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Current events are so depressing. We've reached a point in monument removal and institution bashing, some of it understandable, some of it fed by ignorance, where reenacting and living history are being called into question. I can't write about hobnails or johnnycakes or "Present ARMS" while this is going on.
So what's a Confederate Civil War reenactor to do?** Hang the musket over the fireplace and pack it all in?** Get all bristly when people ask you if you're a white supremacist? I suspect a lot of Confederate reenactors are missing some events this year, judging from some of the turnout I've seen. I mean, when's the last time Union forces outnumbered Confederates at New Market, which is usually a Rebfest? It happened this year.
We need to think this all through and have cogent, simply expressed concepts for those occasions when we are questioned or, worse, accused.
Let's see if we can agree on some starting points. I might add I've had a head start on this, because when I moved from New Jersey to South Carolina to take a job, I also took up Confederate reenacting, and I had to think some of this out to calm down my employer.** That may or may not have been a success -- if that was an unstated reason behind the falling out we had, it remains unstated to this day -- but I did have to do some thinking.** And I learned an awful lot about the South from my experience.**(I do Union now that I'm in Pennsylvania, but still retain Confederate gear for the occasional classroom presentation.)
First lesson:** They're all dead.** All the people who believed whatever they believed to make that war inevitable are all dead. Sometimes visitors to your campsite need to be reminded that yes, the fire is real, but "we" are "not."
Second: Our goal as reenactors and living historians is understanding. We understand in order to better explain, or to satisfy our own thirst for knowledge.** Our learning method is immersion in the historical context, as best we can re-create it.** We teach the same way, through what amounts to a grown-up version of show-and-tell.
We do not have to believe what they believed in order to either understand them or explain them, but it is important to both understand and explain if we are to reap the lessons they learned without shedding the blood.
Third:** Our values as 21st Century human beings have no bearing on our involvement in historical mimicry, other than the obvious one that as modern people we are very interested in history.
Fourth: A key point is that while politicians and leaders clearly had reasons for secession and war that are not acceptable today ¹, the "regular folks" we tend to represent may or may not have shared those reasons for picking sides and joining up to fight. That's your escape valve, to keep from making it too personal.
Some of our ancestors, we know, were coerced into joining by peer pressure; others were clearly mislead by myths spread by agitators. (Remember weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Same thing. And we're still hearing from those who maintain there were such WMD, just as we still hear from people who believe states seceded because the Northern mudsills were planning a violent invasion of the South all along.)
Fifth: Those of us who have an additional motive of "honoring" an ancestor who fought on one side or the other also have an additional burden, because unless you own a letter or diary from that man spelling out what his motivation was, you really have no damn idea why your ancestor went to war and no business, if you are truly respectful, of putting words in his mouth.
Most of us do not have firsthand knowledge.** We may have family stories, but rarely words from the soldier's own hand. But we can't gild the lily and paint 21st Century values on our ancestors to clean them up for modern palatability. That goes for both sides.** Not every Confederate soldier's family owned slaves, but not everyone called "abolitionist" today believed black people were the equal of whites. Some wanted slavery abolished so there would be no excuse for having black people around.**² The sad truth is most people in 1860 believed in the superiority of the white race, even those who believed in legal equality of races and equal protection under the law.** So it's not a question of the pot not calling the kettle black; it's the far more interesting and complicated reality that not everyone was either a pot or a kettle, and they came in all shades of grey. As we do today.
Notice that I haven't suggested exactly what you should say to visitors to your living history or colleagues who ask you if you are going to keep on reenacting.** That's up to you. I've merely tried to give you starting points.
12-star flag of the Sixth South Carolina Infantry, issued October, 1861.
I will tell you this: Don't hide your flags at events.The battle flag itself is a great place to start a conversation about how the regiments in the Confederate army took on a life of themselves. Its use as a tool for maneuver, as the rallying point when things went wrong, the battle honors proudly attached, the blood stains - that all resonates with people, and gives you a starting point for explaining how the valor of the men who fought under the flag became a transferrable and valuable legitimizing commodity for the white supremacists who hijacked it for the KKK in the 20th Century. Not the 19th Century - the original postwar Klan did not use the battle flag.
You will not change anyone's mind about what the right thing to do might be. You will give them understanding of why emotions can run so high. Just don't use that tripe now circulating as an Internet meme that connects the battle flag with Christianity, St. George, the Last Supper and, I think, Andy of Mayberry They needed a flag with a diagonal graphic to distinguish it from the Stars and Stripes, period. That's interesting all by itself. Again, don't gild it, let it speak for itself.
A final note: I'm sometimes accused of being too optimistic about humanity and a bit of a Pollyanna. I recently noted I hadn't met many reenactors who were white supremacists, and was told by several people I hadn't been paying attention. Well, yes I was, for 27 years, because it was important to me. Perhaps I had a lucky selection of units, especially when I was in South Carolina and North Carolina, but I heard no racist comments around the campfire, even when they finally forgot (they all eventually did) that I was not only a damn Yankee but some kind of liberal pollywog to boot. That's Sixth South Carolina, Eighth South Carolina, 13th South Carolina, 38th Georgia, Salt River Rifles, 30th North Carolina, 21st North Carolina, 26th North Carolina -- the Palmetto Battalion and the Fourth Battalion ANV and Stepp's Legion. I found fellows, instead, who went to great lengths sometimes to separate themselves from white supremacist stereotypes, including welcoming the occasional black man into the Confederate ranks not to prove that there were black fighting men in the war, but that they are above issues of race now. Your mileage may vary. I know what mine was.
I hope I'm in a better mood next week and can write about something not so fraught with emotional land mines. You know, whether they ever wore their forage caps backward and what the term "barefoot" really meant. We'll see.
¹ We know their reasons because, unlike our own Uncle Bill, they wrote them down. That's a link. If you have not read those declarations of secession until now, you really, really, really should read them so you are, in these troubling times, fully informed. It's all there: the belief they were suddenly politically impotent, the belief in white supremacy, the desire to protect and expand slavery. Just remember, they're all dead and they are NOT YOU!
² American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Color of the United States
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