What’s the Glory in the Corwin Story?

Here we go! Another installment in my Slaughtering Sacred Cows series. Last time I took on Winston Churchill and it went pretty well with very few nastygrams except for that text from the Queen Mum that was not even close to being on topic (and was highly inappropriate). Anyway this time I’m going to take on something that for a major part of the population is held to be sacred and beyond question. That is, the Union cause during the War Between the States better known to the smattering of Americans who are interested in it as the American Civil War. Now I don’t have to spend a lot of time setting this one up. We all at least remember some of what we were “taught” back in school about the war, (through the haze of testosterone run amok, or estrogen for my seven female readers) and how the North fought the South to end slavery. It makes a cozy picture in that it puts the Union on the side of good and the Confederacy in the camp of pretty bad but not totally contemptible, thus allowing Southerners to wallow in shame without losing every last scrap of their self-esteem.  Like so many other watered down history lessons we have a good versus bad picture that makes the history easy to swallow. Unfortunately once you learn a little bit about the subject you find that it can be a little difficult to digest. As a yumpkin, lil’ Grossy was taught these lessons too and I more or less bought into them until my formal schooling was over and I started my real education.

First off reader, if you’ve been paying any attention at all you’ll know that Lincoln was far, far more interested in maintaining the nation’s status quo than he ever was in ending slavery. He wanted to keep slavery from entering the new territories but as for the original Southern states he was in the swim with slavery going on indefinitely. Granted, Abe certainly considered slavery to be a moral wrong but he had such a fetish when it came to the Union that he was willing to allow slavery to continue. We’ll leave aside Jefferson’s explicit statements about the states being permitted to leave the Union if the Federal government impinges on the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That’s for another post. By someone else. But consider this little snippet from the Abe-ster from a letter written to Horace Greeley in 1862. Now you should have read this somewhere by now but if I’m breaking it to you for the first time then this is kind of like we’re going to the prom. I guess.

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause.

The dude just could not let the Union go. You know how you have that buddy who dates a girl for like a month, and he thinks he’s in love, and she dumps him, and then he just can’t let her go, and he starts writing her bad poetry, and makes you drive along with him as he drives past her house, and then you look over and there’s no one in the passenger seat and you realize that it’s just been you in the car all along, and you’re alone going on these weird missions to drive past this girl’s house even though you never even learned her middle name? You know what I mean?………….. Reader? Well that’s sort of like Abe during the Civil War.

But this post isn’t just about Abe Lincoln. No reader, there’s another topic in this post but sometimes it takes me a while to bring it around town. I want to talk about the Corwin Amendment, or as we almost called it, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. Wha, wha, wha? That’s right reader, it wasn’t just Abe who was willing to let slavery exist in order to keep the Union all cozy and together, it was members of both houses of Congress, North and South. The Amendment was offered by Ohio Representative Thomas Corwin as a way to keep the Southern states from seceding so in a sense it told the slaves that while years from now average people will think that the North fought the war to free you, as of right now in 1861 you can go and shit in your hat. It was actually passed by the 36th Congress with a vote of 133 to 65 and states the following:

No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.

That “persons held to labor or service” part isn’t referring to some “ethnic gentleman” you’re paying under the table to cut your grass. Oh no, they’re talking slaves there. So there it is. The Northern Congress was willing to do whatever it took to keep the slave states in the Union and yet somehow this fact seems to have been lost to history.

Back to Abe. In no less important a speech than his first inaugural he mentions the Corwin Amendment and says this:

I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution—which amendment, however, I have not seen—has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service…[H]olding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.

He also says this in the same speech.

I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.

So there’s the Great Emancipator weighing in. Doesn’t sound like he’s in the mood to do much manicpatin’ right there. Abe came around over time and did in fact take the position that slavery should be abolished but next time you look at a penny (five dollar bills are so hard to come by) spare a moment and think about the Corwin Amendment which almost became part of our Constitution and yet is about as well understood by most people as escrow.

H.R. Gross

From Russia With Blood

How about we slaughter a sacred cow! Not your usual early fall rallying cry, and for you veggies out there we don’t do so in a literal way but in a literary way here at There’s Free Cheese in Every Mousetrap (™ pending. Need more monetary contributions. Currently have zero. You can do it!)  What we do, for the newcomers, is take a well-loved historical figure and point out their faults in order to round out the whole picture of that person in a way that mainstream historians and the media seem to be incapable of doing. So we’re not here to assassinate characters but just turn some of the black and white picture into more of a smudgy, pastel gray. (Nice way to describe your writing Shakespeare!) Anyway, we (and by we I mean I) just posted one of the Sacred Cow series not long ago concerning Che Guevara here. Previous installments can be found here, here, here, here, here, and here. They’re very good. Read em’ all! Because,*Masochist Alert!* nothing generates good hate mail like me dishing on the Sacred Cows.

So reader, you know for a while I could not stop writing about Russia (we’ll call it my red phase.) I mean I was just bewitched, bothered, and bewildered by the Soviets. When it comes to hatred of the State no one presents quite as juicy of a target as did Lenin/Stalin and the rest of the comrades. Sure they didn’t kill as many people as say Mao, or horrifically murder a quarter of the population like Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, or try to wipe out an entire ethnic group like the Nazis, but the Soviets were able to combine elements of all these aforementioned groups into one eerie, bone chilling package. And before we move on you should also know I’m an anti-collectivist to the nth degree and thus have no love for Soviet Russia in the broad sense but in today’s post I’m actually going to give the U.S.S.R. some kudos while taking the west to task. Well, mainly the western media and education establishment. You see I’m about to tackle something that in the U.S. anyway is nearly verboten. Tom Brokaw if you’re reading this, (Don’t look at me like that reader. He could be a Free Cheeser) please close this window and go back to Yahoo or Fakebook. You see I’m going to talk about a subject that was, and is, literally never discussed in American schools nor in the mainstream media. I’m going to talk about…(I’m stalling here because I can’t even bring myself to say it) well, the fact that, um……..Jesus Gross just say it! Alright. The U.S. didn’t defeat Nazi Germany it was mainly the Soviet Union! There! What a catharsis. I’ll pause here to allow you to A.) Close this blog and remove it from your favorites. B.) Run to your copy of Saving Private Ryan, turn it on, and sit with your knees to your chin while rocking back and forth and cursing H.R. Gross C.) Go and look up what the word catharsis means. D.)There is no D. So if you’ve made it to this point read on!

Now if you aren’t from the U.S. * Free Cheese Fun Fact.* I can track where the views of my posts come from and I do have international readers. The first problem is that it’s only because of my post way back when about the Trabant that you can read here. In the post I hammered the poor little Trabant, the car that communism built, and I must say the post is pretty funny and illuminating. The real problem though is that I found out the international readers aren’t reading the post to mock communism but are actually searching online for parts for their still functioning cars and stumbling onto my post. I can only imagine what they think when they start reading. What is the acronym for WTF in Czech? Anyway, if you aren’t from the U.S. you can’t understand how we’ve been educated to believe that we as a country basically won World War 2 and all you other guys were Mr. Helpers but not the main driving force. Or maybe you can understand this because it’s probably the same in your country. Hey, you Icelanders, it’s time to take the blinders off. Seriously, you didn’t think you won the war did you? It’s certainly human nature to build yourself up a bit. Nationalism being something that doesn’t appear to be going away, I get that and I’m okay with a little chest thumping up to a degree but at some point facts have to be addressed and the books need to settled.

So again, the common portrayal of World War II in America, reinforced by endless popular shows on the numerous tv stations that are geared towards telling the story of the war for a general audience is this: The war was a bloody slog, after 1941 it was mainly America fighting Hitler, the British and Russians played ancillary roles, the Pacific war was important but a bit of a diversion (how could it not be when there was so much juicy Euro-fighting to be done?) and that in the end America prevailed, freed the Jews, Hitler took the coward’s way out, a young Roger Waters got his mind messed up, we brought the boys back home. Done. In the process several things happened. A.) Americans got a skewed view of World War II, B.) The G.I. was given an almost mythic status, C.) The cult of “we had to go over there and win two world wars” came into being.

There’s a problem with these ideas though because they’re essentially wrong. And that’s a problem isn’t it? You see what went on in Western Europe with the fighting involving the Americans and British against the Germans mainly but also the cannoli makers and their other minions, was ghastly, brutish, dehumanizing stuff. But compared to what happened on the Eastern Front between Germany and the Russians it was about as easy as getting a cat to ignore you. On the Eastern Front we’re talking massive battles with front lines hundreds of miles long. These armies were giant mechanized armored killing machines, both led by megalomaniacs, bent on erasing their opponents from the earth. It was Teuton versus Slav for all the marbles in a continent sized cage match. For the Nazis it was a death struggle in an attempt to knock the Russians out of the war and then hopefully finish the British, Americans and what was left of the French, or at least consolidate their gains and come to some type of agreement on Germany’s western boundaries. For the Soviets it was “The Great Patriotic War” and literally concerned the survival of Mother Russia. That spud Hitler would no doubt have turned that massive country into one giant slave labor camp if given the chance. Though in fairness to the Big H, Stalin almost did that after the war to his own people but I’ve discussed that in other posts. Use the search box on the home page and go read em’! Anyway, massive atrocities took place on both sides and commanders, especially on the Russian side, often forced troops into battle at gunpoint. Extreme weather led to incalculable pain, misery, and death. Civilians were murdered, tortured, and displaced in almost unbelievable numbers. This was deep war.

Check out these spicy numbers: World War II led to around 60 to 70 million deaths both military and civilian, (You know it’s a big conflict when your rounding error is 10 million people) and of those deaths around half took place on the Eastern Front. The Soviets lost around 25 million alone which translates into around 15% of their entire pre-war population. Imagine a war where the United States lost 15% of its population. My abacus tells me that would be a cool 48 million. Oh and by the way 8 out of every 10 German soldiers in the war were killed where? Not during the attack on Kansas City, but good guess. No, on the Eastern Front. Some of these battles could almost constitute a war in themselves. Stalingrad, Leningrad (with a 900 day siege), Kursk (the largest tank battle in history) the Battle of Moscow, Rostov, and so many more. And every battle contained a million little forgotten horror stories by combatants and civilians alike.

Stalin fumed while the U.S. and Britain first sent their armies to Africa instead of the European theater. Their thinking was that they’d take Germany by doing “the old reach around” and coming up through Italy. Stalin on the other hand viewed it as the Allies being more than willing to fight to the last Russian and to let the two crazies go at it until there was nothing left. And in fairness to the Allies, they dealt with some seriously bloody battles especially in Italy, (against German troops of course. Capiche?)

Now Russians died in such great numbers for a number of reasons besides just bravery and being the main focus of the Germans. Many of the deaths were due to the fact that the battles took place on Russian soil so everyone in the population got involved whether they wanted to or not. You know it’s all hands on deck when the Wehrmacht comes rolling into town. Couple this with poor leadership since during the Great Purge the ever kooky Stalin killed off hundreds of experienced military commanders that he viewed as a fifth column looking to take him down. Also, who would have guessed that the mighty Soviet socialized economy, pride of communists around the world, would be incapable of supplying the army with its needs? This lack of supplies ended up killing a lot of Red Army soldiers and also forced the Soviets to take major subsidies of war materiel from the west, specifically the United States. One sad by-product of robust capitalism is that it can create all the killing devices one could ever want whenever we decide to let slip the dogs of war.

One hilarious quote that we history majors have been throwing around for decades, hold your side and prepare to wet the pants, is that the war was won with American dollars and Russian blood…….Honestly history majors aren’t know for their humor but it’s always better when you hear it in person. Why couldn’t it have been the Soviets and Italians who won the war? Then we could attribute it to Russian hands and Roman fingers. Now that’s funny. Alas, the quirks of history rarely make for good comedy.

H.R. Gross

 

Che Dream Believers, or What a Day for a Che Dream

At Free Cheese this seems to be the summer of the Sacred Cow. Coincidentally, the Summer of the Sacred Cow is the name of a little Indian restaurant downtown that I drunkenly stumbled into one night and tried to order a cheese steak. Nothing like being frog marched out of an establishment at midnight by three angry busboys and a hostess but it was an honest mistake. No, by now if you’ve been reading Free Cheese like you claim you have you know what the Slaughtering Sacred Cows series is and I’m calling this the Summer of the Sacred Cow because I have not one but two Sacred Cow posts to unleash on the public. For the uninitiated, or those who for reasons only known to them search for “slaughtering cows” online, * a shiver runs down Gross’ prematurely curved spine, what I do is take a well-loved figure, or movement (though don’t we all love a good movement?) and expose their darker side thus giving a more well-rounded portrayal than the pop culture/ 8th grade history textbook stuff that we’re all used to. We all know that even for the saintly, or those considered saintly by the masses, for every twenty great things they did they dropped a few clangers as well. Character traits are sort of like oysters (or kids.) They can seem pretty damn terrific until you run into that one rotten one.

Anyway, I’ve got several previous installments in the series where you can read about the following: Winston Churchill here, Nelson Mandela, here Abe Lincoln, here and Martin Luther King, here. Today though we’re going south of the border muchachos y muchachas and we’re going to discuss that one man who has seemingly taken over the silk screen t-shirt industry from the grave. He is so adored and revered by musicians, quasi-intellectuals, actors, and that rarest of breeds, quasi-intellectual actors who think they are musicians (see, Depp, Johnny) that to question his sainthood among the celebrity-entertainment-university-industrial complex is considered a heresy of a high degree. These people define Lennonism- See Free Cheese Glossary.

So who else could we be talking about besides Che Guevera? Now granted, for those with a smidgen of common sense Guevera is a pretty easy target but considering how many people not only sport his iconic image on $80 hipster t-shirts but also believe in what he espoused I think it’s high time to get out the white apron and do a little butchering. Though in a way we’re going to go after the members of the cult of Che as much as the man himself. He just liked to kill people and that’s a bit of a buzzkill, but it’s these followers, who should know better, who really irk me because most of them know about the killing and they think that’s just way cool.

So let’s start by talking a little bit about an actor who clearly has a crush on Che and that’s Benicio Del Toro whose hipness factor is currently off the charts. He in fact portrayed Che in the movie, uh, Che released in 2008. Now clearly Del Toro did his homework on Che and really looked into the man’s actions and motivations for his killing and torture of Cubans which we’ll discuss in due time. In his interview with the Guardian, Del Toro discusses his intellectual pursuit of the man he idolizes when he told the interviewer:

“I hear of this guy and he’s got a cool name. Che Guevara!” (The interviewer then cuts in), Del Toro as good as swoons when he says it. And the appeal does seem as simple as that – groovy name, groovy man, groovy politics.

And then there’s Depp. In one of his Deep Depp thoughts he has said he “digs” Che. And he’s got a necklace with Che’s face to prove it! And probably a T-shirt as well, both produced by a capitalist and sold to him at a price that the free market would bear. Sort of like the movies Depp and Del Toro make. Can’t……..handle…….the………irony………much longer.

Then there’s the musicians. Madonna, Jay-Z, Santana, Rage Against the Machine, and plenty more all see Che as an inspiration and, well dammit, just plain cool. Again the irony is just too rich, (and the musicians just too uninformed) since the very music they use to fill their pockets via that most peculiar institution of capitalism would have been banned in Che’s communist paradise. American and British music, particularly rock, was viewed as imperialist garbage and thus prohibido in Cuba. Although in fairness, this  piece in the New York Times describes how the communist party on the island lifted the ban on the Beatles, Hooray! * in 2011. Oh. Now that’s a long and winding road.

But maybe all these celebrities need to be given a pass for perhaps they don’t even know enough to know how much they don’t know. Maybe they just read what the man said and it sounds good on paper and they can comfortably espouse his ideas of fairness, justice, and equality. So with that being said, let’s look at just what Che did in fact say in order to dig a little deeper and understand the motivations of these people.

“Youth must refrain from ungrateful questioning of governmental mandates.  Instead, they must dedicate themselves to study, work and military service.”

“Youth should learn to think and act as a mass.  It is criminal to think as individuals!”

“We must do away with all newspapers.  A revolution cannot be accomplished with freedom of the press.”

“To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary.  These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail.  This is a revolution!  And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate.”

“The blacks, those magnificent examples of the African race who have conserved their racial purity by a lack of affinity with washing, have seen their patch invaded by a different kind of slave: The Portuguese.”

“I fired a .32 caliber bullet into the right hemisphere of his brain which came out through his left temple.  He moaned for a few moments, then died.”

And lastly, a touching note from son to father:

“I’d like to confess, Papa, at that moment I discovered that I really like killing.”

Oh. Well, so much for what the man said. Perhaps it’s what Che actually did in the world that makes him so cute! cute! cute! to the Hollywood crowd. Let’s look at his real world actions, devoid of the fiery blood and guts rhetoric.

Let’s see. As a hardcore revolutionary he was responsible for killing or ordering the deaths of “class enemies” all in the name of furthering the cause. As you can see by some of the quotes up there ↑ he played pretty loose and fast with those whole trial and proof thingies. Castro put Che in charge of La Cabana prison which is where anybody who was anybody in the counterrevolutionary scene went to get a little of the good stuff they had coming. You know, torture, summary execution, etc. So here we’ll quote a guy named Pierre San Martin, a political prisoner who ended up in La Cabana. He’s discussing the plight of a young boy, maybe 12 or 13 years old, freshly beaten and thrown into the prison after trying to defend his father while he was being murdered by the revolutionaries. In the book Exposing the Real Che Guevara: And the Useful Idiots who Idolize Him by Humberto Fontova, we get a peek into Che’s habits at La Cabana.

Soon Che’s guards returned. The rusty steel door opened and they yanked the boy out of the cell. “We all rushed to the cell’s window that faced the execution pit,” recalls San Martin. “We simply couldn’t believe they’d murder him. Then we spotted him, strutting around the blood-drenched execution yard with his hands on his waist and barking orders-Che Guevara himself. ‘Kneel down!’ Che barked at the boy. ‘Assassins!’ We screamed from our window…The boy stared Che resolutely in the face, ‘if you’re going to kill me’ he yelled, ‘You’ll have to do it while I’m standing! Men die standing!’ The men yelled desperately from their cells, “Then we saw Che un-holstering his pistol. He put the barrel to the back of the boy’s neck and blasted. The shot almost decapitated the young boy.”

Okay, scrap the “real world actions” line of thought. That only leaves two options. Either the Che idolizers are so totally clueless that they truly don’t realize how bad the dude was or else they do know and just figure that for the advancement of the cause some cracking of skulls needed to be done. You see while Che was probably a sociopath, his advantage was a bit of a Goldilocks situation. He didn’t kill too many people, or too few, and for that reason it’s cool to wear his shirt in a way one could never feel good about wearing a Jeffrey Dahmer shirt or a Hitler, Stalin, or Mao. Though I have seen a Mao shirt, the biggest killer of all, but that’s for another post. Imagine glowing song lyrics celebrating Timothy McVeigh or Slobodan Milosevic. No, Che is in the sweet spot, knocking off just enough capitalist pigs to make him acceptable for fashion and song lyrics but still dangerous enough to keep the hipness meter pegging.

 In closing you can watch a short video about this subject Here compliments of Reason magazine and our audio/visual department here at Free Cheese. So until next time as Madonna would say, ¡Viva La Revolución!****just don’t take my stuff.

H.R. Gross

 

Too Much Bulge in the Battle

Brothers and seven sisters, readers of Free Cheese, lend me your eyes because as part of my Slaughtering Sacred Cows series (previous posts in the series can be read here  about Lincoln, and here about Churchill) I’m about to poke a hole in a hobby that apparently is enjoyed by thousands of grown men and women across this country. You see them on the news occasionally or perhaps you’ve seen them in person. They wear hot, tight-fitting clothing and do quite a bit of moving around. They dwell on minutiae, usually take themselves pretty seriously, and are often revered by those who encounter them and thus rarely have much criticism thrown their way. We’re not talking about yoga enthusiasts here, though I know they fit many of the above descriptors. No reader, I’m going to discuss Civil War reenactors.

Oh I can hear you now and not because I’m staked out in the shrubbery outside your house (anymore) as an audible gasp echoes across the internet. “How dare you Gross! Those people out there camping and marching around are honoring those who fought in that war that is above all criticism. We don’t make fun of your bog snorkeling hobby.” Not the point reader. Short of harming someone’s person or property against their will I am cool with anyone’s hobby whether it’s polishing balls of dirt which has the fancy name of dorodango or grooming your dog to look like a panda or a buffalo or extreme ironing.

Now let me tell you something about Gross here. I have an undergraduate degree in History from a well-known, some would say infamous university so in theory I should have a certain affinity, even a kinship with these people I’m about to tear down. When it comes to history I’m a lover not a hater and I was making my bones in 400 level 19th century history classes when you were dating cheerleaders. It’s just that I have a few problems with Civil War reenactors.

So first off, first let me first get the more trivial one out of the way first. This deals with the physical characteristics of those who take part in reenacting. Keep in mind, as I’ve mentioned many of these individuals take this stuff very seriously, sometimes to the point of obsession, and no doubt spend sleepless nights worrying about things like whether their haversack is a few inches too long (braggarts!) or if the buttons on their coat are true to the style of their regiment. Apparently nothing is more embarrassing than not being true to your uniform. However, when it comes to another piece of the puzzle, well, that’s a different tub of Crisco. You see the thing is, the size of the average soldier in the Civil War was 5’8″ and 143 pounds. Uh oh. Now granted, there’s nothing you can do about your height, I’ve tried, but when it comes to weight, that’s something else. Honestly, I don’t care what you weigh, in fact I’m hovering around 185 completely naked, which I may or may not be as I write this. * (Webcam $3.99 per minute) But, or butt in this case, if you’re going to take the time to make sure everything in your get up is correct right down to your 19th century undergarments you should damn well take the time to lose the 21st century roof over your toolshed and get down to your correct playing weight. You can scour all the historical documents out there and you’ll never find an account of Colonel Pallet Ass leading a charge up Peanut Butter Hill, so to see a bunch of 280 pound infantrymen with barbed wire bicep tattoos out there marching around all red-faced and sucking wind is just not historically accurate.

Now we turn to the real problem I have with the Civil War reenactor hobby. This should be obvious but it seems that people either never give this much thought or else push it to the back of their minds. The thing is, there’s no death. No terror, no fear, no deprivation, no lice, no bayonet thrusts through your gut, no infected gangrenous wounds, no piles of sawed off limbs, and no lead balls flying through your head or through your sternum and then cracking your spinal cord in half. Much less that wound that never seems to make it into the movies, the wound that dare not speak its name, the understandably dreaded scrotum shot.

I often wonder what Civil War soldiers would think if they could see the reenactors. Some in the reenactor community feel safe saying that the Civil War soldiers would be honored by the hobby but I feel just as safe saying that at least some portion of them would be horrified. Keep in mind, many of them were drafted and even those who went willingly often grew disillusioned with the whole thing and couldn’t wait to get home. Of course many never made it home or came home in boxes, or else came home with certain pieces missing. Anywhere from 600,000 to 725,000 Americans died in that war. Is that something that should be celebrated by people pretending to kill one another and in reality heading back home afterwards for a nice meal and some reality TV? I can easily picture a Civil War soldier who somehow could see these reenactments saying, well first saying ” God, I’m really old.” But after that grabbing one of the reenactors by their woolen lapels and giving them a good shake while screaming, “Why would you want to reenact this? I saw five of my best friends torn in half by artillery fire right in front of me! I got sprayed with their blood and their brains! Don’t reenact this, it was horrible.”

A true reenactment would be to wound yourself, say a deep puncture wound, and then use only 19th century medical techniques to try to heal yourself. “See how he’s shivering nurse even though he’s hot? We’d better bleed him of another pint of blood to cure him of the vapors.” Or better yet, add some serious realism to the whole thing by randomly having one out of every ten men actually jam a lead ball down the barrel of his rifle. That would quickly add that component of true fear that reenacting by its nature is forced to leave out.

Regardless of how one feels about the American Civil War, and there are in fact arguments for and against the war for a myriad of reasons which I can’t go into in this post, learning history is one thing but pretending to be part of it for kicks is something far different. If people want to remember what happened between 1861 and 1865 that’s fine. People should. Read about it, write about it, write and perform a mime sketch about it, hell watch one Ted Turner’s crappy movies but don’t try to do what those men did and then cheapen it by leaving out the most crucial part of the whole thing. Real live human beings were getting mangled.

H.R. Gross