An advantage of being a Re enactor is that you get to choose where you die. In a large field with cow patties and or mud everywhere a Re enactor will find the most pristine spot to die. Casualties a non existent in the beginning of the battle even though the two forces are shooting at each other from only about 100 yards. It is when the ammunition charges run out that men begin to fall. I found it interesting that following the troops were “Civil War Angels” women in uniform who would tend to the injured and dying. Note that the red was not found on the actual battle field that day, when I painted the red stripes on the American flag, I could not resist using the red paint elsewhere. When the battle was over, an announcer on a loud speaker announced “resurrect!” and all the dead rose back on to their feet. The audience then cheered.

Finally the moment of truth. The Union forces fired the first volley of cannon fire and the Confederate troops then followed suit. After the Union guns would fire, an explosion would occur right in front of the Confederate lines. One of those blasts caused a fire to flash up in the dry grass and suddenly the lines between fiction and truth were blurred. You can see a small group of Confederate soldiers trying to put out the blaze with buckets of water on the right side of this sketch. They did not have enough water and the fire started to spread. When the fire spread to about 20 yards wide I started to think that the tree might catch fire, then the woods. At that point a truce must have been called because Union Cavalry charged across the battle field also carrying buckets of water. With the combined forces forming a bucket brigade, the fire was finally put out.

The battle then started to heat up again as Confederate forces started to form back in the woods and they marched onto the battle field with a rebel yell. It was a sizable force and rather intimidating. As I said before, there had to be 5 Rebels to each Union Soldier.

The group, Seven Pounds of Bacon, entertained the reenactment audience just after the battle of , Narcoossee. The instruments were a washtub bass with a broomstick and a string, a mandolin, and a guitar. They made use of such modern contrivances such as microphones and a sound system. A small crowd of spectators stood around the stage and some folks started to dance.
Earlier in the day I had seen the group trying to set up the stages tent like canvas covering with some difficulty, since the wind kept whipping it around. They also had to dig a small trench to hide the electrical cords so people would not trip on them.
After the performance they came down and introduced themselves. They were quite tickled that they could recognize themselves in the quick sketch. They reminded me that as an artist I should have skipped drawing the the microphones since they are not very historically acurate.

Back in the shade of some trees, I found Captain Munson and Lieutenant Mosher relaxing smoking a cigar and sipping some grog. Captain Munson explained that only the officers were permitted a drink in camp. I don’t know what was in the brown bottle but they sure found it refreshing. It turns out that Lieutenant D. Mosher was a field artist himself. He went in his tent and pulled out a hand drawn map he has made of the battle field, so the Generals would have a good idea of the lay of the land. The map was drawn with ink and watercolor very similar to how I execute these sketches. Then lieutenant gave me a color copy of the map. I have no idea where he found a color copier in the 1860s.
A 21st century father and son wandered by curious as to what I was sketching. The captain took some time to share information with the boy about what life was like during the Civil War. He pulled out his saber and offered it to the boy to hold. The 10 year old had trouble holding the weight of the saber but he was thrilled. Then officers has a fire pit set up but they could not light it since they would have to suffer a $200 fine if they did.

In the Confederate camp I ran across this group who were packing gunpowder into small white paper cylinders. The fellow sitting in the center was always working an angle. For instance he wanted to charge me for the right to do the sketch. He would run the same scam any time any other 21st century tourist would wander by with a camera. He wanted to charge me more than he was charging people for photos since “We have to pose so much longer for you”. I mentioned that no one was actually posing, everyone was moving about as usual, just doing their thing. He never did collect any money, besides my currency would have been useless in the Confederated States.
A suspicion I have about reenactors is that they never die until they run out of ammunition. If you are going to take all this care to pack your charges, well then you had better get the pleasure of firing them all off.