Civil War reenactment

The 16th Annual Civil Ware reenactment was this weekend, so I packed my camera and laptop and ambled on down to Kearney park to check it out. I haven't been to a civil war reenactment since 6th grade(about 10 years ago) and was surprised to see how much things had grown. When I originally showed up, there had been maybe 20-50 soldiers per side, with half the union force being the 1st Army Sharpshooters. Now there are almost 2000 reenactors, with hundreds of soldiers, civilians, and calvarymen all working together to show this great part of history. There's even a unit reenacting the 1st Massachutus regiment, which was the only(that I know of) civil war unit composed entirely of Californian Volunteers. (We were in danger of attack from Russia during the war, so we were unable to donate federal troops. But Massachtus and a few other states allowed west coast volunteers to flesh out their conscript quotas.) There is also a signal corps now, using actual telegraphs and signal flags to denote battle orders. Even better was the 6-horse artillery teams, which are coordinated warhorse teams that can limber and unlimber cannon at amazing speeds. They actually managed to move the whole atrillary line piecemeal to match the movements of the front line.

Some other Great memories:

* One of the cannons was reeled close to the crowd so the annoucer had to warn us every time those things fired. The primer failed on them three times, leaving people cupping their ears for an explosion that didn't happen

* Watching the Calvary commit wheel maneuvers

*Laughing at some of the crappiest Calvary swordfighting I've seen. Ever.

* Watching the union and Confeds interact at the food court

* Seeing and absolutely beautiful dirk made by everyone's favorite group of blacksmiths

* Hearing that good-old timey music floating from the tents

* Chuckling that there was a bigger cheer when they managed to untangle and switch out an artillery horse than when the Union won.

* The fact that the union won the first battle of mannassas twice that weekend

* Realizing that half the artillery team was Female. This is a huge advantage the Civil war renactors have in that there are so many (at least 500) documented accounts of women serving the armed forces as men. (only certain medieval countries allowed female service or had female service documented)

I also managed to meet several people from the guild who was there. It seems the guild has several friendships with some of the gray units and was especially cheering for the Texas Calvary. I managed to spark a pretty good sized argument over which side had more native Irishmen on it. (The Irish enlisted in the war in droves for the free training and guns..Which they hoped to use to free Ireland).