With the coming of the new year, America has come upon the sesquicentennial of 1864, the bloodiest year of its civil war. Many historians consider ’64 the beginning of the end for the Confederacy in the storytelling of America’s most fatal struggle. In 1861, the war was young and so at heart were the men who fought it. The people of both North and South thought it would be a quick war, all won by a single glorious victory, and all the boys would

The beautiful war that was not to be – the 7th New York State Militia marches down Broadway in April,1861

come marching home to parades on warm, sunny days as their sweethearts hold them arm in arm. 1862 killed that notion. ’62 brought America’s young and inexperienced warriors into horrific combat on the banks of the Mississippi at Shiloh, Tennessee, brutal killing on the banks of Antietam Creek in Maryland, and ruthless struggle at Fredericksburg, Virginia. 1863 sent men through the hell that now comes to mind when one hears the names “Chancellorsville,” “Gettysburg,” and “Chickamauga.” By 1864, the men in blue and gray had marched to hell and back. They all had seen men die, seen their friends perish right in front of them. They all had been fighting in a war they were not certain they would see the end of. In the memory of those who know the story of the war, 1864 echoes with a solemn darkness, like the closing of a cemetery’s wrought iron gate on a late autumn day.

This May will be the 150th anniversary of the day an ancestor of mine descended into the war’s most terrifying battle and lived to tell the tale. Pvt. Jeremiah Stailey, an uncle on my

The reality of war – Skeletal remains of lost soldiers in the darkness of the Wilderness, 1864

mother’s side, was a Federal soldier with the 7th Pennsylvania Reserves. He had seen battle in numerous actions earlier in the war, and was wounded in America’s bloodiest single day at the Battle of Antietam in 1862. In 1864, he would see the side of war that the hand-printed lithographs and parlor paintings didn’t show. He and his regiment entered battle in Virginia’s “Wilderness” on May 5, 1864. The Wilderness is a massive forest in the backcountry of Spotsylvania County, a confused and tangled mass of undergrowth gathered at the ankles of old and gnarled trees spread out over 70 square miles. The disastrous Battle of Chancellorsville had been fought within the forest the previous year, and the the moldered remains of the fallen remained unburied throughout the underbrush. It was almost like the setting of some psychological horror movie. By fate, the armies of Generals Lee and Grant met there in sudden combat. At a crossroads of lost and meandering roads in the ancient forest, 160,000 men slammed together in a crash of fire and lead. Lines of men threw themselves into the tangled briars

Richmond’s Libby Prison – Jeremiah Stailey’s personal hell for over a year

and brush as bullets hailed all around them. Gunfire set the dry underbrush aflame, sending massive forest fires across the Wilderness, roasting the wounded alive in many cases. In the middle of all this hell, the 7th Pennsylvania Reserves plunged headlong into the fire, blazing away at the enemy as darkness fell upon the battlefield. In the confusion, the 7th became surrounded by the enemy and was forced to surrender. Jeremiah Stailey was taken prisoner and sent to Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia, where he endured abuse by the guards, starvation, and disease. The experience of captivity left him effectively crippled for life. Pvt. Stailey served through some of the most fearful engagements of the war and saw things that even a historian would find difficulty describing. It was in the year 1864, 150 years ago, that he saw the worst of it.

As I did last semester, my passion blog this semester will be on the topic of my hobby of Civil War reenacting. To recap for any new viewers of my blog, as a Civil War reenactor, I represent the life of the average soldier of the Civil War. Though I predominantly wear the blue and serve the United States, I on occasion will don a gray uniform and represent a soldier of the Confederacy. I wear everything that the original soldier would have worn and endure nearly all of the same hardships that they did. I spare myself no extra comfort in this. I do all this for multiple reasons: I’ve made some of the best friends I have through reenacting, and the camaraderie I share with them is indescribable. I enjoy testing myself and immersing myself in the experience of our forefathers. I love to help educate the public and teach them about what their ancestors experienced. Foremost, I do all this to honor the memory of the hundreds of thousands of men who fought and died in the bloodiest days of our nation’s history.

I had a powerful and eventful season of campaigns and fights in 2013 (1863). I stood sentry duty in the bitter winds of March on the front lines, helped train new recruits back home in the pleasant days of May, and found myself on the killing fields of Gettysburg in the stifling heat of July. ’63 was quite a ride for me, but needless to say, I’m ready to take on ’64. As we enter this fourth year of the American Civil War’s sesquicentennial commemoration, we arrive upon the latter years of the war. In these tumultuous months comprising 1864 and 1865, we will come upon some of the most horrific and fatal battles ever to be seen on the American continent. This year will take me from the siege lines around a plantation called Bermuda Hundred, to a muddy field at New Market, Virginia, to a dark and deadly forest ominously named The Wilderness, to the trenches surrounding the city of Petersburg, Virginia. This year is bound to provide some memorable experiences for me as I furthermore embark on this crusade to see through the eyes of my forefathers.

In prior posts, I’ve talked about some awesome things in reenacting that are pretty huge: the sun being blotted out of the sky by gunsmoke at Antietam, the huge volleys we poured into the Confederates on Culp’s Hill at Gettysburg, things like that. I won’t deny, big things like that are PRETTY SWEET. But sometimes in reenacting, it’s the little things that happen at events that really make things cool. Sometimes as reenactors, we get what we call “period moments,” where we feel like we’ve left the modern day and have been transported back to the time period. Often times, it’s a little thing that makes you have a moment like that. This is one moment where, even though I wasn’t really having a great time, I seriously had one of those moments.

The occasion occurred over a year and a half ago in March of 2012. About a dozen or so of us were having a training and drill weekend on a friend’s property just outside of Gettysburg, PA. The house and adjoining property had been used as a field hospital by the Confederates during the Battle of Gettysburg and it was well-known the dozens of men had perished of their wounds in and around the house. Though it cannot be said for sure how many, a number of those men still rest on the property in unmarked graves. (I digress, those were just some really cool and moderately creepy details about the place.) I was pretty atrociously sick that weekend. (I came out of that weekend with full-blown bronchitis, pink-eye, and a horrific case of poison ivy. Where the latter two came from, I have no idea.) But despite my sickness, I was happy to be out in the field with the boys. We set up in a patch of thick, marshy woods and began to dig rifle pits. Rifle pits are essentially small fortifications meant to shelter a few men. My best friend Chase and I began digging our own, we dug down about a foot into the ground and piled up tree limbs in front. We stretched our tent over the small trench and laid down pine boughs on the ground for some nice cushioning – we were to sleep in our rifle pits over the chilly March night. We threw down our blankets inside our shelter and made this little ditch in the dirt home. As my illness got worse and I began coughing violently if I so much as spoke, it was agreed by the other fellows that it would be best if I bundled up inside my rifle pit and be excluded from any further work. So, there I lay, inside the tiny shelter of sticks, mud, and canvas, bundled up in a government-issue blanket with a scarf wrapped around my head like a little Russian babushka, all while hacking continuously and shivering like a dog. To put it plainly, I was miserable. But then I thought to myself, “You

A very sick me lounging by the rifle pit.

know, this is what it was like. These guys suffered a hell of a lot worse than this, but this is a taste of what it was really like to be in their position.” In between shuddering coughs, I smiled to myself. As crazy as it sounds, it was pretty cool. (No need to worry about my sanity. Around nightfall, my friends agreed it was best if I slept inside the nice, heated old house instead of out in the rifle pits. So, instead of catching pneumonia or God knows what in the bitter cold, I slept inside the notably haunted old house, nicely knocked out by Nyquil. This was the ONLY time I will admit to copping out on authenticity.)

Post-script – I wrote most of this in a tongue-and-cheek style. Don’t think that I intentionally was like, “Aw, sick, brah! I’m wicked under-the-weather! This is going to be SO authentic!” No, that’s just silly. It was just a horrible misfortune that happened to befall me that I wasn’t really all that pleased about. Safety comes first. 😉

Post-post-script – I just realized that this is the last passion post. Well then, I suppose this will be a one-part series. 🙁 In that case, ta-ta from 1863!

A fight that I’ll hardly ever forget was my venture into the infamous Cornfield at Antietam with the 4th Texas Infantry (yes, I was a Confederate, but only once).

On September 17, 1862, the bloodiest day in American history, Federal troops under

General Joseph Hooker

General George B. McClellan pressed forward in a massive morning attack against General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. The morning attack, led by General Joseph Hooker, slammed into the Confederate left. It was directed across a mile of ground, much of which traversed a cornfield owned by the Miller family along the Hagerstown Turnpike. The attack threw back large amounts of the Confederate left wing… Until the approach of the division of General John Bell Hood, including his mighty Texas Brigade.

General John Bell Hood

Hood’s Texas Brigade was one of the most feared and respected units in the Army of Northern Virginia. Having come a long way from home to fight, the rugged men from Texas were some outlandish fellows, but were seasoned fighters. My place was that of a soldier in one of the regiments of the Texas Brigade, the 4th Texas Infantry. When they entered the fight that morning, they’d come straight up from their camp, having not eaten in two days and being forced to miss breakfast that morning. When we were called into the attack to repulse Hooker’s Federals, I too had had no breakfast. Though my hunger was not quite as fierce as that of Hood’s

original boys, I was a hungry man, and was none too pleased about being thrown into the fight without some food in my belly. We were called quickly to attention, formed a column in the woods we were stationed in, and marched out toward the sound of the fighting. The roar of battle was thunderous, and I must confess, I’ve never heard such noise. It was about 7:00 AM, and the sun was up, but I was stunned at the fact that we could not see it; the sun was literally blotted out, completely blocked from our vision by gunsmoke. I’d heard of such things happening during the real war, but I’d never seen it.

We were marched out into a wide open pasture, surrounded in the thick smoke by other regiments and brigades of men. We heard the incredible firing of musketry in the cornfield, and above it all we heard the monumental crash of artillery blazing away across the field. As we waited to deploy into the field, from our ranks emerged one man – a man holding a fiddle. This man began pacing up and down the line, sawing away at the fiddle with a beautifully and hauntingly lively spirit. The whole regiment began cheering and screaming the hellacious rebel yell, and all as one, our voices lifted to the air. The command was given, and into the deep and hazy cornfield we went.

The Charge of the Texas Brigade into the Cornfield

As we made our way through the corn, I tried to see ahead, but I could see nothing through the stalks of green and the smoke of steel gray. Then we came upon them: bodies, dead and wounded, from the fighting that had preceded us here. Blue and gray were intermingled. I saw some faces I knew. At this point, I forgot I was a reenactor. This was no reenactment. I was there. I could tell by the faces of the men around me that they all were thinking the exact same thing. Their expressions were somewhere between horror and awe. Some men had tears running from their eyes.

Suddenly a volley ripped into us from ahead. We’d finally encountered the enemy. We couldn’t see them, but we knew they were there, thousands of them. Through the smoke, we could see the flashes of their gunfire and hear the shouts of their commanders. We traded volleys for minutes that seemed like hours. I couldn’t tell how much damage we were inflicting, only that we were losing men by the dozens. The fire grew and grew, and we were forced to retreat through the remnants of the trampled corn to the pastures beyond.

Some amazing views from the fighting that morning in the infamous Cornfield

The mighty Texas Brigade in the Cornfield at Antietam

One of the most intense fights I’ve yet been in was this past summer during the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. On the night of July 2nd, 1863, Confederate troops under the command of Lt. Gen. Richard S. Ewell launched a horrific and bloody assault at twilight upon Federal positions on Culp’s Hill, a high and wooded rise crucial to the Federal defensive position at Gettysburg. I was a Federal soldier with the 150th New York Volunteers of Lockwood’s Brigade, XII Corps, Army of the Potomac. My brigade was in position upon the hill behind a barricade of logs, rocks, and tree limbs. The rebels launched attack after attack against us in some of the most heated and harshest battles I’ve ever seen. I’ll let you see for yourself:

Video credit – Andrew Prasse/HistoricSandusky – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD6mbdrpl6w

From the way I’ve been talking in my posts, it probably sounds like reenactors basically just reenact for their own enjoyment and experience. Sometimes this is true, but the larger part of the time, we reenact for the education of others. In fact, the sort of events that are strictly just for us – called EBUFUs (Events By Us For Us) – are rather uncommon. Almost always, our efforts are for the public. Whether the event we do is big or small, people almost always come to watch.

The 15th Iowa, a full 400-man regiment, at the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Shiloh last April.                 *I do not own this photo, please do not redistribute.*

For the larger ones, there is often a large, overarching organization that plans and markets the event to the public. For instance, this past summer, I did an event for the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. This event was organized and conducted by an organization called the Blue-Gray Alliance. Thanks to the BGA’s marketing, literally tens of thousands of people came to watch the reenactment. The BGA helped to coordinate several interpretive talks and demonstrations by us reenactors for the public on how battles were conducted, what certain branches of the military did at that time, and overall what the life of a soldier was like.

Some fellas and I at a small event near Lancaster to promote awareness of local history and bring in funds for historical preservation. I’m standing, third from the right.

For smaller events, we often do them as volunteer time and donated work for small local organizations. Such smaller events, due to less reenactors being involved, may not have a battle portion to it, so they are then called living histories. In living histories, people can come walk right through the camp and ask any of us any sort of questions they may have. We may perform weapons demonstrations, drill demonstrations, or even offer samples of period food. Small events like these have been done in small towns for annual festivals, for school education days, to benefit charities, or even on battlefields administered by the National Park Service in order to educate visitors.

I prefer to do living histories. Big battles are cool and all, but burning all that gunpowder takes a toll on my wallet. Plus, I just love teaching people one on one. Few things make me happier than talking face-to-face with an old gent I’ve never met before about the causes of the war, or answering the questions of a little boy about what it’s like to camp out in the rain and live like a soldier. In addition to that, nothing makes me feel as good as when the parents of said little boy sincerely thank me for what we reenactors do and for helping to educate people like this. I bow my head a little, smile, and I say to them, “It’s truly my pleasure, folks.”