They come from every nook and cranny of the country, much like their wool-clad brethren did a century and a half before, but instead of arriving by horse and locomotive, they appear in roof-rack laden Fords and Dodges, hauling equipment and pulling trailers.
Many are already adorned in what some what might mistake for a costume; to them, however, it is their uniform, and whether it is the deep blue of a Union soldier or the faded gray and butternut hues of a Confederate, they wear it proudly.
It is here, in an immense, open, dusty field that lies within crawling distance of Manassas National Battlefield in Virginia, that nearly 9,000 reenactors gather in the nearly unbearable heat of a swampy Virginia summer to reenact the First Battle of Manassas, which was to become the opening scene of America’s Civil War.
Their license plates say it all — they’ve come from the sweltering Deep South and rocky New England, from North Carolina and New York and Oregon and from our own area of North Jersey.
When they gathered on these rolling hills back in 1861, they were there because the union had been torn asunder over the scourge of slavery, and the quarrels between North and South could no longer be settled by the politicians and intellectuals in the halls of Congress.
By July 21 of that year, the fight had definitively passed from the hands that could pen compromises to the hands that carried rifles, and the carnage at Manassas would prove that there would be no hasty end to this conflict.
In 2011, however, their reasons are different — much different. These soldiers come not to fight, but to remember those that did; not to die, but to celebrate the lives of those that came before.
Above all, though, they’ve come to educate, and to provide a first-hand look at what it might look like if the ghosts were to rise up and do it all once more.
The reenactment is at its height on Saturday, July 23, and lasts for over three hours.
The heat soars above 100 degrees on the ground as thousands of troops file out of their camps and set up in the open fields. After an artillery duel of sorts and a brief cavalry scrap, a pitched infantry battle forms, one that is tightly scripted and mirrors the actual Battle of Manassas.
Initially the Union soldiers have the advantage, and as they press forward, they begin to drive the Southerners before them, engaging in firefight after firefight but making steady progress. The Confederates begin to retreat up a gentle slope that represents the famed Henry House Hill, which, in reality, lies just a mile or so southeast.
As the rebels pull back, however, the Union army inexplicably stops. The break, which helps the reenactors cool off and recuperate, is not made up; northern General Irwin McDowell paused for nearly two hours after driving the Confederates from their initial positions before renewing his attack.
By the time McDowell chose to advance, a brigade of Virginians commanded by Thomas J. Jackson had reinforced the Confederate lines on Henry House Hill, and his stalwart defense that day would earn him the nickname "Stonewall," and his brigade the sobriquet "The Stonewall Brigade."
The reenactors show all of this.
The men portraying the New York Zouaves charge up the hill, chanting a throaty "Ah-oooh" that thunders like the bark of angry cur, but wave upon wave breaks upon Southern lines.
Soon, more rebel flags appear as new units arrive, and their lines begin overlapping the Union flanks as the battle lines close on each other.
At one point, the reenactors are separated by maybe 20 yards, pouring it on while close enough to see the whites of eyes.
A charge by the 69th New York, which later in the war will become the heart of famous Irish Brigade, meets with little success, and the Confederates move forward and capture a battery of Union cannons, turning the tide of the battle.
Soon, the Northerners will be streaming to the rear, while some regiments, like the 6th New Hampshire — West Milford’s own reenacting unit – try to cover the retreat.
In 1861, the Union troops fled all the way to Washington, D.C., just under 30 miles away; in 2011, they only have to retreat to the back of the battlefield.
In both cases, the South wins the day.
‘It’s not like you’re going home in a box’
Mike Belgie, 55, is from Upper Greenwood Lake, and has been a Civil War reenactor for the past 16 years. He has long white hair that’s normally pulled back in a ponytail, and a graying goatee decorates his face.
He’s a photographer in real life, although he’s taken on an odd assortment of jobs over his years, running the gamut from security contractor to faithful Deadhead.
At this event, however, he will be the head of the Provost (military police), as well as the chief medical officer and head safety officer; basically, he’s responsible for the safety of nearly every man that steps onto the field.
It is late in the evening of July 23 when he finally sits down to talk in front of the half-dozen tents that make up the federal headquarters.
Candles hang from every available post, and the wooden table is decorated with a half-empty bottle of Tullamore Dew, several tin cups, period votives, and other assorted garb.
Belgie says he took an interest in "the hobby" at the 130th reenactment of the Battle of Cedar Creek, which took place in Middletown, Va., in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley.
He and his "better half," Rebecca, went down with friends on a couples’ weekend to see the reenactment, and the spectacle left him dumbstruck, in part because the Civil War played a prominent role in his own family’s story.
Belgie’s great-great grandfather, William C. Louderback, was a coal miner who had served with the 79th Pennsylvania Volunteers. He was a part of Sherman’s army during its infamous "March to the Sea" when that Union general made a promise to "make Georgia howl," and survived the war to live until 1892.
Coming from a military family, Belgie had long known the details of Louderback’s story, but seeing it acted out brought it to life.
"To see this reenactment, standing there watching it, knowing my family history…it was like, ‘Wow, I’m surprised my great-great grandfather could survive something like that,’" he says.
He then saw the 130th reenactment of the Battle of Bentonville and got to walk the grounds of a battlefield where he knew his great-great grandfather had fought so many years ago.
He was hooked.
On one occasion, he says, he got to sleep within 20 feet of where Louderback slept, on the anniversary of the day he slept there before a battle.
It is a little morbid, perhaps, but more than a little remarkable.
At reenactments, though, Belgie is near the top of the food chain, and as head medical officer and safety officer, he’s got more on his mind than simply representing history.
"Ninety-nine percent of the time, I’m worrying about real-world problems," he says. During the battle, he will be all over, attending to reenactors suffering from heatstroke or exhaustion as the temperatures rise to astonishing heights.
It’s been awhile since he was in the infantry line, but he recalls being in the middle of "a good, hot firefight," along with a good artillery barrage, as being amongst his favorite moments.
That’s changed as he’s moved up the ranks, however.
"Now it’s all the planning we do in headquarters, and seeing that transfer to the field, and making sure that all the guys who spend all this time and money to come out and do this, and the public, not only get a good show, but we give them a good education," he says.
Reenacting has changed the way he thinks about the way they fought wars during the 19th century, which was an era when battlefield technology was rapidly outpacing tactics.
The men who would become generals learned older styles of warfare at West Point, and the manner in which their armies fought during the 1860s was much the same as it was during the Napoleonic wars, when soldiers stood shoulder to shoulder to maximize the efficiency of their shoddy muskets, which were not generally accurate past 100 yards. Unfortunately, they were using rifles in the Civil War, many of which were accurate to at least 500 yards, which contributed to the horrendously high number of casualties.
The rifles themselves, such as the Springfield Model 1861 or the Pattern 1853 Enfield, were generally large-caliber, black-powder guns that fired hulking bullets at low velocities, leading to horrific injuries.
However, there were several steps to reload, and even the best trained troops could rarely get off more than three shots per minute.
"I would be a private in the ranks, and we’d fire a volley at the Confederates, but then you’d have to reload because it’s a single shot weapon," Belgie said, "and you’re watching the guy who’s directly across from you and you can see that while you’re pouring the powder (down the barrel), he’s already coming to his shoulder and aiming right at you…"
"I would have dropped my gun and said, ‘Go ahead, you got me,’" he says with a laugh. "It really changes your ideas."
Reenactors take hits, he says, according to an honor code, and the first unit he trained with told him that he’d know when to take a hit — namely if someone was aiming right at him.
"It’s not like you’re going home in a box," he jokes.
Some units don’t like taking those hits, though, and Belgie says that there are guys out there who are "musket proof."
"You could be point blank at them and they wouldn’t go down," he says.
One of his biggest worries, however, is that someone pulls the trigger and a man goes down for real.
"Guys go hunting with these rifles," he says.
All it takes is the wrong cartridge to make its way into the wrong box, and a real bullet could very well be stuffed down the barrel.
"It’s happened," he says.
‘It’s about getting away from middle-management’
Reenactors get into the game for different reasons. Many times they will say that they began reenacting because their parents or their fathers did it, and as they grew up, it just came naturally.
Krist Brembt, 19, is different — he actually got his father, Rob, involved through his own participation.
The West Milford High School graduate has been reenacting with the 6th New Hampshire for about seven years, he says, and his interest stems from local events that used to take place at the regiment’s headquarters at Long Pond Ironworks, just down the road from where he lives.
"I started going to the events, and just fell into the ranks," he says.
He’s extremely knowledgeable about the war, and says that although his first reenactments were quite chaotic, he is now used to the drill.
"It’s gotten to the point where I just wait for the officers’ commands to load and fire. I don’t really think too much anymore. I just do what we’re ordered to do," he says.
Many of the 6th New Hampshire’s members were excited for the reenactment because they got to perform the Napoleonic square, a defensive measure used against cavalry assaults that has the soldiers form a hollow square, facing outwards in all directions.
"It’s the only battle that they would have made the square," he says. "At that point, cavalry charges were becoming outdated."
His father, Rob, works for a marketing firm, having only been reenacting for about two years, is a newcomer at 55 years old.
He says that when his son started as a runner for the 6th NH as a child, he became his taxi.
"I always said that I couldn’t commit to this, but we found ourselves always bringing Krist to events and hanging out, and the guys turned out to be a fun bunch of people," Rob says.
The 6th New Hampshire tends to be the guys who are the last to leave the party, so to speak, and Rob says one of his favorite parts of the event is the after-party that goes on around the campfires as a gathering of the 6th’s musicians perform.
"I’ve played music for years, so I picked up a guitar and sat in with them," he says. "But there were enough guitars, so I taught myself the banjo, and that’s where the fun comes in….it’s the camaraderie and playing the music, it’s just being together with everyone."
He and his son do about a dozen events per year, ranging from huge events like Manassas to small living history exhibits around the New Jersey area.
"For me, it’s about getting away from middle-management," he says. "I’m a private, I don’t have to worry about anything going wrong."
'Like a civic organization'
Hugh Brennan, formerly of Ringwood but now a Hillsborough resident, sits with his shirt around his neck in the late afternoon heat after the Saturday battle.
He is a reenactor with the 3rd NJ, and equates the unit with a civic organization such as the Elks Lodge, but with a higher cause of educating the youth, many of whom, he says, are forgetting history at a rapid pace.
"I think you’ll find…that the vast majority of (reenactors) are motivated by a sense of patriotism and reverence for the country’s past, and a feeling that that’s being lost and not transmitted to the younger generations," he says.
Brennan is extraordinarily knowledgeable about his unit’s history.
On July 19 and 20 of 1861, he says, the unit was guarding the crossings along Bull Run and did not see much action.
Throughout the war, however, they would fight as a part of the "First New Jersey Brigade," one of the few brigades in the Army of the Potomac to be formed all by men of one state.
It would eventually be commanded by General Phillip Kearny (who would lend his name to the Hudson County town after his 1862 death in battle) and would distinguish itself in some of the bloodiest battles of the war.
Brennan says that while it is easy for current historians to play "armchair general," reenacting shows the difficulties that commanders faced back in the time before radio communications and GPS.
"There’s no communications, your maps are no good, and there’s no reconnaissance except some guy riding up the roadway — they didn’t know what the hell is going on, and they were blundering into each other all the time," he says.
During the reenactment, although the spectators can’t tell, some units will be out of place, either advancing too quickly or not at all, and tempers run short on the field.
Brennan notes that the confusion would be compounded if there were real bullets careening through the air.
"We’re not even scared; nobody’s getting killed," he says.
‘War can never be sanitized’
Others, like Dr. Allan Hordorf of Maywood, are here to prove that some facets of accepted history are completely false.
Hordorf is a pediatric cardiologist at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, and has been reenacting for 24 years. He started as a private, but the last decade has seen him portraying a surgeon, and putting on demonstrations to show the public the aftermath of battle.
"I was concerned that too many people went to see the battles and thought this was all so cool, everybody shooting each other, and nobody was talking about what happened after the battles," he says. "So, I started putting on some demonstrations to give them a clue as to what happened."
His "demonstrations" sometimes end up a little too graphic for the weak of heart, and other reenactors rib him about the spectators who periodically pass out during his talks.
"(The reenactments) are too sanitized sometimes," he says in his defense. "Everybody shoots everybody, they fall down, they get up, it’s sanitized. It can’t be sanitized; war can never be sanitized."
He breaks out his Civil War surgeon’s kit from the 1850s, the pièce de résistance of which is a shiny, foot-long bone saw that saw "real service."
Hordorf says that his pet peeve is the common misconception that wounded soldiers were given a shot of whiskey and a bullet to bite while having limbs amputated. This is totally false, he says; anesthetics were used in nearly every surgery.
"This ‘bite the bullet’ stuff is baloney…it’s ludicrous," he says. "You cannot do lots of procedures without the patients cooperating."
He also spends time speaking on the advancements that the medical field made during the 1860s, although they tended to be more in the way the services were organized rather than in the science itself. During the Civil War, he says, the first ambulance corps was formed to get soldiers off the field, and the first Sanitary Commission appeared in the U.S. Army. Nursing became a specialty, and large, fixed hospitals began to spring up for the first time.
Although doctors knew nothing about asepsis, the 12,000 who ended up volunteering for the role did what they could with the limited knowledge they had.
"They were not surgeons," he says. "There was no specialty, and most of them had never done surgery before…these guys learned on the job…but they did some incredible things, and they saved a lot of lives."
"One thing about war," he continues, "is that the killers and the healers both make great advances, but the question is who does it faster," he says. "The killers are usually better than the healers unfortunately… you don’t have to be as sophisticated to kill."
With ‘Lucifer’ in command
General "Lucifer" Tony Daniels, 64, was born in Newark on the 85th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam.
He bears a striking resemblance to Ulysses S. Grant, and has a thick brown beard and a weathered face that makes it seem like he’s spent more time living history in the field than teaching it in the classroom, which he did for decades after moving from Verona to Jackson Township.
He began reenacting in 1982 after an innocuous conversation with a man wearing a "Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War" jacket while on line at K-Mart during Christmas time, and earned the title "Lucifer" some years ago when he told a snide Virginia woman that his unit was going to burn down her town.
"She was being snotty, and I was just being ‘Jersey’ back to her," he says with a smile. "She started with the, ‘You damn Yankees come down here, blah blah blah,’ and I started saying ‘Get your Lucifers (matches) men, we’re going to burn the town! Leave no two stones upon each other; I want nothing but ashes here!’"
The ensuing outcry left Daniels with a lasting nickname.
He started with the 7th NJ, and when the 3rd NJ spun out of that, he was a charter member. Over the years, he rose in the ranks from a lowly private to where he is now — overall command the federal end of the event.
"I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t fun to be a general," he says. "When you get to the field and you’re in charge, it’s fun and it’s exciting that you’re making it happen."
Much of his job constitutes planning out nearly every minute of the battle and worrying about the safety about the troops; on Friday, he will be up late into the night reading documents by candlelight. Of course, as with all hobbies, there’s politics and petty issues that need to be attended to, such as playing referee in inter- or intra-unit disputes.
Sometimes, he says, the conflicts are not between his men, but between Northern and Southern battalions that may be camped a bit too close together.
"It’s not so much our side, but a lot of the Confederates are what we call ‘neo-confederates’ or ‘unreconstructed confederates,’" he says. "Some of them are still fighting for the cause."
No matter how realistic the events seem, though, Daniels says the reenactors have to cheat a little.
"We put ice under our caps, I wear a kerchief with ice in it…it’s cheating, yes, but the men living 150 years ago never had air conditioning, they were used to being outdoors all day…they were tough characters," he says. "We’re just not used to it as a people.
"If this were a truly authentic reenactment, you wouldn’t want to get within five miles of this site because you’d have all these guys (defecating) in a trench, and they wouldn’t have bathed for weeks or months perhaps, and they’d be wearing the same clothes day in and day out," he says.
He will be the commander for many of the sesquicentennial events as they arrive, but says that after the last of these, which will be in 2015, he will retire from the hobby for good.
"There’s a lot of people out there that are looking to me to do this, and to get it done, but I promise you this will be my last ride on the merry-go- round," he says. "I will probably be too old and decrepit (by the time it’s over)…and you’ve gotta’ give up and let some younger people (rise)."
It is clear that he loves every aspect of reenacting, however, and he can easily spend hours relating humorous tales from his 30 years in the field, such as when he fell through the ice at one event, or led his troops through a snow-melt swollen Saylor’s Creek at another.
"Some of my best friends that I’ve made in life, I’ve made in this hobby," he says.
To Daniels, there is meaning to what he and his guys are doing, and an obligation to do it right.
"The men that are in hundreds of cemeteries across the country, I think that whatever we do, let’s do them proud," he says. "We can’t do it exactly the way they did, but let’s show people what they did and the valor they displayed….they believed in what they did, and they gave their all for it."
E-mail: janoski@northjersey.com
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