What a ride we're on... Sometimes I think the anxious people, the people with high blood pressure, the people always on edge, maybe even the paranoid folks...sometimes I think they're more right that the calm ones. Why should we think good things will happen today? Heaven knows there are lots of bad things happening. Reading …
Honor
"You can't compare men back then to men today. There's just no comparison." So said one of the more compelling Civil War Reenactors I talked to at the "Battle of Waynesboro" in Waynesboro, Virginia last weekend. What he meant was that there was something that the combat veterans of the American Civil War understood, …
Still in the Wake of The Civil War
Here's an interesting question: what types of ceremonies, rituals, and celebrations are appropriate for remembering the war officially known as "The War Between The States"? (So said Congress in 1948, one reenactor pointed out to me last weekend.) Actually, Wikipedia refutes my friend the reenactor, saying Congress never officially legislated a name for the war. …
What Two Months of Civil War Reading Will Do To You
"It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped." After two months of reading, and a trip to Gettysburg, Washington, D.C., and Virginia, here's a little of what's on my mind: The Civil War The battle for how history is told Robert E. Lee and "honor" The muddy boots …
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JEFF BERRYMAN 