Looking back.

As this internship is drawing down to a close :sniff sniff:, I'm starting to look everything over and see what I've learned and experienced in this 3 month "working vacation". As I just said, I have been here 3 months, and now I can say that I've had the experience of one of the "90 day regiments" so common at the beginning of the war.

I have experienced life in the 1860's to about 70% of what it really was like, the other 30% being taken away by being able to go home to an air conditioned apartment, not having to use a chamber pot, and also not having worms in my food or bacteria in my water. Oh, and not being shot at. That helps too.

I have done interpretation as a Provost Guard (a military police officer), a dry goods store clerk, a Union artillerist, and many other things. I have experienced many things here, some good and some not so good, but an experience nonetheless. I've learned to live and breathe as a citizen of the United States would in the 19th century, and I'm eager to continue that into my reenacting career as portraying a soldier in the 4th US Infantry. I'm eager to reenact while thinking like a soldier in the 19th century would, wearing exactly what he'd wear, and doing exactly what he did. Sorry to burst the bubble of my reenacting friends, but we could do better.

On my days off, I have been able to go to other battlefields like Gettysburg, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Bolivar Heights, and Chancellorsville. I've been to places that have names like "bloody lane", "the wheatfield", and "the slaughterpen". After visiting these places, I make a habit of visiting the cemeteries, where "these honored dead" are lain to rest. My most recent visit, to Fredericksburg National Cemetery, there are roughly 15 thousand soldiers buried there, but only 2,500 have a name to go on the headstone.

Over the entire course of the war, 625,000 young men, many of whom are younger than I, perished. 2 out of 3 of them died of disease instead of enemy fire. I've walked in places that were once turned red, where the pride of America's youth were swept off the face of the earth. Another experience I've had is being trained and certified in the use of period firearms, such as flint and percussion lock rifles and muskets, as well as the 3 inch ordinance rifle, the most common artillery piece in the entire war.

Knowing how to use these weapons, and knowing what they inflicted on human beings, I have a greater respect for the men who fought the war (and all wars), and a increased disenchantment with weapons and the "glory of war". One of the things we interpret while on artillery weekends is the different type of "shot" or ammunition used by the artillery, including cannister. When we are talking about cannister (effectively a giant shotgun shell, with 40 iron balls the size of shooting marbles), the story we tell is from a Confederate artillery officer, who ordered double cannister to be loaded into his guns to stop a charging line of Union infantry. "I ordered my guns to load 'double cannister', and fired en masse into the enemy. By the time the smoke in front of my guns had cleared, there was nothing to be seen except a pinkish cloud of mist. There were no bodies or pieces of bodies, only a queer mist that we realized was all that remained of our foe."

Dear God.

625,000 lives.

625,000 chairs that would be empty at Thanksgiving time.

625,000 white headstones that would line peaceful green lawns that have names like Gettysburg, Antietam, Arlington, Shiloh, and Petersburg.

625,000 young men who would never love the people they should have loved, fathered the children they should have loved, lived the life they should have lived.


When I go home to Oregon in just a couple weeks, I will be going home with a greater realization of the cost of the Civil War, and really every war. I will go home with a huge respect for veterans that I've never had before on this scale. I will go home and be rededicated to preserving this memory in whatever way I can, and properly honoring the dead, and their living comrades. I want to dedicate my study of history to the memory of men who have been through hell and back for many people they've never even met. For me. These men are more worthy of the title of being a man than I am, and I am dedicated to honoring them.

I'll close with the words of a man that I admire and respect:
"But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."