European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - January 17, 1989, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Actor James Getty playing the role of Abraham Lincoln reviews Union troops during ceremonies marking the 125th anniversary of Lincoln s Gettysburg address. Fever Confederate army soldiers face their adversaries in a re enactment of the 1862 Battle of Antietam near Sharpsburg my. By Michae Kernan Washington Post Hose who saw it remembered it All their lives a mile Long line of men in Gray straight As a ruler 15,000 of them marching inexorably across the Valley their feet kicking up the dust and chaff like the dash of Spray at the prow of a vessel As one observer recalled with the flags flying and the officers swords glinting in the afternoon Haze while a vast hush fell Over the Field of Gettysburg. Last summer on the 125th anniversary of the Battle an army of civil War fans re enacted that scene Pickett s charge perhaps the most poignant moment of the american 19th Century. It was not the same of course for one thing it took place five Miles from the actual site because the National Park service feared lawsuits from possible injuries. But for 10,000 hobbyists it was a thrill they would never forget. The civil War is alive and Well in America today. It is booming in fact. The people who find truth in statistics claim there Are 250,000 civil War hobbyists in the country whatever that May signify. New books appear almost daily from Coffee table extravaganzas to serious works based on fresh material which amazingly is still turning up in attics and Steamer trunks a new biography last year of dashing Confederate Gen. . Hill was largely based on letters and diaries found just a decade ago. People Are looking for new stuff they re not satisfied with the old Standard histories said Ron  sickle proprietor of military books in Gaithersburg md., which has some 15,000 civil War volumes. There Are still Battles that Haven t been written  though his regular customers have kept the civil War traffic pretty steady Over the last 15 years or so he noted the emergence of new magazines Blue and Gray and America s civil War along with the older civil War times illustrated not to mention  spectacular bestsellers As James Mcpherson s one volume history 8afr/e cry of Freedom Gore Vidal s Lincoln the picture Book Distant Thunder and so on. The production of period uniforms and paraphernalia is big business c & d Jarnagin co. In Corinth miss., for instance employs 27 people up from 20 last year and turns out everything from authentic Union under drawers $13.75 to officers frock Coats $375. The passion for re creating history goes far beyond uniforms and weapons. Most replicas of the 1853 Enfield and the trusty Springfield come from Italy today and they fire authentic Black powder though without bullets besides Soldier outfits Jarnagin manufactures old time Jefferson brogans the first shoes that featured different shapes for left and right. He also produces period coffeepots food tins and tobacco packets. The re enactment craze alone has attracted an estimated 40,000 people across the United states not All men by any Means who spend their spare time learning to Drill and shoot and bivouac the Way soldiers did Back then. And the Battlefield Tours a professional guide in Washington can figure on doing 15 one or two Day trips a year for the smithsonian plus five great journeys expeditions lasting up to a week and any number of round table seminars on the War. And the occasional vip tour for members of Congress. And now the movies. Tri Star pictures plans a major film with shooting to Start next March or april in Savannah ga., on the 54th Massachusetts regiment the first Black regiment recruited by the Union. The movie glory ends with the ill fated charge on fort Wagner at Charleston s.c., spearheaded by Black troops whose colonel was Robert Gould Shaw. There were 300,000 Blacks in that War said the future Captain of the 54th s company a Brian Pohanka who worked for six years on time life books 27-volume civil War series. We think their role has been badly neglected and we Hope this picture will encourage More Black people to take an interest in the history. Did you know that it was a corps of Black troops that Cut off Lee at Appomattox Pohanka is recruiting 40 Washington area men to portray company a one of 10 companies of Amateur actors to be selected from All Over the country. The film company will pay for about half the Cost of uniforms As Well As for two weeks of work before the cameras. He directed queries to himself co 54th Massachusetts Box 1601, Alexandria a. 22313. At a major re enactment you find civil War surgeons with appropriate instrument replicas and nurses dressed the Way nurses would be dressed and even a latter Day Matthew Brady in the person of John coffer an enthusiast from new York who makes photographs with the old wet plate collodion process. He s so into it All that he travels the battlefields in a horse drawn buggy and shaves with a straight razor. Though the Hobby has taken hold most dramatically in the East Jarnagin co. Owner John Jarnagin places the epicentre in Southwest Pennsylvania it spreads As far As California which looms Large in something called the Reen actors directory. Edwin Bearss chief historian for the National Park service said interest in re enactments comes in  he traced the peaks of interest from the 1890s, when Many veterans were alive and prosperous enough to endow Parks and memorials to the 20s, when the car gave new mobility to fans to the 50s. Now it s just surging he said. When the smithsonian comes out with a Battlefield tour you have to sign up the same Day or you re out of  what strikes everyone in the business is the variety of people involved. Age sex financial status it makes no difference. It s a family thing said Jarnagin. The husband starts going off on these trips and so the wife wants to join in. Some of them go As civilians just like it really was. Some women want uniforms. And it seems to be balanced Between North and South you get about 40 percent of people in one Region going for the opposite Side. It s really  what is All this War fever Why the civil War particularly partly it has to do As Jarnagin Bearss and others will Tell you right off with the fact that the country is not at War. We romanticize War when we re not actually fighting one Bearss pointed out. For centuries people have bemoaned the fact that War has a nostalgic perhaps morbid attraction a time of release from the restraints of civilization when All rules Are off and murder rape theft and destruction Are condoned. Partly it has to do with the fact that the civil War was the last More or less chivalrous War in which civilians were for the most part left alone and enemy soldiers would gallantly spare one another on occasion. A civil War always has its own bittersweet brother against brother flavor at Fredericksburg Union and Confederate pickets traded tobacco and Coffee across the Tappahannock. At Shiloh wounded from both sides gathered at bloody Pond to help each other. This could be Why re Enactor have  an egalitarian attitude about which Side they represent the issues that caused the War while still reverberating no longer dominate our lives the boys in Gray and Blue Are just boys now. It is easy to be nostalgic about a storybook War. You Don t find people re enacting the nazi massacre at Lidice. Or for that matter the Normandy invasion the scale is simply too vast. The civil War was the last War you could walk to. And it was Here just Down the Highway. It was our very own private War. The civil War has another pull for urbanized industrialized America it was a rustic War whose killing grounds have names like the peach Orchard the wheat Field Frayser s farm the Hornet s nest reminders of the Rural childhoods that so Many of us had or thought we had. Maybe it is in search of that lost idyll that people dress up in old fashioned clothes and try so desperately to wish themselves into a time Warp. Recently Bearss took a Busload of fans on an All Day tour of the seven Days Battle of june 1862, when Union Gen. George b. Mcclellan and his army of 90,000, hesitating within the sound of Richmond s Church Bells were beaten Back in a series of desperate Battles. On the trip Down Bearss reviewed the situation the strategies and the personalities of the generals involved. Some of the 48 passengers seemed to know almost As much As he did and Many brought their own maps and reference books. The group visited Chickahominy Bluffs overlooking the place where Stonewall Jackson was supposed to come in on the Union flank but did t. Jackson was emphatically tragically for the South not at his Best in the seven Day Bearss noted he May have been exhausted after cleaning up the Shenandoah Valley historical markers a Roadside Stop and a platform were the Only signs of the War and farther on at Beaver dam Creek there was even less. The confederates came across this swamp Bearss said and 6,000 federals were up on that Hill. The water was neck deep Down by the dam so the men crossed upstream there. . Hill attacked on a mile wide front but the Only Way they were going to take it was if Jackson flanked the enemy and he did t  the confederates lost 1,200 men in that disastrous struggle one regiment alone the 44th Georgia losing 334 men barely less than the total Union casualties. The swamp was full of drowned Oaks now and the Black water moved sluggishly among the cattails. A Hundred Yards away cars whizzed by on an elevated Highway. Apartment houses covered the Union Ridge and As we left the area to drive through Mechanicsville poor looking blurbs sprawled where farms wheat Fields and Orchards had stood. We stopped by Walnut Hill Church where Lee finally caught up with the tardy Jackson. We stared in silence at the gravel parking lot the spot where they talked. We tried to see them there the mud spattered weary Jackson laconic mostly listening looking at his feet the gentlemanly Lee somehow unable to really lash out at his subordinate and probably in the end taking the blame himself. As he would at Gettysburg. On to Gaines Mill where Bearss paced Back and Forth crouching stretching waving his arms As he described the fighting frenzy one Man plugged his stomach wound with his canteen Cap and rushed on and took us Down to the Creek where Hood s texans broke through. Here is where Lee at last got All his people to attack at once the guide said. They came on through the Woods and up the Hill  we straggled behind him to the Stone Marker showing where Mcclellan decided he had had enough. A huge Oak nearby had no branches for the first 50 feet just a series of gnarled knobs and healed limb stumps on its trunk the bark still furrowed and twisted. After lunch the bus pushed on East to the Grapevine Bridge where Mcclellan announced his retrograde movement and we stood beside the Highway watching a Man and his two Small daughters fishing in the dark Chickahominy and then to Savage station now a pasture barbed wire and four horses Between two freeways and an Airport. Lee had the Union just where he wanted pm now retreating a 10-mile Snake on the Road. It was a great Chance. All he had to do was coordinate his attack. " but he never did. His last shot was at Malvern Hill and once More he was done in by his floundering generals suffering a final sickening defeat. Mcclellan left anyway taking his army Back to Washington in boats. I think All americans Are interested in the civil War said Eldon Josh Billings of Washington a Veteran of these Tours. People have ancestors who were in it. Even the women it s not just the Battles but the whole life the world of the 19th Century. It s our  Billings belongs to nine separate round table groups owns 5,000 books on the War and has been a fan for 50 years. He remembers when you could buy regimental histories for a Dollar now they re collector s items Selling for Page 14 hundreds. A radio Man in world War ii who flew the Hump in Burma he is a retired economist. He was travelling with mrs Homer Davis a longtime Friend and civil War expert. Both their spouses died in 1982. She is a sixth generation native of Maryland and was wearing a sweater that said save your Confederate Money on one Side and the South will Rise again on the other. She specializes in Gravestone research. About a third of the group were women. Fifty ish Allen kitchens of Arlington va., a state department intelligence executive said his father started him on the War. He does t collect books but he reads a lot. One thing they Don t Point out he said is that while Grant was called a Butcher for All the casualties he took Lee was perfectly willing to take heavy losses  it was Lee who said it is Well that War is so terrible or we should grow too fond of  when Bearss finished his Day Long lecture he got a big hand. He is one of the Best in the business a 33-year Veteran of the Park service chief historian seven years. In world War ii he saw action As a Marine at Guadalcanal and new Britain where he was seriously wounded. He got hooked on the civil War As a sixth grader. I be logged a lot of hours at this he said. I learn things from these different groups. It s also notable what a difference All these concerned people have made in getting the battlefields saved from developers. Look at the noise they made Over that Manassas business. And you know first generation americans Are just As concerned As the others. It makes you feel this interest is All  we ended on Malvern Hill at the spot where Lee s artillery attacked piecemeal Only to be chewed up by the federals once again ranged along a Hilltop. When the Confederate infantry charged wave after wave was smashed by an entrenched enemy with 250 massed guns and the gunboats behind them on the James River. A cold wind swept across Malvern Hill As we stood on the Ridge under a darkening sky trying to see in our minds the Gray figures running desperately up the Long Long slope falling in rows when the grape shot ripped through their ranks and in the silence we listened for the cries and frantic shouts the screams of horses the endless ear cracking Thunder of the cannons and the snap of rifles. But there was Only the empty Field before us the Young grass bending in the wind. The stars and stripes the stars and stripes Page 15