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Carolina Confederate re-enactors march into history
News-Post Staff ^ | 13 September 2002 | Eric Slagle

Posted on 09/13/2002 10:27:20 AM PDT by stainlessbanner

 

Staff photo by Doug Koontz

Civil War re-enactors from North Carolina prepare to march through the streets of Boonsboro on Thursday morning on a two-day march over South Mountain to raise money for a Civil War monument.

   

BOONSBORO — Roughly 30 men carrying rifles, wearing slouch hats and dressed in Confederate uniforms marched out of the American Legion parking lot Thursday, heading for Fox's Gap.

The scuffed leather boots of the 13th North Carolina Civil War Re-enacting Regiment, and those of a few local recruits, were about to travel the path that Brig. Gen. Samuel Garland's men followed to their battle at South Mountain on Sept. 14, 1863.

"A lot of history is not correct," says the 13th's Rex Hovey, whose great grandfathers fought on both sides of the War Between the States.

Proudly carrying a recent letter from Sen. Jesse Helms encouraging them to never forget where they came from, Mr. Hovey said that too many revisionist histories are obscuring the facts. "We're trying to present the soldier as he was, without all the politics. Did you know these men crossed this mountain four times?"

South Mountain was one of the hardest marches in the war, said Mr. Hovey, quoting the diary entry of one New York soldier.

Though the 13th may only hit the hill twice during their engagement this week — six miles up one side, seven down the other — it is not their first time at South Mountain. Their objective hasn't changed since the first visit in 1997: Raise money to pay for a North Carolina battlefield monument.

Paul Luzier, of Charlotte, N.C., said that camping on the battlefield would be an emotional experience.

"Last time we had a small ceremony, Taps, and a prayer," he said. "It's a different feeling being in uniform than without. You can't stop feeling a sense of connection."

Dave Radden, of Poolesville, was a late recruit to this year's march, offering his rumpled application to "Captain" Luzier minutes before the troops were to leave.

As Mr. Radden and his friend, U.S Army Maj. Dave King of Bethesda, made last-minute adjustments to their gear, they recounted other Civil War related exploits.

"Last weekend we went up to Yarrowsburg and found an old wagon trail that's not on any map," said Maj. King, pointing at a topographic map. He said his family was from the Burkittsville area.

Maj. King is lucky to be on the march this September. Last year he was nearly killed in the attack on the Pentagon. Under his Confederate uniform, his arms still bear evidence of his injuries. "I took the bandages off for the march. All they are going to do is keep scarring down."

Maj. King said the recent anniversary of the attack wouldn't much affect the way he experienced the march.

"I went back to work at the Pentagon," he said. "I'm thinking about it every day."

For others on the march, thoughts about the disaster still loomed large.

Randall Andrese, an electrician from Emerson, NJ., said his wife worried about him making the trip so close to the anniversary. He said his mission today would be "to do his unit proud" and to return safely.

Mr. Andrese had no objections to donning a Confederate uniform. Likewise, Maj. King said he's worn the Federal Army uniform in re-enactments to help balance the sides.

Though Mr. Radden winced at the idea of wearing a blue Union uniform, he didn't object to carrying a Yankee firearm.

He defended the fact he carries a Union army Springfield rifle instead of the Confederate-issue Enfield. He said it was historically accurate because many rebels carried captured guns.

The re-enactors all aim for historical accuracy and they are quick to confess when realism goes astray.

George Hatcher, of Fayetteville, N.C., pointed out that his regiment, the 51st, didn't actually fight at South Mountain. He was in town for the re-enactment this weekend of the Battle of Sharpsburg, or what Yankees call the Battle of Antietam.

Mr. Luzier noted that real troops camped at Turner's Gap, then fought at Fox's Gap in the morning.

He also said that though his regiment would carry vegetable provisions in their packs, there was a ham awaiting them for dinner.

One soldier whispered that he'd stashed a bottle of Rebel Yell somewhere in the hills.

Color Sgt. Stephen Howerton, of Charlotte, N.C., said that though the regiment's banner was made and painted with hand-made materials, he was designing one that would be much more accurate.

And though they were about to march into what was a grueling experience for the Confederates, the camaraderie between these re-enactor soldiers is apparent.

"We like to have a lot of fun. Can you tell that?" said Mr. Radden.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; US: North Carolina
KEYWORDS: confederateheritage; dixie; dixielist; gray; honor; northcarolina; rebs; reenactors; soldiers
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1 posted on 09/13/2002 10:27:20 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
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To: STONEWALLS; strela; Maelstrom; proudofthesouth; timberwolf630; Bandolier; shuckmaster; ...
Carolina Bump - Go Boys, Go!

FReepmail to get on/off the list.

2 posted on 09/13/2002 10:28:16 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
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To: stainlessbanner
Kudos to them.
3 posted on 09/13/2002 10:49:39 AM PDT by 4CJ
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To: stainlessbanner
BTTT!
4 posted on 09/13/2002 11:06:31 AM PDT by sheltonmac
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To: stainlessbanner
......here's to the Tar Heels from the "old North State"....go get 'em boys!....

...I'm not going over to the battle field this weekend...Sharpsburg is to this day a tiny village and it will be packed to the gills for the 140th commerative....I'll slip over next week when things die down.....and BTW the National Park Service has done a wonderful job in securing easements to halt encroachment....the sweep of the battlefield is the same now as then; so the visitor can get a real feel for the way the ground lies....one of the NPS guides told me that Sharpsburg and Shiloh are the two jewels in the crown of the Civil War battlefields...they're the last two to remain relatively untouched....you don't want to know what's going on over in Virginia....it's that bad.
Good luck to everybody!
Stonewalls
5 posted on 09/13/2002 3:03:02 PM PDT by STONEWALLS
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To: STONEWALLS
I visited Antietam/Sharpsburg and Gettysburg in 1993; it was part of a memorable summer. Hot, too, just like the summer of 1863, which was a real rose-wilter.

Then the next week I flew out to Burbank, rented a Mustang GT ragtop from an outfit in Beverly Hills, and drove the California coast road from Morro Rock to Crescent City. It was a "great year"!

The National Park Service deserves a lot of praise for what they've done on a shoestring with those great military parks. I've also visited Shiloh, Pea Ridge, the Crater, Chancellorsville/The Wilderness, Fort Oglethorpe, Lookout Mountain, Vicksburg, Chickamauga, and Manassas/Bull Run. Franklin, Nashville, Perryville, Glorieta, Missionary Ridge, Spottsylvania, Fredericksburg, Malvern Hill, Corinth, and the Peninsular Campaign and Shenandoah Valley battlefields are on my list -- as is Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas, where Dr. Mudd was imprisoned.

6 posted on 09/13/2002 7:34:41 PM PDT by lentulusgracchus
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To: lentulusgracchus
"The National Park Service deserves a lot of praise for what they've done on a shoestring with those great military parks"......

yes, they have....several years ago when Congress couldn't agree on the budget there was fear that Sharpsburg would be shut down...it was considered an "under-utilized" property...thankfully, this didn't happen...

things in Virginia are deteriorating rapidly....land abutting some of the battlefields has appreciated so much that owners are tempted to sell to the highest bidder....Disney was planning to put a new Disneyland next to Manassas a couple years ago...they had anonomously cobbled together several tracts of land thru a third party broker...when word leaked out there was enough public outcry to kill the project...but is was a very near thing....this kind of stuff is going to keep on happening....Gettysburg is under attack now, so is Frerdericksburg.......so much is disappearing that it's sad..

.....when I went to college in Atlanta in the early 60s it was still possible to see the outlines of old overgrown trenchworks running thru the woods.....today, I wonder how many Atlantans would even know that a great battle was once fought there....

.....there's a new emphasis in the Parks now too....Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr sits on the appropriation committee and is starting to mandate that the guides emphasize slavery...if he had his way the battlefields would be little more than indoctrination centers with a "hate Whitey" agenda... ......IMHO you're smart to have seen all the Parks you have....I'm afraid that in the future they just won't be same...it's hard to envision a battle when there's a Wal-Mart across the street...

Good luck to everybody.... Stonewalls

7 posted on 09/13/2002 9:13:12 PM PDT by STONEWALLS
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To: stainlessbanner
One soldier whispered that he'd stashed a bottle of Rebel Yell somewhere in the hills.

Now that's not accurate at all. Maybe he should have stashed a bottle of corn squeezings.

8 posted on 09/14/2002 5:01:07 AM PDT by aomagrat
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To: stainlessbanner
I was in Charleston, SC yesterday at the Market Place. I saw a procession of era-dressed men in horse and mule drawn wagons go by. Now I know what it was all about.

God bless those brave men who fought for their homes & families.

9 posted on 09/14/2002 5:23:15 AM PDT by RightWinger
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To: STONEWALLS
Yup, it's a problem around here. Atlanta has grown so much (since about the 1890s) that most of the battlefields hereabouts have simply been submerged. The entire action east of Atlanta (out Decatur way) where one of my cousins was killed and my gg grandfather wounded, has been submerged under a 1910-1920 subdivision. Nobody can even locate the exact site any more, even the graves are gone. They tried to move most of the dead from that action in to Oakland Cemetery some time in the teens or twenties, but the interments were hasty in the first place, they're all unidentified, and I'm sure they missed a few. There was a bit of a stir awhile ago when a contractor turned up some bones, it was at first thought to be a contemporary murder (at the time it was a bad neighborhood, although it is now pretty much regentrified) until the Medical Examiner had a look-see.

I live along Johnston's River Line on the Chattahoochee. I know where most of the old fortifications are located, mostly on private property in people's back yards, etc. But they are disappearing slowly but surely. When we were buying a house we looked at one that had a beautifully preserved trench section, including a gun emplacement, in the side yard. (The house, however, was impossible.) I walked the dog over there a couple of months ago and discovered that the yahoos who DID buy the house added on a garage and simply tanked right over the trench. Must be Yankees. ;-)

But the Kennesaw Mountain Battlefield Park has preserved a good sized chunk of land (my OTHER gg grandfather fought in that one). It is still in pretty authentic and well-kept shape. They allow horses on trails within the park, and I ride over there pretty regularly. Beautiful land, alternating woods and sweeps of open pasture.

10 posted on 09/14/2002 5:31:50 AM PDT by AnAmericanMother
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To: AnAmericanMother
....thanks for the update AnAmericanMother...it's heartening to know there's still some "real Atlantans" left in Atlanta..
Good luck to everybody!!
Stonewalls
11 posted on 09/14/2002 6:15:49 AM PDT by STONEWALLS
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To: STONEWALLS
Well, actually, at the time my ancestors were fighting here, none of my father's family lived here. The first person to get here was my maternal grandfather in 1914. Mom's family are all from Augusta, none of them fought in the war as one branch were immigrating from Scotland just as the war began, and the others were either too young or too old, or dead. Lots of typhoid and TB in Augusta. I can understand the typhoid, but can't figure out the TB unless it was the urban close quarters.

Dad's family all lived in Alabama, some in Cherokee and some in Russell and Barbour Counties. One branch of the family did live just over the Georgia line in Coosa, west of Rome, GA, and one of my 3X great grandfathers lived briefly in Atlanta in a boardinghouse in the 1850s. But at that time the city was little more than a railhead and a cluster of houses. I think the state capital was in Milledgeville at the time. Some people think it ought to have stayed there (sorry, inside joke, Milledgeville is also the long-time site of the State Hospital for the Insane).

When Atlanta finally began to grow, it was the time of Henry Grady and Joel Hurt Jr. "booming" the "New South" and encouraging development. So relics of the war were the last thing on anybody's mind. I think that was a shame, but I am historically inclined and do not care for the Atlanta attitude of "wreck out the old." The city really has carried it too far -- old time Atlantans tend to give directions in terms of where things "used to be" - "go up Peachtree and turn where the Sears used to be" - "go out Ponce de Leon to where the old ballpark used to be" - and of course nobody knows what on earth they are talking about (my grandfather used to take me to Ponce de Leon ballpark to watch the Crackers play. Backward, turn backward, o Time in thy flight!)

12 posted on 09/14/2002 7:42:15 AM PDT by AnAmericanMother
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To: stainlessbanner
North Carolina is rich in Civil War history. One of the most interesting Civil War era sites is the National Cemetary in Salisbury. There are 11,700 Union soldiers buried in long trenches. Their deaths were the result of being held at a nearby prison camp. One third of the inmates at the prison camp died, mostly the result of malnutrition and disease, ranking it with Andersonville as one of the deadliest. There are more unkown dead there than any other National Cemetary.
13 posted on 09/14/2002 8:18:34 AM PDT by socal_parrot
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To: AnAmericanMother
" I can understand the typhoid, but can't figure out the TB unless it was the urban close quarters."...maybe from all the mill workers being cramped together?...mill owners weren't exactly known for providing commodious housing...

..."I think the state capital was in Milledgeville at the time".....yes, I believe that's true...also it's believed that Georgia supplied some of the best equipped troops to the CSA...in 1861 it had a good transportation, industrial and agricultural base...which is one reason Sherman raised so much hell there...Georgia could have gotten back on their feet a lot quicker if could have sold all their cotton that was bottled up by the Union blockade...it was all siezed by the Union and sold at a handsome profit..."war reparations" don'tcha know!

"go out Ponce de Leon to where the old ballpark used to be" - and of course nobody knows what on earth they are talking about (my grandfather used to take me to Ponce de Leon ballpark to watch the Crackers play.".....Whooeee!...you're really taking me back here....I remember that old ball park ...the Crackers used to play their dreaded rivals the New Orleans Pelicans there...I also remember the old Sears too...I was sworn into the Army at the induction center next door to it*....(see below)

...always nice reminiscing with a southern lady from Atlanta....you sound just like my late aunt...she was an Atlantan from the old school too....in '39 she went down to the Fox Theatre and stood on the curb to watch the movie stars arrive for the premier of GWTW....actually SAW Gable and Lombard.....what a thrill!....she lived to be an old lady, but she never forgot that night...

*when they gave us our physical exam some guys tried to get disqualified; said they had an "old football" injury or some such...I'm standing next to a big ol' tall skinny poor boy from way up in the mountains of N.Georgia.....the doctor gets to him and says "what's that on your arm?"...(he had an infected boil the color and size of a plum)...the mountain boy says "aww hell, that's just a 'risin'....I'm ready to fight for my country"...I thought to myself "yeah, I know that kid alright...he's the same tough Georgia kid that lived on cornpone and collards and fought to the bitter end 100 years earlier.."

..I better go do some Saturday chores now.....good luck to everybody!!....Stonewalls

14 posted on 09/14/2002 9:32:50 AM PDT by STONEWALLS
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To: stainlessbanner
i was at Sharpsburg RE-Enactment this weekend, recruiting for the SCV and we got another 50 or so new members for the organization.

100 men a WEEK are joining the SCV here in VA, mostly because of the NEW SCV license plates.

our lads looked good-got misty-eyed numerous times over the weekend, especially when the gentleman portraying GEN Lee saluted ME!

free dixie,sw

15 posted on 09/16/2002 8:34:59 AM PDT by stand watie
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To: stand watie
Fantastic! That is great news from the front-line.
16 posted on 09/16/2002 9:12:38 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
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To: stainlessbanner
We saw them. While this was going on, my Army Guard unit was doing a 30-mile ruck march up the Appalachian Trail from Harpers Ferry, past Fox and Turner's Gap. (strolling along the ridges, listening to the cannon, pretending my feet aren't screaming...)
17 posted on 09/16/2002 9:24:55 AM PDT by AbnSarge
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To: socal_parrot
WRONG ANSWER, unless you don't consider Arlington National Cemetery a national cemetary.

free dixie,sw

18 posted on 09/16/2002 9:35:48 AM PDT by stand watie
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To: stainlessbanner
certainly was!

"GEN Lee" rode up on his horse, with 2 aides de camp, saluted me and said "you Sons of Confederate Veterans make these old bones proud." (he looks like REL, BTW). EVERYBODY stood and CHEERED him!

the re-enactment was GRAND!

free the southland,sw

19 posted on 09/16/2002 9:39:45 AM PDT by stand watie
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To: stand watie
I don't make this stuff up.

In the book Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz he recounts his visit to the National Cemetery at Salisbury, NC-

The log for Union soldiers wasn't long. "Most of the corpses were stripped of their clothes, tossed on dead-wagons and dumped in those trenches," Stice said, "so we don't know a whole lot of the names." Salisbury's tiny graveyard held more unknown dead than any other National Cemetery in America.

From a Website which tells the history of the 128 NYS Volunteers.

William, his fellow townsmen Potter Burton, James Norton and George Tipple, and nearly four thousand other Union soldiers were buried en masse in Salisbury's 18 long trenches- the largest group of unknown soldiers in American history.

20 posted on 09/16/2002 11:07:26 AM PDT by socal_parrot
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