casualties. We have those tactics dictating strategy which ultimately led, for example, to Lee's invasion of the North or Sherman's devastation by fire on his march to the sea.

In turn, these strategies of total warfare devastated the South for generations and led to a disparity in economic progress, Jim Crow, segregation, and civil rights struggles.

The professors' disdain for tactics, for the study of the blood and mud of war is to lose a very valuable perspective and to teach a distorted history.

[0.E.O]

In turn, these strategies of total warfare devastated the South for generations and led to a disparity in economic progress, Jim Crow, segregation, and civil rights struggles.

Yeah. Look at what total war did for Germany and Japan? Economic basket-cases and social wastelands, the both of them.

Maybe the South brought its problems down on itself and should stop blaming others?

[Salamander]

Well, yes.

:D

[sten]

slave labor was very common across the world pre-1776, as attitudes started to change around that time.

do you think the pyramids were built by contractors??

[Sherman Logan]

Since the article was about the 1860s, I assumed you were talking about slave labor being the norm in 1860. Which it wasn’t, unless you consider poor people with no alternate way of making a living to be slaves.

And, yes, it does appear the pyramids were built by contractors, or at least by men paid wages who often worked on these projects for generations.

It should be pointed out that the association of a slave’s position as inevitably one of degradation, poverty and powerlessness is not universal. In most “oriental” monarchies all subjects, including the highest nobility, referred to themselves as slaves of the king.

In many societies some slaves rose to positions of status and power, even becoming monarchs themselves. Notably the Slave sultans of India, the janissaries and the mamelukes. But there were lots of others.

[Sherman Logan]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/who-built-the-pyramids.html

[sten]

LOL

pyramids... built by contractors... ROFLMAO

whatever dude

[x]

Another day, another fake controversy. I can't get too worked up when the kinds of things people mutter through their teeth somehow get into the papers.

Every humanities professor is a bit of a snob, and it comes out sometimes when it shouldn't. It especially comes out in the summer when they feel their resort communities are "invaded" by the "unwashed." The battlefield is Carmichael's "resort" and he takes the re-enactors for "invaders" as his peers regard newcomers to Martha's Vineyard or the Hamptons.

Carmichael and Gettysburg College have ridden the wave of popular interest in the Civil War to the point of becoming regular features on C-Span, and when the crowds start to gather the professors kick away the ladders and draw up the ropes or planks to re-establish their superiority to the mob. When the sesquicentennial's over and the crowds and cameras have moved on, he's going to wonder where they went and why all the attention went away.

I don't know about the whole "Marxist" thing, though. Carmichael isn't the best historian out there by any means. He may be unlikeable as a person and share the left-liberal opinions of most humanities professors. But the guy who asks "his question to me - didn't I find most of the re-enactors to be blue collar?" may not be that much of a Marxist.

[wally_bert]

I went to one at Sandy Run just down I26 from Columbia and saw a replica of a Williams Repeating Cannon which I had never heard of.

I bagged a little footage of it. I’ve seen it one time since but didn’t see it firing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-3Fsjf1iwE

[Ditto]

"It's the old boys we do this for, and it's the old boys who were here."
That kind of participatory history simply can't be found with a licensed guide on the battlefield.

Bottom line of the story, and bottom line of what some tenured self-entitled professor will never begin to comprehend.

Two very different worlds. And as to the facts and accounts of any of the specific events, I'd bet on the re-enactors before I'd bet on some tenured professor. For the re-enactors, it is a passion, not their profession. They are honoring what our ancestores endured. They bring life to history.

God bless them for that.