Wednesday, May 24, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
25
The Nugget Newspaper Crossword
By Jacqueline E. Mathews, Tribune News Service
PHOTO BY JERRY BALDOCK
A piper with the Federal 79th Highlanders joins the ranks marching to battle.
CIVIL WAR: Program
offers glimpse of
“living history”
Continued from page 1
he didn’t feel he had time to
commit to the demanding pur-
suit. A friend finally talked
him into taking the plunge.
Veteran reenactors are known
for their willingness to help a
greenhorn along — as long as
said greenhorn is making the
effort to put together his out-
fit and historical persona and
deepen his or her knowledge
of the period.
The key, according to
Schnetzky, is “drive — just
the gumption to do it,” and a
willingness to “say, ‘Yeah, I
don’t know everything that
well, but I’m going to do my
best.’”
Spectators sitting on
bleachers awaiting the battle
were treated to a discussion
of life for women during
the period, featuring women
authentically dressed in the
layers of petticoats and the
voluminous skirts typical of
the era. One of the women
noted that the dresses posed a
significant health risk — and
not from the constraints of a
corset, which she said is actu-
ally comfortable if it fits right.
The dresses posed a tremen-
dous risk from fire for women
working around open cooking
flames. In fact, the women
said, fire was the number-
one cause of death among
women, eclipsing childbirth
and disease.
Jill Ingalls and Danielle
Fisher portrayed two women
from Georgia displaced by
Sherman’s March to the Sea
in 1864, when the Union com-
mander drove from Atlanta
to Savannah, cutting a swath
of destruction calculated to
break the Confederacy’s will
to resist and cripple its ability
to supply its armies.
They demonstrated camp
cooking of the era, using
authentic foods and utensils,
though Ingalls acknowledged
that “we have better provi-
sions than they had.”
Ingalls noted that she has
ancestors who fought on both
sides of the conflict. She also
said that Confederate reenactor
ranks have thinned over the
past couple of years due to
conflict over the Confederate
battle flag and other symbols
of the Confederacy – symbols
that for most reenactors are
simply part of telling the story
of the conflict.
Ingalls said it is some-
times hard for people to rec-
ognize that her portrayal of a
Confederate does not imply
that she endorses everything
the Confederacy stood for
– particularly slavery. She
argues that the story of the
Civil War is a complicated one
and said, “I think it’s impor-
tant that for people to hear the
true story … not what people
choose to believe the symbols
mean today.
“We don’t want to make
light that slavery was an
important part, but it wasn’t
the start of the war.”
The origins of the conflict
remain a spark for heated
debate among professional
and amateur historians alike,
but for the reenactors on hand
at last weekend’s events, their
purpose is not so much to
refight the war as it is to touch
the experience of their 19th-
century ancestors and share a
glimpse of what life was like
in the midst of a watershed
moment in the history of our
country.
Camp Sherman resident
Christopher Lundgren joined
the Union Army’s 69th New
York Regiment, Co. K. The
teenager has a deep interest
in history that was stoked last
year by the battle reenactment
in his backyard.
“I’ve always been inter-
ested in military stuff, and I
thought it was really interest-
ing how they did the battles
and I wanted to take part in
it,” he said.
He recruited several friends
to join — adding a little extra
authenticity to a unit that cer-
tainly had its share of teenaged
soldiers.
Advancing across a field
into fire — even though it is
from blank rounds — gives a
sense of the terror that must
have gripped soldiers during
the bloody battles of the Civil
War, Lundgren noted.
“Looking down the artil-
lery pieces scares you so
much,” he said.
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