originally published in Coastal Isles magazine, May 2013
Falling In With the Times
Reenacting the Civil War’s Battle of Charleston
I was hunkered down in a trench on John’s Island, under orders to ready my musket—to bite the top off of a hand-rolled paper cartridge, to pour the gunpowder down the muzzle, to cock and load the firing cap—when I saw the first line of blue-clad Union soldiers appear out of the misty woods like figures in a dream.
A cold, steady rain fell over everything—over my felt hat, over my gray wool coat, over my brogans and my Confederate belt buckle, over my canteen and my bayonet and my cartridge box and my haversack with its meager provisions, over the fellow soldiers hunkered down beside me and the commanding officers wielding their swords and shouting their orders: “Ready! Aim! Fire at will! ”
The reports of so much gunfire crackled throughout the pine woods, and someone let out a Rebel yell just as a cavalry unit flew by on horseback, weaving between the rain-slick trees and firing long-barreled pistols and short-barreled shotguns. One boy, probably not fifteen years old, carried a large Confederate flag with something exactly like pride. Officers huddled, conferred strategy, broke huddle, then yelled “Fall Back! Fall back!” as the Union boys advanced steadily upon us.
For a moment it was hard, nearly impossible, to remember that this was a great big game of make-believe. That I had left for war, two days earlier, in a Ford Explorer, barreling down Highway 17 at 70 miles per hour, having spent all week checking my email and my text messages and my social media feeds every five seconds on my smart phone. That no one would get killed, and that we would all return home soon to our friends and our families and our comfortable modern lives.
For a moment this was the nearly-mystical feeling that re-enactors like to call “seeing the elephant.”
“I first saw the elephant at Gettysburg in 1976,” said Major Buddy Jarrells, the Battle of Charleston’s coordinator, and an officer willing to let me imbed myself in his infantry unit, the 7th South Carolina, as a period reporter for the three-day event on the Legare Farms in John’s Island. “It’s hard to explain, but you’ll know it when you see it. You actually think you’re back in time. It feels real, but it never lasts long.”
And, indeed, I saw it and felt it, if only for a few seconds in those rainy woods during the tactical battle—a “period rush” that all the history books in the world cannot evoke or replicate, a sensation that may be the main reason why re-enacting (whether it be Viking, Renaissance, Revolutionary War, Civil War, or even World War I, II, and Vietnam War reenacting) is one of the most popular hobbies in America.
~
But this is not to say that “seeing the elephant” is the only reason people spend their weekends sleeping in canvas tents, wearing period dress, drinking coffee brewed in cast-iron kettles over open fires, eating hard tack, rolling gunpowder cartridges, debating 19th century politics.
The reasons people come to reenacting, in fact, are about as diverse and innumerable as the re-enactors themselves. Especially reenacting the Civil War, with all its complex social and cultural legacies.
Most will tell you that they come to it through family history, a connection to their relatives who fought in the war. And this makes for an interesting generational kinship, with constant references to a faceless but very much present “they”—the soldiers and civilians of the Civil War period—as when, sitting around a campfire, someone will say, “They would have eaten salt pork and been swatting away flies all day.” Or, “They would have been bitching about the rain and the cold just like we are.”
I, for one, was attracted to the Battle of Charleston because I knew that my great-great-great uncle, Simeon Tootle, had fought and died on nearby James Island with the 47th Georgia, a unit nicknamed the “Tattnall Invincibles,” and I was eager to meet anyone in their present-day incarnation. Like many Civil War reenactments, this one does not take place at the exact spot that an actual battle occurred—a near-impossibility with modern development—but is meant to commemorate all of the skirmishes and battles that took place in or around Charleston, especially the Battle of Burden’s Causeway in 1864—a three-day battle fought in five locations.
This doesn’t mean, however, that the 300-acred Legare Farms, which is on the banks of the Stono River and which has been in the Legare family since 1725, doesn’t possess its own sliver of Civil War history. Two Union soldiers are buried there, and it is highly likely some sort of skirmish or encampment took place on the farm.
~
I linked up with the 7th South Carolina, enlisting as a reenacting soldier-reporter from the Post and Courier, and one of the first things I discovered was that there are many men who come into reenacting through the real military. When I first arrived in camp, I was issued my loaner gear by James Daves, a “regular-old mud-raking private” in the 7th South Carolina but a former 2nd Staff Sergeant in the US Army, a North Carolinian with Confederate ancestors and a wit as quick as the machine guns he fired in Iraq.
It did seem ironic—here was a man who had battled insurgents with real weapons and real intentions to kill, and a man who was openly battling Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, taking orders from a major with no real military experience. But contradictions naturally abound at reenactments—majors talking on cell phones in the hours before battle, sergeants drinking Dr. Peppers and smoking Camels during drills, privates warming themselves with propane heaters in their tents at night.
“People wonder how I can come out here and be around all these guns and stuff, but for me it helps,” James Daves said about re-enacting with PTSD. “I know, at the end of the day, it’s not real.”
Still, there are those who come to it in a quest for authenticity, who wince at any modern intrusions. They are the hardcores, and they don’t always take too kindly to Farbs. For just as all hobbies have derogatory terms for uninitiated newbies—surfers call them “kooks,” sailors call them “greenhorns,” athletes call them “rookies”— re-enactors are no different. They call them “Farbs.”
Much, of course, has been made of this in Tony Horwitz’s popular and prize-winning book Confederates in the Attic. The unit that Horwitz fought with, the Southern Guard of Virginia, considered themselves hardcore—a unit, he writes, that “remained vigilant against even accidental Farbiness; it had formed an ‘authentic committee’ to research subjects such as underwear buttons and 1860s dye to make sure that Guardsmen attired themselves exactly as soldiers did.”
The men of the 7th South Carolina were, thankfully, not too hardcore. I appreciated the way that many of them gently helped me “de-Farb”—as when they told me I had my pants on backwards, or guided me to the row of sutler’s tents, where I bought a leather journal and a pencil to take notes with, instead of my Farbish Bic pen and CVS notepad.
But I also liked how they referred to me only as “Reporter,” stuck me in the supply tent to sleep, and asked me, with half-seriousness, if I was a Union spy.
I was also amazed at how much they knew about history. They could sit around the campfire, taking pulls from a Mason jar of Popcorn Sutton’s moonshine, and debate the finer points of Napoleonic battle tactics or Civil War artillery technology.
Indeed, I sensed that there is another, simpler reason that people come to reenacting—they just enjoy sitting around a campfire with likeminded history buffs. And the way they told stories of old reenactments—about the thundering cannons in Hot Springs, or the heavy rains in Atlanta, or the traitor-execution they performed at Congaree Creek—made me envision surviving Civil War soldiers trading real battle stories 150 years ago.
After all, the campfire is the center of camp, the place where men cook stew and bacon, and “horse-trade” for goods (such as guns and gear and even enviable gold pocket-watches, with pictures of sweethearts tucked inside). And the campfire is also the place where a Farb like me can pick up new knowledge; it is where I learned, for example, that blanks can kill you.
Yes, Private Craig Wood, who showed me how to roll blanks and how to shoot the musket, was also the one who told me that, if I weren’t careful, I could die out there.
He loaded the musket and aimed it high above a tidal creek behind our camp,. He yelled “Fire in the Hole!” and pulled the trigger, and the gun produced a flash of light and a loud blast.
“You have to be careful and you have to aim high,” he said. “Especially if you get close.”
Suddenly the one thing that was missing from reenacting, the one thing that, no matter how authentic one got, would distinguish a Civil War soldier any day from a reenactment, the most important thing—the fear of death—was here.
And so it made sense that there was a strong emphasis on obeying the commands of your officers, who ultimately are in charge of safety at a reenactment, even more so than they are in charge of tactical strategy. In fact, when the officers arrived back to camp on Friday night from their officer’s meeting, their main order of business was to make sure nobody was going to double load, or load any paper into, his musket.
There had been a few, recent, minor injuries at reenactments, and it was important nothing like that happened here. So we listened, and despite a few joking asides, we obeyed like good soldiers.
~
Rank, in fact, is a big deal in re-enacting, just as it in the real military, and I sensed that many of the men were ambitious to move up the ranks. Just as in the Civil War, reenacting units like the 7th South Carolina are part of larger regiments and battalions, which are part of larger divisions, such as the 1st Division, or the Army of Northern Virginia. This Division even has a general who apparently looks exactly like Robert E. Lee, and who will play Lee at the Appomattox Court House surrender in two years.
At one point during the weekend I walked over to the Army of Northern Virginia’s tent and talked with the brass. They certainly had the look of officers—hands tucked into the pockets of their frock coats, chests puffed out, measured responses to all my questions. They never seemed to go anywhere without each other, and later that day they strolled through our camp, asking us if we were “liquored up.” It was not too hard to imagine the generals of old strolling the same way through camp, patrolling for any misdeeds.
But their commitment was real.
“I don’t think people always really understand the amount of research and time and effort and money it all takes,” Colonel Troy Fallin told me. “I devote about one hour each day to plan for upcoming events. But ever since I was a little boy I’ve liked Civil War history.”
And this echoed something my own major, Buddy Jarrells, had told me: “All re-enactors are eccentric in their own ways, but they are adamant about their history. I hear a majority of our society, especially young people, say, ‘Who cares about the Civil War?’ Well, it’s about keeping history alive so that we don’t repeat it.”
~
Our unit’s two main officers, besides Major Buddy Jarrells, were Acting First Sergeant Carr “Gobbler” Horrell and Captain Gary Wycoff. They were the ones to lead us through the School of the Soldier—the marching and arms drills—with commands such as “Attention!” “Shoulder…Arms!” and “Company…Halt!” And they were the ones to answer all of the questions from the camera-clutching schoolchildren on Education Day: (“What kind of gun is that?” “How far did they go?” “How many people could a cannon kill?” “Where do you sleep?” “Can you hold your pistol to your chest so I can take a picture?”).
Captain Wycoff, for his part, answered each question with an endearing mix of kindness and intense technicality.
Indeed, what is there to say in so little space about Captain Wycoff? Here’s what he told me about himself: he was trained in Europe as a part of a Foreign Legion; he is veteran of the Bosnian War; he sleeps every night with a .38 under his pillow. Here’s what I saw: wide-eyed and gap-toothed, with a raspy North Carolina accent and an incredibly vast knowledge of artillery and military history, Captain Wycoff speeds through each day with enough crazy energy to power any piece of equipment on the Legare farm.
And, in keeping with the theme of irony and contradiction, Captain Wycoff was also the man who got married in a full period-wedding on Saturday. Because—besides the Gullah reenactments and the hospital reenactments and the musical reenactments and the candle-making, butter-churning, quilt-weaving reenactments—there was, yes, a real wedding.
And I would never have guessed that I would one day find myself in full Confederate uniform, holding up my musket with the other soldiers to form an arch, under which a bride, in a white hoop-skirt wedding dress, would walk towards a pot-bellied Confederate preacher and her groom, the incomparable Captain Gary Wycoff.
But that is part of the strange serendipity that happens at a reenactment. It is the same kind of magic that causes a man like Keith Matthews to “fall in” with our unit.
“Falling in” is a phrase soldiers use to describe the act of linking up with another unit. It is not hard to envision the surviving members, of a company nearly obliterated by battle, having to “fall in” with another company, forming a kind of ragtag bunch. Indeed, during the “late war” (which is the part of the war, 1864, we were reenacting), soldiers engaged in all sorts of extemporaneous behavior—salvaging the uniforms or belt buckles from a dead enemy, foraging for food, stealing livestock, falling in with another unit.
After Keith Matthews fell in with our unit, spending Friday training and marching with us, he sat on a stump beside the campfire and told us where he was from. Keith Matthews, with his missing tooth and his white bushy beard and his eagle-head walking stick, it turns out, was a member of the 47th Georgia. He was, like my ancestors, a “Tattnall Invincible.” I couldn’t believe it.
“Them’s good boys,” he said about the 47th Georgia. “They had their reenactment last weekend in Manassas, Georgia, and I suspect they’re about worn out.”
So I wouldn’t meet all of the “Tattnall Invincibles,” after all. But that was fine. I was a part of the 7th South Carolina now, and I was prepared, upon waking to the bugle playing Reveille at 7 AM on Saturday morning, to fight and die for them.
~
In the middle of the rutted field, among the cow-pies, and with rain-clouds threatening on the horizon, our unit marched to Morning Parade and Arms Inspection. The gleeful jokiness, so pervasive the two days before, began to turn more serious by degrees. Today was a day for war.
As Major Jay Jaines, a female re-enactor who had moved up the ranks, called roll, some of the other officers walked over to our unit and asked us if we were willing to galvanize. The question seemed to punch a few people in the gut.
One of the first things you do at a reenactment is sign-in and indicate whether or not you are willing to galvanize; that is, whether or not you are willing to act as a Union soldier if your company is Confederate, or vice versa. At many reenactments the 7th South Carolina reenacts as the 4th New Hampshire.
It is a touchy subject for some, and there is a natural reluctance. But there is also a sense of duty in it, too.
“My ancestors would roll over in their graves,” James Daves said. “But you have to do it.”
“There’s no shame in going blue to balance the numbers,” Troy Fallin told me. “It gives a good historic perspective.”
For there were, it’s true, more Union soldiers than Confederate soldiers during the war, but there are certainly more Confederate re-enactors than Union re-enactors. And at this year’s Battle of Charleston, the possibility of foul weather had kept many Union regiments from making the long trip.
But, at last, it was not meant to be. A regiment from Florida volunteered to galvanize in our place, since we were the hosting unit, and so at noon we started quietly marching single-file through the misty pine woods on our way to war.
~
We followed an old game-trail along a tidal creek off the Stono River, with the intent being to join forces with another unit near a dirt road. We marched through a pine stand, hunkered down in the trenches, fought the Union boys, and fell back. And then, after more fighting, fell back again. The officers, I could tell, weren’t pleased with the way things were going. The Union seemed more in command.
“Reporter, get over here,” Sergeant Horrell yelled at me, and I took a reluctant, exposed position near a tremendous live oak tree, where I could clearly see the faces of the Union soldiers thirty yards ahead.
One of them took direct aim at me and fired. I stood there stunned, as if hit in the shoulder, wounded and perhaps dying, like my ancestor Simeon Tootle, looking up into treetops as the rain came down and the war continued to rage on.
For one thing was clear to me by then: this war will rage on forever.
Falling In With the Times
Reenacting the Civil War’s Battle of Charleston
I was hunkered down in a trench on John’s Island, under orders to ready my musket—to bite the top off of a hand-rolled paper cartridge, to pour the gunpowder down the muzzle, to cock and load the firing cap—when I saw the first line of blue-clad Union soldiers appear out of the misty woods like figures in a dream.
A cold, steady rain fell over everything—over my felt hat, over my gray wool coat, over my brogans and my Confederate belt buckle, over my canteen and my bayonet and my cartridge box and my haversack with its meager provisions, over the fellow soldiers hunkered down beside me and the commanding officers wielding their swords and shouting their orders: “Ready! Aim! Fire at will! ”
The reports of so much gunfire crackled throughout the pine woods, and someone let out a Rebel yell just as a cavalry unit flew by on horseback, weaving between the rain-slick trees and firing long-barreled pistols and short-barreled shotguns. One boy, probably not fifteen years old, carried a large Confederate flag with something exactly like pride. Officers huddled, conferred strategy, broke huddle, then yelled “Fall Back! Fall back!” as the Union boys advanced steadily upon us.
For a moment it was hard, nearly impossible, to remember that this was a great big game of make-believe. That I had left for war, two days earlier, in a Ford Explorer, barreling down Highway 17 at 70 miles per hour, having spent all week checking my email and my text messages and my social media feeds every five seconds on my smart phone. That no one would get killed, and that we would all return home soon to our friends and our families and our comfortable modern lives.
For a moment this was the nearly-mystical feeling that re-enactors like to call “seeing the elephant.”
“I first saw the elephant at Gettysburg in 1976,” said Major Buddy Jarrells, the Battle of Charleston’s coordinator, and an officer willing to let me imbed myself in his infantry unit, the 7th South Carolina, as a period reporter for the three-day event on the Legare Farms in John’s Island. “It’s hard to explain, but you’ll know it when you see it. You actually think you’re back in time. It feels real, but it never lasts long.”
And, indeed, I saw it and felt it, if only for a few seconds in those rainy woods during the tactical battle—a “period rush” that all the history books in the world cannot evoke or replicate, a sensation that may be the main reason why re-enacting (whether it be Viking, Renaissance, Revolutionary War, Civil War, or even World War I, II, and Vietnam War reenacting) is one of the most popular hobbies in America.
~
But this is not to say that “seeing the elephant” is the only reason people spend their weekends sleeping in canvas tents, wearing period dress, drinking coffee brewed in cast-iron kettles over open fires, eating hard tack, rolling gunpowder cartridges, debating 19th century politics.
The reasons people come to reenacting, in fact, are about as diverse and innumerable as the re-enactors themselves. Especially reenacting the Civil War, with all its complex social and cultural legacies.
Most will tell you that they come to it through family history, a connection to their relatives who fought in the war. And this makes for an interesting generational kinship, with constant references to a faceless but very much present “they”—the soldiers and civilians of the Civil War period—as when, sitting around a campfire, someone will say, “They would have eaten salt pork and been swatting away flies all day.” Or, “They would have been bitching about the rain and the cold just like we are.”
I, for one, was attracted to the Battle of Charleston because I knew that my great-great-great uncle, Simeon Tootle, had fought and died on nearby James Island with the 47th Georgia, a unit nicknamed the “Tattnall Invincibles,” and I was eager to meet anyone in their present-day incarnation. Like many Civil War reenactments, this one does not take place at the exact spot that an actual battle occurred—a near-impossibility with modern development—but is meant to commemorate all of the skirmishes and battles that took place in or around Charleston, especially the Battle of Burden’s Causeway in 1864—a three-day battle fought in five locations.
This doesn’t mean, however, that the 300-acred Legare Farms, which is on the banks of the Stono River and which has been in the Legare family since 1725, doesn’t possess its own sliver of Civil War history. Two Union soldiers are buried there, and it is highly likely some sort of skirmish or encampment took place on the farm.
~
I linked up with the 7th South Carolina, enlisting as a reenacting soldier-reporter from the Post and Courier, and one of the first things I discovered was that there are many men who come into reenacting through the real military. When I first arrived in camp, I was issued my loaner gear by James Daves, a “regular-old mud-raking private” in the 7th South Carolina but a former 2nd Staff Sergeant in the US Army, a North Carolinian with Confederate ancestors and a wit as quick as the machine guns he fired in Iraq.
It did seem ironic—here was a man who had battled insurgents with real weapons and real intentions to kill, and a man who was openly battling Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, taking orders from a major with no real military experience. But contradictions naturally abound at reenactments—majors talking on cell phones in the hours before battle, sergeants drinking Dr. Peppers and smoking Camels during drills, privates warming themselves with propane heaters in their tents at night.
“People wonder how I can come out here and be around all these guns and stuff, but for me it helps,” James Daves said about re-enacting with PTSD. “I know, at the end of the day, it’s not real.”
Still, there are those who come to it in a quest for authenticity, who wince at any modern intrusions. They are the hardcores, and they don’t always take too kindly to Farbs. For just as all hobbies have derogatory terms for uninitiated newbies—surfers call them “kooks,” sailors call them “greenhorns,” athletes call them “rookies”— re-enactors are no different. They call them “Farbs.”
Much, of course, has been made of this in Tony Horwitz’s popular and prize-winning book Confederates in the Attic. The unit that Horwitz fought with, the Southern Guard of Virginia, considered themselves hardcore—a unit, he writes, that “remained vigilant against even accidental Farbiness; it had formed an ‘authentic committee’ to research subjects such as underwear buttons and 1860s dye to make sure that Guardsmen attired themselves exactly as soldiers did.”
The men of the 7th South Carolina were, thankfully, not too hardcore. I appreciated the way that many of them gently helped me “de-Farb”—as when they told me I had my pants on backwards, or guided me to the row of sutler’s tents, where I bought a leather journal and a pencil to take notes with, instead of my Farbish Bic pen and CVS notepad.
But I also liked how they referred to me only as “Reporter,” stuck me in the supply tent to sleep, and asked me, with half-seriousness, if I was a Union spy.
I was also amazed at how much they knew about history. They could sit around the campfire, taking pulls from a Mason jar of Popcorn Sutton’s moonshine, and debate the finer points of Napoleonic battle tactics or Civil War artillery technology.
Indeed, I sensed that there is another, simpler reason that people come to reenacting—they just enjoy sitting around a campfire with likeminded history buffs. And the way they told stories of old reenactments—about the thundering cannons in Hot Springs, or the heavy rains in Atlanta, or the traitor-execution they performed at Congaree Creek—made me envision surviving Civil War soldiers trading real battle stories 150 years ago.
After all, the campfire is the center of camp, the place where men cook stew and bacon, and “horse-trade” for goods (such as guns and gear and even enviable gold pocket-watches, with pictures of sweethearts tucked inside). And the campfire is also the place where a Farb like me can pick up new knowledge; it is where I learned, for example, that blanks can kill you.
Yes, Private Craig Wood, who showed me how to roll blanks and how to shoot the musket, was also the one who told me that, if I weren’t careful, I could die out there.
He loaded the musket and aimed it high above a tidal creek behind our camp,. He yelled “Fire in the Hole!” and pulled the trigger, and the gun produced a flash of light and a loud blast.
“You have to be careful and you have to aim high,” he said. “Especially if you get close.”
Suddenly the one thing that was missing from reenacting, the one thing that, no matter how authentic one got, would distinguish a Civil War soldier any day from a reenactment, the most important thing—the fear of death—was here.
And so it made sense that there was a strong emphasis on obeying the commands of your officers, who ultimately are in charge of safety at a reenactment, even more so than they are in charge of tactical strategy. In fact, when the officers arrived back to camp on Friday night from their officer’s meeting, their main order of business was to make sure nobody was going to double load, or load any paper into, his musket.
There had been a few, recent, minor injuries at reenactments, and it was important nothing like that happened here. So we listened, and despite a few joking asides, we obeyed like good soldiers.
~
Rank, in fact, is a big deal in re-enacting, just as it in the real military, and I sensed that many of the men were ambitious to move up the ranks. Just as in the Civil War, reenacting units like the 7th South Carolina are part of larger regiments and battalions, which are part of larger divisions, such as the 1st Division, or the Army of Northern Virginia. This Division even has a general who apparently looks exactly like Robert E. Lee, and who will play Lee at the Appomattox Court House surrender in two years.
At one point during the weekend I walked over to the Army of Northern Virginia’s tent and talked with the brass. They certainly had the look of officers—hands tucked into the pockets of their frock coats, chests puffed out, measured responses to all my questions. They never seemed to go anywhere without each other, and later that day they strolled through our camp, asking us if we were “liquored up.” It was not too hard to imagine the generals of old strolling the same way through camp, patrolling for any misdeeds.
But their commitment was real.
“I don’t think people always really understand the amount of research and time and effort and money it all takes,” Colonel Troy Fallin told me. “I devote about one hour each day to plan for upcoming events. But ever since I was a little boy I’ve liked Civil War history.”
And this echoed something my own major, Buddy Jarrells, had told me: “All re-enactors are eccentric in their own ways, but they are adamant about their history. I hear a majority of our society, especially young people, say, ‘Who cares about the Civil War?’ Well, it’s about keeping history alive so that we don’t repeat it.”
~
Our unit’s two main officers, besides Major Buddy Jarrells, were Acting First Sergeant Carr “Gobbler” Horrell and Captain Gary Wycoff. They were the ones to lead us through the School of the Soldier—the marching and arms drills—with commands such as “Attention!” “Shoulder…Arms!” and “Company…Halt!” And they were the ones to answer all of the questions from the camera-clutching schoolchildren on Education Day: (“What kind of gun is that?” “How far did they go?” “How many people could a cannon kill?” “Where do you sleep?” “Can you hold your pistol to your chest so I can take a picture?”).
Captain Wycoff, for his part, answered each question with an endearing mix of kindness and intense technicality.
Indeed, what is there to say in so little space about Captain Wycoff? Here’s what he told me about himself: he was trained in Europe as a part of a Foreign Legion; he is veteran of the Bosnian War; he sleeps every night with a .38 under his pillow. Here’s what I saw: wide-eyed and gap-toothed, with a raspy North Carolina accent and an incredibly vast knowledge of artillery and military history, Captain Wycoff speeds through each day with enough crazy energy to power any piece of equipment on the Legare farm.
And, in keeping with the theme of irony and contradiction, Captain Wycoff was also the man who got married in a full period-wedding on Saturday. Because—besides the Gullah reenactments and the hospital reenactments and the musical reenactments and the candle-making, butter-churning, quilt-weaving reenactments—there was, yes, a real wedding.
And I would never have guessed that I would one day find myself in full Confederate uniform, holding up my musket with the other soldiers to form an arch, under which a bride, in a white hoop-skirt wedding dress, would walk towards a pot-bellied Confederate preacher and her groom, the incomparable Captain Gary Wycoff.
But that is part of the strange serendipity that happens at a reenactment. It is the same kind of magic that causes a man like Keith Matthews to “fall in” with our unit.
“Falling in” is a phrase soldiers use to describe the act of linking up with another unit. It is not hard to envision the surviving members, of a company nearly obliterated by battle, having to “fall in” with another company, forming a kind of ragtag bunch. Indeed, during the “late war” (which is the part of the war, 1864, we were reenacting), soldiers engaged in all sorts of extemporaneous behavior—salvaging the uniforms or belt buckles from a dead enemy, foraging for food, stealing livestock, falling in with another unit.
After Keith Matthews fell in with our unit, spending Friday training and marching with us, he sat on a stump beside the campfire and told us where he was from. Keith Matthews, with his missing tooth and his white bushy beard and his eagle-head walking stick, it turns out, was a member of the 47th Georgia. He was, like my ancestors, a “Tattnall Invincible.” I couldn’t believe it.
“Them’s good boys,” he said about the 47th Georgia. “They had their reenactment last weekend in Manassas, Georgia, and I suspect they’re about worn out.”
So I wouldn’t meet all of the “Tattnall Invincibles,” after all. But that was fine. I was a part of the 7th South Carolina now, and I was prepared, upon waking to the bugle playing Reveille at 7 AM on Saturday morning, to fight and die for them.
~
In the middle of the rutted field, among the cow-pies, and with rain-clouds threatening on the horizon, our unit marched to Morning Parade and Arms Inspection. The gleeful jokiness, so pervasive the two days before, began to turn more serious by degrees. Today was a day for war.
As Major Jay Jaines, a female re-enactor who had moved up the ranks, called roll, some of the other officers walked over to our unit and asked us if we were willing to galvanize. The question seemed to punch a few people in the gut.
One of the first things you do at a reenactment is sign-in and indicate whether or not you are willing to galvanize; that is, whether or not you are willing to act as a Union soldier if your company is Confederate, or vice versa. At many reenactments the 7th South Carolina reenacts as the 4th New Hampshire.
It is a touchy subject for some, and there is a natural reluctance. But there is also a sense of duty in it, too.
“My ancestors would roll over in their graves,” James Daves said. “But you have to do it.”
“There’s no shame in going blue to balance the numbers,” Troy Fallin told me. “It gives a good historic perspective.”
For there were, it’s true, more Union soldiers than Confederate soldiers during the war, but there are certainly more Confederate re-enactors than Union re-enactors. And at this year’s Battle of Charleston, the possibility of foul weather had kept many Union regiments from making the long trip.
But, at last, it was not meant to be. A regiment from Florida volunteered to galvanize in our place, since we were the hosting unit, and so at noon we started quietly marching single-file through the misty pine woods on our way to war.
~
We followed an old game-trail along a tidal creek off the Stono River, with the intent being to join forces with another unit near a dirt road. We marched through a pine stand, hunkered down in the trenches, fought the Union boys, and fell back. And then, after more fighting, fell back again. The officers, I could tell, weren’t pleased with the way things were going. The Union seemed more in command.
“Reporter, get over here,” Sergeant Horrell yelled at me, and I took a reluctant, exposed position near a tremendous live oak tree, where I could clearly see the faces of the Union soldiers thirty yards ahead.
One of them took direct aim at me and fired. I stood there stunned, as if hit in the shoulder, wounded and perhaps dying, like my ancestor Simeon Tootle, looking up into treetops as the rain came down and the war continued to rage on.
For one thing was clear to me by then: this war will rage on forever.