It is 105 stultifying degrees on rural Virginia farmland, and 8,700 sweaty people slog under heavy rifles and soaking layers of wool. For two days, in front of bleachers overflowing with 11,000 glistening paid spectators, they turn the soupy air to thunder with cannons and rifle blanks. Over loudspeakers, a color commentator narrates enthusiastically: “When we asked ‘How do they do it?’, what we‘re really asking is ‘Could I have done it?’”
Last month’s all-volunteer reenactment of the First Battle of Manassas kicked off four years of commemorative events for the Civil War’s 150th anniversary. It’s both history lesson and entertainment by death, a temporary vacation world in which observers clutch cataclysm-themed merchandise, and once they fall, mortally wounded infantry spend the night amputation-free at the Motel 6.
The recent Latter Battle of Manassas, also called Bull Run, grabbed media attention but it may be one of the only truly massive events of the war’s sesquicentennial. Most events will be small and organized on the grassroots or local level.
Even at Manassas, officials won’t say yet whether the July reenactment was financially successful enough to warrant another for the Second Battle of Bull Run on its 150th next August.
Why is America holding its fire? Fifty years ago, on the 100th anniversary of the war, the federal government tried to mount a four-year, blockbuster commemoration, but the whole event was gutted by politics.
The first commemorative event of July 1961 — the same one mirrored by last month’s sweltering rumble — proved to be the centennial’s undoing. Then, some 120,000 tourists stampeded to the circus-like replay of Manassas — digging up relics, trampling soldIers‘ unmarked graves — and the resulting furor gave reenactments a bad name.
It didn’t help that Southern states disdained mentioning slavery since many were actively defending segregation. As a result, President Kennedy banned all reenactments on federal land, so for the 150th, no National Park will arrange or host any.
Private land has been lost, too. Antietam, the pivotal clash near Hagerstown, MD, had re-enactments in 1997 and 2002, but the fields used have since been developed, and there’s no battle planned there for next year.
This year, with the issue suddenly a hot topic once more, Congress decided not to touch the 150th birthday of federal power. So any major events will have to be organized locally – and likely will not take off unless communities see potential for tourist cash.
So, instead of multi-day immersive attractions, Civil War commemoratives are erring toward the bookish with walking tours, expert lectures, and one-day living history encampments — edifying, but not epic.
Still, most Civil War sites are doing something meaningful. In a glass case at the visitors center in Fredericksburg, VA, rangers display era newspapers open to the same date in 1861 so visitors can track the growing gloom of war in real time.
Civil War tourists should take a page from that idea: Follow the timeline of the war, since most events will fall near its anniversary. The National Park Service tries to keep abreast of activities with its homepage at nps.gov/cwindepth, but fans, not feds, are your best resource. The non-partisan group Civil War Trust maintains a schedule at CivilWar.org, as does enthusiast group CivilWarTraveler.com.
Three out of five Civil War battles happened in Virginia, where the Confederates tried in vain to topple Washington, and the state steps in where Uncle Sam bows out by maintaining a calendar at VirginiaCivilWar.com. Washington’s wealth of other related sites (Ford’s Theatre, Arlington House) makes it an ideal touring base. Two of the most crucial battles, Antietam, and the apocalyptic Gettysburg, both happened an hour north. On December 3, Antietam holds its annual Battlefield Illumination, when 23,000 candles — one for every casualty there — are lit and visitors thread slowly among them.
Of all the 150th events, the most lavish (living history villages, mortar fire) falls July 2013 in Gettysburg, where the tourism machine needs to feed a $103 million visitor center erected with private funds in 2008. Many Americans barely remember that from 1861 to 1865, national disunion was catastrophically worse than it’s ever been since. We were technically two nations with two presidents, and more than 600,000 of us died reversing that and freeing slaves.
Perhaps ironically, the legacy of the Civil War makes for an illuminating family vacation for that very reason: If we can survive the Civil War, we can probably survive just about anything.
FIT FOR A KING?
A first look at Washington’s newest memorial
Despite its dedication on Aug. 28, the 48th anniversary of his “I Have a Dream” speech (organizers had trouble booking celebrity performers because the MTV VMAs fall on the same day), King as a civil rights leader is downplayed in his long-delayed, $120 million memorial now open on Washington’s Tidal Basin.
Instead, architects carved 14 King quotations about general humanitarian issues on its sweeping 450-foot stone crescent. His statue, carved in Chinese granite by Chinese sculptor Lei Yixin, might have looked better on the drawing board, because it’s so monumental (30 feet tall) that admirers wind up peeping unflatteringly up King’s sport coat.
Heavily backed by corporate donors, it features some rather clunky symbolism — he’s carved on a “Stone of Hope,” that is pulled out of a “Mountain of Despair,” as per his speech — but the craftsmanship (partly by Chinese stoneworkers) is seamless.
Unintentionally, its new 182 cherry trees, which will blossom over the April 4 anniversary of his assassination, may endure as the most popular element of the design. King is the first non-president to be honored solo on the National Mall (nps.gov/nacc).