At my first reenactment I learned an important lesson - reenactments are not the best places to conduct interviews.  The natural soundtrack of the events with  children running around, horses grazing, cannons firing, whole animals roasting on spits and a cacophony of competing bands and fife and drum corps makes for quite the backdrop, but also competes for the attention of the microphone with the voices of the subjects.   A facet of reenactments that I had not anticipated was the hectic nature of it all – it is not exactly the ideal place to sit down and have a conversation.  Yet, that is what I attempted to do and what I obtained among all the chaos was a sense of direction for future research, as well as a sense that all the books I have been reading tend to leave out important, and fascinating, details of this hobby[1] and subculture. 

 

Just as some of my interview questions were not asked in the language of the subjects, it seems neither was my hypothesis regarding reenactors and performances of martial masculinity. I learned quickly that you need to speak in the language of the subject(s) – not only when conducting the pre-interview or interview, but even before that, such as when forming the project scope and when parsing out nuances of the topic to be researched.  For example, how was I to know that there was not one 150th Anniversary Reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg this summer, but two? Lacking the requisite knowledge that there are two warring factions in the world of Civil War Reenactments, each with their own Generals, Lincolns and soldiers who are fiercely loyal to their chosen reenacting production company, I initially got in contact with the organizers of the “other” reenactment - the one that my chief informants/subjects, the Mifflin Guard and the McNallys, would not be attending.  After much chagrin on the part of Steven McNally, the patriarch of the 20-year “veteran” reenacting family, I contacted the “real” organizers of the “actual” 150th reenactment and secured their blessing to go down to Gettysburg in July, clad as Uriah Painter Hunt, (male) journalist for the Philadelphia Inquirer so that I may be free to move about the battlefield take notes and take pictures and recordings of the action (surreptitiously, so that no one sees such “farby”[2] gear).

 

This episode is indicative of my experiences as an oral historian with the sub-culture and community of reenactors; I have been constantly expecting and preparing for one situation and encountering another.  No matter how much reading I do or reenactors I speak with, I am constantly surprised by what I learn about the reenacting world - and this is the confusing beauty of my project.  When I went to Neshaminy State Park in Pennsylvania in April, I was expecting to meet lots of veteran reenactors (reenactors who are veterans of the US Armed Forces), who would want to sit and tell me their stories; when I asked for introductions to veterans, I was ushered to speak with “veteran reenactors” – reenactors who have been in the hobby for many years.  I also met lawyers, engineers, policemen, retirees, school children, dancers, architects, teachers, prosecutors, construction workers and bankers.  After speaking with dozens of reenactors, portraying soldiers and civilians, I only met one veteran who was not keen on talking about his experiences in the service but did tell me that there was no connection between his service in the Army and his reenacting.[3]  This notion completely shifted the scope of what I had initially set out to do at the reenactment.  The way with which the veteran disregarded any semblance of a connection between his prior service and his current “service” rendered me a bit speechless.  This was the entire premise that I built my further questions upon, how I approached the secondary literature of the hobby and the entire project as I envisioned it.

 

While a bit dismayed that my initial project seemed to be in question, I abandoned many of the questions that I had prepared and sat at the pavilion of the national park and quickly wrote up new, more general, questions to learn what I needed to know in order to be better able to formulate more in-depth interview questions and to re-shape my project to that I was not forcing a theory upon it, but rather was influenced by the hobby in order to theorize about it.  What came of this was the opportunity to investigate male roles and performances unlike I had previously envisioned, as well as the chance to challenge some of the literature upon which I built the structure for my initial hypotheses.

           

Past: Where I was coming from

 “What are these secret attractions of war, the ones that have persisted in the West despite revolutionary changes in the methods of warfare? I believe that they are: the delight in seeing, the delight in comradeship, the delight in destruction” (Gray, 28-29).  I went to the reenactment and into the interviews focused on the last of these three attractions. Very soon into the interviews, however, I was struck that, for the reenactors I spoke with, it is the comradeship that is the most important of the three – but perhaps, depending on whom you speak to, not as important as the history.  I was guilty of harboring some of the misconceptions of the hobby that other members of “the public” (non-reenactors) have about reenactors – and was thankful to be corrected quickly.  Robert Sandusky, who was portraying an enlisted soldier at Neshaminy[4], debunked two of the rumors about reenactors early on in our interview:  “Two things are: people think we are glorifying war and killing people, and the other thing is that they think we do those crazy, farby stupid things…And, you know, you can say that about any hobby.  Why do you chase a little white ball around a mowed lawn?” (Sandusky). 

 

Once we began to discuss the bonding of the men on “the company street” (campsite), I was looking forward to hearing about different notions and performances of masculinity that the men demonstrated and/or witnessed as they spent so much time together in this homosocial space.[5]Yet, instead of confirming hypotheses that I had about the behavior of men in such a space, I learned more about masculine family roles and familial bonding.  I witnessed traditionally feminine behavior on the part of the male reenactors on the company street – waxing poetic about romantic notions of the past, mending clothes while sitting by the fire – and, in my short time with them[6], did not see what I was expecting to: New Warriors high off simulated battle, using the past as a conduit to a more masculine present.

 

Having been steeped in James William Gibson’s notion of New Warriors and Joseph Roach’s theories on performativity, I approached the reenactment with certain conceptions as to why the men were spending their weekends (and money) in such a particular fashion.  In his text, Cities of the Dead, Roach uses the methodologies of performance studies to detail the process by which some memories become “embodied in and through performances” (xi). Memories and histories endure through “genealogies of performance,” according to Roach, which are embodied practices and social networks governed by three processes: the kinesthetic imagination, vortices of behavior and displaced transmission.  For Roach, these processes “document - and suspect - the historical transmission and dissemination of cultural practices through collective representations” (25).   Through performance, then, the past is explored in order to understand the present.  Roach describes performance as “stand[ing] in for an elusive entity that it is not but that it must vainly aspire both to embody and replace” (3).  I suspected that reenactors were seeking to embody the past, perhaps their own family’s past, in order to create a new narrative of service and performance of commemoration.  What I actually witnessed was a group of men who had a good time during the battle, but who were really most excited about “hanging out” with their comrades-in-(reproduction) arms at the campsite, sharing some meat and beers, and getting to sleep outside.[7]

 

Roach describes culture as made up of “the social processes of memory and forgetting” and posits a three-sided relationship of memory, performance and substitution (xi, 2).  Civil War reenacting units are social groups who perform together as effigies of real soldiers, standing in for those who fought 150 years ago while serving, in the minds of spectators and reenactors alike, as the actual soldiers of the war.  The reenactments form “prosthetic memories” for some of the participants, such as Megan McNally, rendering their memories of reenactments and the history of the Civil War as interchangeable. To perform is to reinvent for Roach; through the performances/reenactments, the history of the Civil War is reinvented, despite the fact that most reenactors do not see it that way.  Reenactors strive, to varying degrees, to be “authentic” and to present history “as it happened.”  But unless the reenactor is of the very small minority of “hardcores,” there will always be some level of anachronism and interpretative license in their performance – whether it takes the form of modern foot- or eyewear or if the interpretation is from one General’s journals and not another.

 

Before I sat down with the reenactors of the Mifflin Guard, I envisioned their “weekend warrior” hobby to be one akin to those as described by Gibson in Warrior Dreams.  The new warrior that Gibson defines finds himself in various “improvisational behavioral spaces,” to use Roach’s term, including the paintball field, gun conventions and shooting classes (28-29).  I envisioned many veterans of “real wars” to be reenacting, using this particular improvisational behavioral space to (re)enact their warrior fantasies that perhaps they were unable to during their own war.  Megan McNally’s father, for example, joined the Air Force during Vietnam only to serve the entire time in Colorado – never to be deployed and without getting to fire a single shot.  Is his reenacting, with a cache of three large cannon no less, a way to recoup the warrior experience that he never had the change to enact?  I have an interview set up with Steven McNally during the Gettysburg reenactment and am eager to find out. 

 

The kinesthetic imagination is a part of Roach’s explanation of how memory is practiced and performed that I expected to get to witness first-hand at Neshaminy.  The “resources of memory stored up (but also reinvented)” create the kinesthetic imagination which functions to transmit and transform memory through movement (Roach, 26).  The kinesthetic imagination is interdependent of other events of social memory.  For the purposes of reading a reenactment as performance, the kinesthetic imagination appears as the “deeply ingrained habits” that are reinforced by systems of behavioral memory that are practiced on the parade ground during drill.  Coupled with the fact that there are many aspects of reenacting that are strictly for the reenactors themselves, such as the tactical battle, drill, and special weekend camps devoid of spectators, these performances of movement, simulating a fantasy through a physical performance, transmits a message and a memory to the reenactors that, I posited, connected them to a larger ethos of the Gibson’s new warrior – to a performance that they otherwise would not have had access to. 

 

Present: What I learned at Neshaminy

Instead of witnessing new warriors preparing for battle as if it was the real thing, I found myself surrounded with “history nuts” who were eager to tell me how many “greats” they had in the War and other familial connections to the past and family men who were pleased to have the opportunity to share experiences with their parents, spouses and children.  For the reenactors, family – both past and present – is a crucial part of the reenacting experience and the hobby enables them to become closer to both. 

 

I learned about the Mifflin Guard’s familial ties and other stories in a situation that I was unprepared for – a group interview.  The dynamics of this interview situation were quite unlike the interviews I had experienced before as well as a bit chaotic.  As with any group, the dynamics were particular to who was in the group and also shifted depending on who was listening to the exchange.  The biggest issue with the group interview was that the men kept interrupting or talking over each other; it was a casual atmosphere and as such there was little decorum.  We were all sitting on the ground, lounging after the battle on the company street while dinner cooked over a fire pit and the reenactors cleaned their gear, tooled their belts, and sometimes dozed off in between interjections.  This allowed for a more natural exchange of ideas, much as the reenactors typically do at the end of the day[8], but did not allow me to ask deeper follow-up questions about topics that I was eager to hear more detail about.  The group interview situation made for an excellent pre-interview discussion of sorts, except that I was unable to move from this pre-interview stage to a one-on-one interview with the reenactors due to time constraints.

 

During my interviews, several themes were discussed that both complicate and corroborate current literature on and theories of reenacting and living histories.  I have divided them up into such themes so that the reenactors may have a chance to “speak” to the authors on the various issues. 

 

Why reenact?

“For Civil War reenactors of the 21st century, it can be argued that two pivotal factors encouraged accessibility and the pursuit of self-education.  The first influential arbiter of Civil War popularity was Ken Burns’s [sic] “Civil War” series, which aired on public television in the early 1990’s… The appeal of Burns’s [sic] work lay in his ability to relate the tale of an epic event on an individual level.  Many reenactors portray actual soldiers who fought in the war, and the sentimental appeal of romanticizing and commemorating individual sacrifice is a driving force behind their reenactment.  Burns’s [sic] portrayal spoke to the imagination of the reenactor and potential reenactor for this very reason… Aside from the personalization of war as created by Burns, there is a greater  accessibility to Civil War and Civil War reenactment information through the advent of  the internet” (Kennedy, 3-4).

 

From what the reenactors shared with me, there are several suppositions Kennedy makes that are simply not true.  To begin with, very few reenactors do first-person impressions.  This type of impression is very difficult as they require the reenactor to never “break character” which makes it almost impossible sometimes for them to speak with/educate the public.  Megan McNally told me, “Most of the time they [reenactors] are just doing a general soldier. There are some people that do the generals and stuff when they reenact…they will have someone who is Lee and Grant and all the big name people but they are a very select few and they are elected or somehow chosen to be this position. But most people just do a general soldier” (McNally).  Furthermore, the only mention of the internet during our conversations was that reenacting is a chance to escape from technology: “If we can’t have our internet page load in seven seconds, we’re moving to the next internet page. How many people really care about what happened a hundred and fifty years ago? Not that many. Which is sad. It’s much more important to who we are than that seven-second internet page, or that twitter, or that email. The Civil War had a much greater impact on your life than any of those things ever will; but we are a now [snaps] have it [snaps] new thing [snaps]  society” (Sandusky).  There was no talk of Burns’ documentary as an influence, but rather most of the reenactors joined the hobby after seeing a reenactment first-hand.

Kennedy further posits in her text:

 

“Taking into account the varying dynamics of Civil War reenacting, it is important to ask what people are trying to negotiate or renegotiate by embodying the personae of Civil War soldiers for several weekends a year.  It could be argued that people construct a  sense of their genealogical and national pasts through their engagement in reenactments…it can be said that reenactors are using  the Civil War as a lens to make sense of their current place in society” (Kennedy, 6). 

 

While this is what I, too, expected to witness and hear about from the reenactors, I did not see any obvious evidence of this type of negotiation.  It is also curious that Kennedy says “it could be argued” and “it could be said,” as if she is unsure of her claim and while she says that “it is important to ask,” there is no evidence in her work that she did ask such pointed questions about what the reenactors were typing to (re)negotiate.  For the Mifflin Guard men, they were using the reenactment and the Civil War to experience history and spend time with their friends and family.  This is an interesting theory and one that perhaps I can explore further at Gettysburg with some specific questions such as “What do you learn about yourself when reenacting?” or “How does reenacting factor into your understanding of your family (history)?”

 

One place in her conference presentation where Kennedy detailed an aspect of reenacting that was echoed by the reenactors I spoke with is when she notes that “many” who reenact see the Civil War as “the defining event in American history” and as such choose to reenact this era due to its status, in their view, as the lynchpin of American society (11, emphasis in original).  This sentiment was further evidenced by my interviews with members of the Mifflin guard: “It’s [the Civil War] an incredible turning point in so many different ways.  And if you think about it, the men who fought the Civil War, either them or their grandchildren invented spaceflight, airplanes, radio, television, cars, built the intercontinental railroad…It’s a moment where we go from being a group of people to a nation. We decide our course and we really set the foundation for modern society” (Sandusky).

 

Tony Horwitz, author of Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from an Unfinished Civil War, notes in his text how the Civil War shaped the modern nature of warfare:

 

“The Civil War, as I’d seen on countless battlefields, also marked the transition from the chivalric combat of old to the anonymous and industrial slaughter of modern times.  It was, Walker Percy wrote, ‘the last of the wars of individuals, when a single man’s ingenuity and pluck not only counted for something in itself but could conceivable affect the entire issue.’…Today, the same tasks would be performed by spy satellite and drone aircraft.” (Horwitz, 385).   

 

McNally also brought up the different nature of modern warfare in her interview, remarking, “…war currently, nowadays, is all modern technology it’s all drones and stuff and so, the fact that they used to just line up and point a gun at each other is unreal. So, I guess the fact that it changed, and that it’s no longer so much human-based, that you can just push a button and send it, it’s interesting” (McNally).  For McNally, this was one of the reasons she enjoyed reenacting as she was then able to “witness” the close-order drill and combat of symmetrical warfare.

 

As the Civil War is considered a turning point for American history for reenactors, they work to commemorate and educate this time period and attempt to bring it into the public’s consciousness and serve as representatives of the nation’s historical record:

“Like sites of memory, public memory has a symbolic function, being ‘a body of beliefs and ideas about the past’ which helps a society understand its history. It is also the product of political discussion, emergent from the intersection of ‘official culture,’ represented by political and civic leaders, and a more multivocal and contestive ‘vernacular culture.’ When the meanings of historical events are contested, public memory ‘functions to mediate the competing restatements of reality’ in a process which reveals a society's organization, power structure, and inherent contradictions… Just as do battlefield memorials and television series, reenactments act as sites of memory, representing the nation's wars.” (Cash, 28).

 

I attempted to learn more about this from Meagan McNally and from the Mifflin guard; are they representing history or mediating it for a particular audience? And if they do mediate the representation of historical events, why and for whose benefit?  However, while the reenactors did see some anachronisms in their performances, the ones that they were most concerned about were about the presence of pizza or cell phones, not historical revision.  For these reenactors, and perhaps it was due to the fact that the reenactment I attended was a bit lax in terms of authenticity/“hardcore-ness”, did not feel that they were not covering up any pieces of history, but preserving it.  Sandusky told me, “We [Americans] tend to write history through our views. So we color it. So the modern interpretation of the Civil War is about slavery.  It isn’t if you read their writings of the times.”  Lumpy, the Guard’s 19-year-old cook and banjo player, chimed in, “States’ rights…” to which Sandusky replied,  “Well…states’ rights, political power…The young men who went to fought, many of the Southern boys didn’t own slaves, their families didn’t own slaves, they had no interest in slavery.  And certainly most of the Northern boys didn’t think of the African-American as their equal. So you can have a sanitized ‘This is how we view history’ version of it or you can try to preserve it and understand how it was…And it’s the same with every war” (Lumpy, Sandusky).  Sandusky went on further to explain what he saw as the two “things that happen in history: there’s facts and there’s interpretation.  Facts don’t change. They fought a battle on this day. This many men were involved. This many men got killed. This side won. Those are all facts. Why they fought that day, what brought them together, what happened, what was the course of history after – that is all interpretation” (Sandusky).  While Sandusky and others of the Guard seem to believe that they were representing the facts of history, there is also, necessarily, much (dramatic) interpretation of the events of the battle that they are portraying that day.  How they decide how to act and how to perform their impressions of soldiers, civilians, doctors and others that were present that day was a topic that we did not have time to discuss, but I hope to learn more about their process in cultivating an impression during future interviews.

 

With my notions of the new warrior and the assumption that men, specifically, reenacted in order to allow themselves the opportunity to have the simulated experience of a heroic existence, I found the following comment by an Army veteran and philosopher J. Glenn Grey to be of particular pertinence: “This appeal of war is usually described as the desire to escape the monotony of civilian life and the cramping restrictions of an inadventerous existence” (Gray, 29).  While I did not have the opportunity to speak to the reenactors regarding heroism during our time on the company street, in a subsequent email exchange with Sandusky, he broached the subject without a prompt from me, beginning his email by saying, “After you left I spent some time thinking about your thesis and wondered if there was something we (meaning the guys) had not covered. And if we didn’t why not? Fortunately my role this weekend [as the flag bearer for the company, a coveted role] gave me a lot of time to observe my fellow reenactors and I think I have come across something I doubt we’d articulate out loud (at least without the benefit of alcohol)” (Sandusky, email).  Sandusky followed this introduction with his thoughts on why some men reenact: that the hobby allows males to live out fantasies of heroism within a safe space:

“There are many opportunities for reenactors to be “heroes”.  All pretty safe.  You can lead you[r] men in a glorious charge or defend a position against all odds. You can take or rescue the flag. You can save a wounded comrade (the original purpose of the Medal of Honor was for recognizing men who rescued wounded men under fire at considerable danger to the rescuer. Only after the Civil War was it expanded to great acts of valor.).  In some ways it fills a niche that the male psyche needs filled and can rarely be filled by normal modern life […] Foolish I know but they say the difference between men and boys is the cost of their toys.  As boys we all dream of doing something great, something heroic. Be it the football quarterback who throws the winning touchdown in the Superbowl, or the fireman that rescues people from a burning building or being Batman or being the high scorer in some video game.  Whether they admit it or not every man wants to be considered a hero.  We just don't often get the chance in real life and sometimes when we do we fail.  In reenacting, everybody can be that hero they once dreamed themselves to be at no cost to themselves.  No one goes out saying “Gee, I get to be a hero today.” But you can still pretend you are one.  Even if only for a moment” (Sandusky, email).

 

The concept of the reenactment as a space for (simulated) heroism and heroics is something that I hope to cover in my future interviews with reenactors.[9]

 

All In the Family

While some men gear up in order preserve history, or to have the chance to perform heroic acts, others spend the weekend sleeping on the ground in woolen clothes as a way to spend time with their family – both past and present (and sometimes, future).  The Mifflin Guard, however, is an interesting case as the men and women/children are separated into two different camps during the reenactment – the men in the “company street” and the women/children in the “civilian camp”.  Most reenacting companies allow the women and children to stay with the men, but the Mifflin Guard prefers to be more historically accurate and have non-soldiers camp separately.  Initially, I saw this as conflicting with their declarations of the importance of family in the hobby, but of those who I interviewed that day, only one had family with them that weekend, and he left the interview early to go and have dinner with his wife and five children.

 

“Americans who reenact strive to display their patriotism.  Some are literally born into it, as several generations of one family may embrace the hobby.  Others find that they virtual time travel of a reenactment allows them temporarily to abandon such modern conveniences and nuisances as mobile telephones and traffic jams – not an easy thing to do” (Elson, 12).

 

Looking through the list of registered reenactors, there are two listings with the first name “Baby” (Registered Reenactors).  One is “Baby McNally,” the nephew of Megan McNally, whose given name is not Baby, but Gavin.  However, Steven McNally, his grandfather and the one who registered the family up for the 150th, could not put his real name down as the deadline to register was before Gavin was even born and named by his parents.  Just a quick skim over the 9,017[10] registered reenactors, it is clear to see that there are very few “single” reenactors (such as myself) whose entry is not surrounded by others with the same last name.  In fact, it seems that over 50% of the reenactors are registered with at least one family member.[11] 

 

That reenactors typically come to the hobby within a family unit is often cited in the literature, for example: “Entire families reenact together, enabling family members to spend time with one another away from computers and television.  Parents bring children into the hobby and children bring parents.  Friendships spawned at reenactments have lasted decades, just as they did during and after the war” (Elson, 21). When I was speaking with reenactors, I was able to see just how deep the familial ties to reenacting go.  Matt Decker listed the family members who come to the reenactment with him, all of whom were present that day, “I got an 18-year-old son, who’s in the ranks as a private, a got a 11-year-old daughter, 10-year-old son and a 6-year-old and a 4-year-old …and they all come to the reenactments[12]… It’s great to be able to stand next to my son, and be able to partake in this with my son” (Decker).   Decker went on to further explain that the reenactment is a good place for his 18-year-old son, Malachay, to learn about life and adult behavior, “I don’t drink, I drink a little, but I don’t drink a lot, and Malachay had never really opened up to this kind of environment. And when he saw this kind of environment, you know, it opened his eyes like ‘Wow’, totally different than his normal lifestyle that he is in. But he hears it in school and stuff like that, but when you’re around a bunch of men who live freely and enjoys life…and see sees it, and never saw it before…” (Decker).

 

Decker was not the only reenactor who attends reenactments with close family members.  Marchand told me, “I [reenact] with my father – he’s 84, not here today, he had a wedding – but he comes out here and humps his traps around the battle, sleeps on the ground, eats with us, you know, loves drinking at night, having a few beers with us. And it’s, again, same thing, how often can you go out with your 84-year-old father and sit around and have fun with him like one of the boys? It’s something my friends are all jealous on… I can do that” (Marchand).  Marchand also has two daughters that reenact off and on, one less so after correcting her teacher on Civil War history and getting teased by her classmates.

McNally lamented the fact that once  her older brothers went off to college, they no longer went to all the reenactments with her and her parents, “It’s really for me part of being there with my family, ‘cause when my brothers grew up and went to college and kind of started getting out of it, the whole experience changed. It was like now, it’s more about the unit and having soldiers, we started bringing in a bunch of other random people who weren’t a part of the family because my dad needed help running the cannon.  So it was a fun experience still, but it was different because it used to be a big family activity and so, now it wasn’t” (McNally).

 

Otto, a Mifflin Guard member, summed up the importance of reenacting to family ties and vice-versa by telling me, “There’s a certain bond you create over and above the family bond in the company street” (Otto).  All the reenactors I spoke with were reenacting that day, or have reenacted, with members of their family and as they spoke about that experience, they always had a smile on their face thinking about those times and appreciated this unique opportunity to spend quality time together.  However, one particular NPR.org story told its listeners that the numbers of reenactors in America are dropping due to the lack of interest in the hobby on the part of children:

“An estimated 30,000 people nationwide re-enact the Civil War, but recently those numbers have dropped. Dana Shoaf edits Civil War Times ma gazine. He says part of that's because these days, kids just don't get jazzed about history.

Mr. Dana Shoaf (Editor, Civil War Times): There just aren't as many kids that are, you know, finding re-enacting as an enjoyable hobby. That's one of the things that concerns a lot of us.

Douban: Also, there are so many more entertainment options now. Playing a historical computer game can give someone a battle fix from an easy chair.” (Douban).

 

Yet, the only reenacting child of the Mifflin guard who has dropped out of the hobby was one of Marchand’s daughters: “…my younger daughter [13 years old], so far, knock on wood, she’s known at school as the Civil War kid, explains to the teacher what hardtack is, and she enjoys it and is not really embarrassed by it yet [unlike the older sister, 19, who was teased about it in school after correcting the teacher on the date of Gettysburg]” (Marchand).  During the interviews, there were several children in the Mifflin Guard present who were actively participating in or listening to the interview, as well as cleaning their gear and mending their own clothing, sewing by hand.  Decker’s children, he said, gain a lot from the reenactments, “They understand more.  Kids these days play video games, and that’s it.  My kids they’re running around and actually learning things about history, about the Civil War. It’s a good thing, because they don’t learn it in school” (Decker).  For children who do not have parents who reenact, they can also have the experience of history through one of the living history events that the Mifflin Guard put on.  During these events, “We organize the kids as an infantry company and we run them through a drill with muskets to give them an idea of what it was like to be a soldier.  It’s interesting, the modern kids are so used to doing whatever they damn well please, or having mom just cater to them and we don’t let them get away with that. You’re in the infantry now” (Sandusky).  For the reenactors, the hobby was a way to instill in the children a sense not only of history, but of duty, respect and honor. 

 

Objectification of the Past   

There is an obvious fetishism of objects from the Civil War among reenactors.  They are keen to display them and explain their history to others. 

“The items are tangible objects that embody the world of the past. They are the props that re-create the past as a lived context, a creation central to the reenactment experience. Tactile, sensual, aesthetic, the material culture of reenacting persuades the experiencing body of the reenactor that he can participate in the Civil War world. Reenactments set up two intersecting frames of ‘reality,’ one shaped by the contemporary ongoing present, and one generated by the records of history and reconstituted” (Turner, 125-126).

Marchand is an avid collector of letters from the Civil War, with a large collection of letters from actual members of the unit he reenacts, explaining that, “…there’s something about the time, the way they wrote.  You read their letters and they could express themselves much more than people can today. I collect 125th paraphernalia, pictures and letters and you read some of these young 21-year-old soldiers explaining why they’re fighting and what happened to them. It really makes you cry…” (Marchand).  With a background in architecture, Marchand also creates custom displays for his letters and sets them up meticulously for viewings at living histories.

 

Yet, there is a deeper connection to the objects of the hobby than just a commodification of the past.  “Their relationship to their possessions was not one of commodity fetishism, of owning for the sake of owning. It was deeply contextualized in knowledge and use of these objects, embedded in the sense of themselves as creative individuals” (Turner, 126-127).  Bill Johnson, an older member of the Mifflin Guard, took me through his trunk, holding up a glass bottle to the sun so that I could see the embossed initials on it, narrating, “Here’s one of my relatives [points to the initials], Francis Nicholson.  His brother founded William and Mary down there in Williamsburg, and Sir Francis Nicholson was the governor of New York, Maryland, South Carolina and Virginia.   They found this [glass bottle] in the 1930’s and they reconstructed it and then they reproduced it, and it was probably his drinking thing… [laughs] I think he may have been an early part of Hellfire [Club?] as well…” (Johnson).[13]  In addition to the objects that they bring with them and take careful care of, there are also copious amounts of items for sale at Suttler’s Row at the reenactment.  Here, reproductions of objects of the time, as well as trinkets and souvenirs for the less historically-inclined. 

 

 

Performing the Past (for the present)

I was dismayed to find that the first battle of the day was far away from the main camp area and located down an unstable path and well-hidden in the forest.  As I made my way to the site, I was stopped by a reenactor leaning on his musket who told me that this was the “tactical battle,” and was not for spectators’ eyes.  He was dismayed that they did not have a more secluded location for the battle as there was a small group of spectators gathered to try to catch a glimpse of the action through their binoculars and zoom-lenses. 

 

That there was a battle just for reenactors was curious: if this battle is not a performance for the public, then who was it for? In the literature, one author posits that, “There seems to be a continuum in reenacting between performing for the spectators performing for each other, and performing for oneself” (Turner, 128).  Another author writes, “Reenactors must satisfy three audiences: each other, the public, and the Civil War dead” (Cash, vi).  It seems that the tactical battle was for the first and third of these groups: it was a chance for the reenactors to show each other their warring skills and to have the opportunity for “a moment”.

 

“But simulation is also the process of re-creation, achieved through the replication of historical artifacts and processes, and resulting in a collapsing or merging of perceived historical frames of past and present: ‘The site becomes, then, both the time machine and the destination of the time travel.’ of the participant's experience. Ideally, the participant feels that the wall between present and past has disappeared and one's presence in the past seems real and immediate. This feeling of the immediacy of the past is living history's selling point. Anderson's reenactor informants call this experience the ‘magic moment’” (Cash, 5, emphasis in original).

 

The Mifflin Guard men continuously seek out their own “moments” in their reenacting weekends. Reenacting allows the men the opportunity to “touch [the past] in a way that you can’t from a book or a movie or a history program by trying to recreate what they do…I’ve always been a history nut and this is a chance to get a ‘moment,’ is what it’s called, a chance to feel what it’s like” (Sandusky).  These moments, it seems typically do not happen during the battle for the spectators, but during the tactical battle or drills.  These illusive, fleeing, feelings of having transported to the past are so palpable for some that they can acutely describe the “moment” and recall it with pride and a sense of wistfulness:

 “…you don’t get those [moments] too often…In December we did Fredericksburg…The Army put a bridge going across the Rappahannock. And I was literally the first Union man to step foot on the bridge, and let me tell you…I say it was like electricity going through your body. It was a thrill! […]It could be anything, and you never know what that moment’s going to be.  It could be going through the woods or you turn around in the woods, you’re ready to aim your musket and you see a guy running up to you and he goes ‘Union!’  and you can understand, just for that split second, you know, what it was like. And for me, that’s why I do it. To wait for those choice moments, to ‘see the elephant’ as they used to say” (Marchand).

 

Sandusky also shared his first moment, which happened, much to the chagrin of Marchand who found the Neshaminy reenactment a bit “farby,” not too far from where we were sitting:

“My first moment was actually here [Neshaminy reenactment] and it wasn’t about the battle.  We were going through the woods and one of the things you read about sometimes when the guys talk about getting ‘squeezed’. And of course the theory is we keep these nice rigid lines which is not reality, but that’s the theory. And we are going through the woods and the guys on my right push towards me to get around some trees and the guys on my left push towards me to get around the trees and all of a sudden I got squeezed. And for one tenth of a second I had the clarity – it made sense – what I was reading that Civil War veterans were writing. Not about the big moments, not about the battles, but it made sense what they were going through (Sandusky).

 

Through these moments, the reenactors are not only performers, but effigies, to use Roach’s term, of real soldiers.  By performing for themselves in order to reap the satisfaction of “time traveling,” the audience is no longer separate from, but the same as, the reenactor himself.  The pleasure derived from reenacting at a tactical event as opposed to a spectator battle or a living history must be quite different.  I am interested to speak to the reenactors again about how these two different types of reenacting give them pleasure and am also curious to know whether or not reenactors would prefer more opportunities to perform for spectators, or for themselves – and how they cross the liminal space that lies between performing and the “moment”.

 

Future: Where I am going: Preparing for 150th Gettysburg

 

As I set out on the battlefield or in cyberspace, trying to find reenactors to interview, I will be approaching the reenactors in a different way by framing my project differently – as simply an oral history of reenactors.  From my experiences, I have learned not to explicitly mention the specific topics I am interested in academically: masculinity, “performance” in the academic sense, and notions of manhood as they pertain to the military.  By telling those that I will interview that there are my specific academic interests, a false constraint to the interview was created and the subjects often tried to “give me” what I want to hear by telling me things that they felt would be useful for my project.  While this was very kind of them to want to “help me out,” there were topics/statements in the interview that I felt may have not been genuine, but rather contrived so that their answers were “in line” with what I had mentioned I was interested in.

 

It seems simple, but instead of framing my project to others as a study of masculinity within the reenactor community, I will instead ask the reenactors themselves about their notions of masculinity during the interview.  By not announcing this particular interest of mine up front, I think I will be able to get more genuine answers instead of answers manufactured to please me/assist me in my project.  I will, of course, not be dishonest about what I am doing – I am there to listen and learn from reenactors about reenacting and about why they specifically reenact – but do not, I think, need to preface the project with artificial constraints on answers.  And, in fact, that is what my project is about – creating an oral history of historians whose medium is both the oral and the corporeal.  What I will cull from what I hear, such as hypotheses on masculinity, martial performances of masculinity, and the reasons why veterans reenact, is something that I need to leave until after I listen.  While I have my theories, without the words of the reenactors, I have no evidence to support my theories and by spoiling the interviews with hypotheses, I may “get” what I want to hear, but will never know if I hear it because it is actually the belief of the subject, or if they were just being kind in assisting me as they understood it.

 

Since I will have more time at Gettysburg and will be allowed to stay after the reenactment closes to spectators as I will be a reenactor myself, perhaps I will be able to use the group interview dynamic as a pre-interview, and then can speak one-on-one with selected reenactors based on their interest/availability/stories they want to share.  In this individualized environment, I think that I will be able to hear some answers to the above questions that perhaps the reenactors would not want to share in front of others (other men specifically).  Additionally, at Gettysburg, I will be reenacting and will be (more of) an insider. I will also be attached to a unit that has been reenacting for 20 years together which will give me some legitimacy.  I did not have, at least I do not think, a problem with legitimacy at Neshaminy, but am interested to see if being a participant as opposed to an observer changes the interview exchange/experience for the subject and for me.  I will also have the opportunity to speak again with the Mifflin Guard and it will be informative to see how the interactions with me as an outsider (spectator) versus me as an insider (reenactor) are/are not the same.

 

As I prepare for the 150th and get my gear in order, my outfit sewn and my history down, I do so with less of a sense of apprehension than I did at Neshaminy.  It was surprisingly difficult at first to strike up conversations with the reenactors but once I did, it was sometimes difficult to get them to stop talking, although many times the conversations took strange turns that I was unprepared for.[15]  Reenactors are storytellers, and I just have to keep learning how to create a space where they want to share, and where I am ready, and able, to listen.

 

 

 

Works Cited

 

Elson, Mark and Stein, Jeannine.  Battlefields of Honor: American Civil War

Reenactors.  London and New York: Merrell, 2012. Print.

 

Fastenberg, Dan.  “A Brief History of Civil War Reenactment.” Time. 3 July 2010. Web. 1 May

2013. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2001375,00.html

 

Gray, J. Glenn.  The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle.  Lincoln and London: University of

Nebraska Press, 1959. Print.

 

Hadden, R. Lee. Reliving the Civil War: A Reenactor’s Handbook.  PA: Stackpole Books, 1996.

Print.

 

Horwitz, Tony. Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War.  New

York: Vintage Books, 1999. Print.

 

Cash, John.  “Borrowed time: Reenacting the American Civil War in Indiana.” Diss.  Indiana

University, 2003.  ProQuest Dissertations and Theses.  Web. 1 May 2013.

 

Chamberlain, Mary.  “Narrative Theory.” In Thinking About Oral History: Theories and

Applications. Edited by Thomas L. Charlton, Lois E, Myers, and Rebecca Sharpless.  Maryland: AltaMira Press, 2008.  142-165. Print.

 

Decker, Matt. Personal interview. 20 April 2013.

 

Douban, Gigi. “Fewer People Participate In Civil War Reenactments.” NPR.org. 4 July 2011.

Web.  1 May 2013. http://www.npr.org/2011/07/04/137609367/fewer-people-participate-in-civil-war-reenactments

 

Friedman, Jeff.  “Fractious Action: Oral History-Based Performance.” In Thinking About Oral

History: Theories and Applications. Edited by Thomas L. Charlton, Lois E, Myers, and Rebecca Sharpless.  Maryland: AltaMira Press, 2008.  223-267. Print.

 

Gibson, James William. Warrior Dreams: Paramilitary Culture in Post-Vietnam America. New

York: Hill & Wang.  1994. Print. 

 

Hoffman, Alice M.  and Hoffman, Howard S.  “Memory Theory: Personal and Social.”  In

Thinking About Oral History: Theories and Applications. Edited by Thomas L. Charlton, Lois E, Myers, and Rebecca Sharpless.  Maryland: AltaMira Press, 2008. 33-54. Print.

 

Johnson, Bill. Personal interview. 20 April 2013.

 

Kennedy, Amanda.  “Theatres of Battle, Battles of Meaning: Meanings and Historical

Representations of Civil War Reenactment.” American Sociological Association 2003 Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA. Web. 1 May 2013.

 

Larson, Mary A.  “Research Design and Strategies.”  In History of Oral History: Foundations

and Methodology.  Edited by Thomas L. Charlton, Lois E, Myers, and Rebecca Sharpless.  Maryland: AltaMira Press, 2007.  95-124. Print.

 

Lumpy.  Personal interview. 20 April 2013.

 

Marchand, Mike. Personal interview. 20 April 2013.

 

McMahan, Eva M.   “A Conversation Analytic Approach to Oral History Interviewing.” In

Thinking About Oral History: Theories and Applications. Edited by Thomas L. Charlton, Lois E, Myers, and Rebecca Sharpless.  Maryland: AltaMira Press, 2008. 94-114. Print.

 

McNally, Megan. Personal interview. 3 March 2013.

 

Morrissey, Charles T.   “Oral History Interviews: From Inception to Closure.”  In History of Oral

History: Foundations and Methodology.  Edited by Thomas L. Charlton, Lois E, Myers, and Rebecca Sharpless.  Maryland: AltaMira Press, 2007. 160-196. Print.

 

Otto, Dave. Personal interview. 20 April 2013.

 

“Registered Reenactors.”  150th Gettysburg Anniversary National Civil War Battle Reenactment. 

Web. 1 May 2013. http://www.gettysburgreenactment.com/reenactors/registered-reenactors/

 

Roach, Joseph.  Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance.  New York: Columbia

University Press, 1996. Print.

 

Sandusky, Robert. Personal e-email communication with author. 21 April 2013.

 

---. Personal interview. 20 April 2013.

 

Straight, Dick. Personal interview. 20 April 2013.

 

Turner, Rory.  “Bloodless Battles: The Civil War Reenacted.” TDR. Vol. 34, No. 4 (Winter,

1990), 123-136.  Web. 1 May 2013.

 

Zacek, Natalie.  “Francis Nicholson (1655-1728).”  Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Foundation

for the Humanities, 6 December 2012. Web. 6 May 2013. http://encyclopediavirginia.org/Francis_Nicholson_1655-1728#start_entry

 

 

 

 

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[1] I use “hobby” deliberately in this paper as it is what most reenactors call what they do.  One reenactor, Bill Johnson, insists on calling it an “avocation,” but all others called it “the hobby” (Johnson).

 

[2] “Farb” or “farby” is a pejorative term used to describe reenactors or reenacting gear that is anachronistic to the time period being portrayed.  For example, having a pizza delivered to the camp site is farby, and a reenactor who is wearing modern pants or glasses may be called a farb.  The etymological creation myth is typically that the word comes from the phrase, “Far be it for me [to tell you your gear/clothing/actions are inaccurate]…”

 

[3] I would have been able to speak with him more, perhaps, had dinner bell not been rung. Yet another lesson of the reenactment – pay attention to when meals will be served, and consider that lost time.

 

[4] The Mifflin Guard often has its members take turns being officers and enlisted men so that everyone gets a chance to lead and be led.

 

[5] The Mifflin Guard is unique in that only male reenactors portraying soldiers can camp at the company street.  Those who come with their families are thus split up with the women and children in the “civilian camp” and the men all together at an entirely different site. 

 

[6] I arrived at the site at 10am when the site opened and left at 5:45pm; I thought would have been enough time to really sit down with some of the men I had made previous contact with. I forgot that they need time to prepare for the battle, drill, eat lunch, battle, and then get back to the camp.  I learned a lot from watching, but only had two and a half hours to sit down with the men and talk as the site closed to spectators at 6pm. 

 

[7] The Mifflin Guard that day, it must be noted, had a particularly un-eventful battle, as they were all taken out by a cannon about ten minutes into the action.  This could explain why many men in the Guard were not eager to share battle stories of the day as they spent most of it lying on the ground, trying not to get sunburn.

 

[8] …and usually over alcohol. In fact, several reenactors suggested I should come back after they started drinking if I wanted more stories.

 

 

[9] See “Future” section later in this paper for further details about what I wish to ask and learn on this topic.

 

[10] Number of registered reenactors as of May 6, 2013.

 

[11] For the purposes of this study, “family member” is defined as someone sharing the same last name.  This is no way a scientific calculation as it does not take into account different families or people who coincidentally share the same last name.  Unfortunately, it is not possible to assess the exact percentage of reenactors who are registered with family members such information without permission of all of the reenactors.

 

[12] At this point, another reenactor chimed in, “See the halo around his head?” (Marchand).

 

[13] Nicholson was not alive during the Civil War, having instead completed his military and political service in the last 1860’s and early 1870’s (Zacek).

 

[14] More questions are also in Appendix I.

 

[15] Strange turns such as when one reenactor told me that no matter how “hard core” a reenactor thinks he is, he is probably not authentic.  Some reenactors lose weight to look more authentic or will not wear shoes as late in the war many soldiers had worn their pair out, but none, this reenactor told me, can “put it back on.”  After some strange hand gestures and other hints from this reenactor, it dawned on me that the he was telling me that since most men in the 19th century were not circumcised, any reenactors who are circumcised are, therefore, not “totally authentic”.