Death comes before breakfast to the inexperienced Confederate picket.
I had not planned to participate in the morning tactical reenactment at the Battle of Gambells Hotel in Florence, SC. The rigors of simulated 19th. century combat on Saturday had left my twentieth century back sore and legs heavy. The Confederate defeat left me weary. I fell asleep to the lyrics of "Goober Peas" and "Beer and Tobacco" sung around the campfires of the Palmetto Battalion. Despite the furrows running across the hard ground we used for a bed, I slept soundly until 5:30 a.m.
I would have slept longer, but the sound of pounding horse hooves and blasting carbines awoke me. The always restless cavalry was raiding the infantry camp. Before we could rip our Enfield muzzle loaders from their cases, the horse soldiers were gone, taking with them any prospect of further sleep. Sharps carbines make a rude alarm clock.
There was some discussion or bringing the artillery up and giving the boys and their horses some cannister shot for breakfast, but the Colonel wouldn't allow it. I pulled on my grey wool uniform and walked out into the chilly morning, contemplating sunrise and a long wait for breakfast. The war intervened.
Civil war battle reenactments are of two types. First is the careful recreation of historic battles where hundreds and sometimes thousands of men march along the old lines, recreate the historic charges and fall in the place of the hallowed dead of 130 years ago. We fire blanks. These battles are usually spectator events confined to open fields and the outcome is known before the shooting begins.
The second category is the tactical, a war game fought with the technology and limits of the 1860's. Again, we fire blanks. There are no spectators, the action can range over miles of countryside and the result depends on the skill of the commanders.
A tactical had been scheduled for Sunday morning at 7:00 a.m. but I had not planned to go. Though my Great Great Grandfather William E. Finklea had come from Marion County and fought with the Francis Marion Guards, Co. I, 10th. S.C. volunteers, I felt too green to attempt a tactical at only my third reenactment. William E. Finklea was captured and imprisoned by the Yankees at Missionary Ridge in 1863. I just wanted to avoid getting my rifle dirty before breakfast. I would have stuck to that plan, but the Sergeant made it an affair of honor.
I noticed a strong muster of Yankees for the event, two dozen or more, including several black members of the Fifty-forth Mass. and some cavalry. Less than ten grey warriors answered the call. Like Stonewall Jackson, I was not eager to fight on the Lord's Day. I would sit this one out and help assure a hearty breakfast awaited the soldiers on their return. Then the Sergeant turned around to face the rows of tents where the other Confederates were asleep or resting. "Will no one else answer the call?" He cried, "Are their no Confederates besides these worthy to take the field of honor and defend the good people of Marion County?" I had no choice when my "honor" was at stake, I drew my five foot long Enfield Rifled Musket from the tent, strapped on my other gear and fell in as did many others.
We reached the woods and crossed a stream to obtain the high ground. The sergeant detailed the last two files of two men each to picket duty, we crossed the stream again and headed toward where we believed the Yankees to be. We spread out along the ridge between an impassible bramble and the stream and advanced through the thin undergrowth of early spring. Suspecting the Yankees were close, we hid behind a fallen tree.
I reached into the cartridge box and pulled out a small paper tube filled with black powder, put its end in my teeth and bit down until I tasted the dry salty flavor of the charge. I poured it down the barrel, fixed a brass precussion cap on the cone, pulled back the hammer and waited in the quiet woods. I had never done picket duty before.
If I had been properly instructed in the practice I would have known I functioned as a sort of radar and early warning system for the main Confederate force to our rear. We would wait until we saw the Yankees, draw their fire, get off a shot or two of our own and then run to the rear. Our job was not to make a stand, but by the sound of our rife fire, to betray the location and progress of the enemy to the main body of troops. By firing and retreating, we would allow the Confederate commander to prepare for the arrival of the Yankees, changing position if necessary. In the age before battlefield walkie talkies, it was a critical method for obtaining information.
What was advancing through the woods was no ordinary unit in blue. The yankees had mustered out several members of Charleston's crack 54th. Massachusetts, Company I, the black soldiers featured in the movie "Glory." They also had a brace of men from other units armed with Henry repeating rifles, who could dispense Thirteen shots as fast as they could crank the levers on their guns. My Enfield took twenty seconds to load for one.
We waited in the woods, which gradually betrayed the approach of the Yankees in the snapping of twigs and the cracking of leaves. We could not see them. Then there was a yell as the bushes ahead parted and the quiet morning was rent by the thunder of Henry's and Enfields. I got off two shots before it became apparent we had to retreat, but behind us was another fallen tree and behind that another still. To escape we would have to run down the hill across the face of the yankee line of repeating rifles, impossible. I loaded and fired again at a the closest Yankee who was pressing me hard with his repeater.
As the thunder of my rifle echoed along the hillside and I reached for another paper cartridge, the Yankee stepped from behind the tree directly into my line of fire. "Don't load, Johnny," He ordered. He had five shots left and I had fifteen seconds before I would be ready to fire. I bit the end of the cartridge anyway and poured the powder down the barrel. The last time a member of my family was captured by the Yankees, he spent two years as a prisoner of war and had to walk home to Pamplico, SC from New Orleans. The Yankee smiled, informed me I was dead and marched on.
A member of the 54th. Mass came up with the main Federal advance and took me prisoner.
The Federal with the repeating rifle did not get another fifty yards, the reoriented Confederate line opened on them with twenty rifles, the cavalry pressed them from a nearby field. Once contact was made, each side poured a merciless fire at the other. A handful of Yankees were all that was left standing when it ended.
Then I and the other pickets, who had also been killed, rose from the dead, collected our rifles and joined the others for the march back to breakfast, American and Confederate flags flapping in the morning breeze. The South was 0 and 2 on the weekend.
After Breakfast and Church there was another battle. The Yankees captured the field and overran the Confederate artillery. In their hurry to celebrate, they put down their guns without bothering to load or deploy pickets. We were waiting behind the hill, loaded. A rebel yell was the last thing those Yankee heros heard. The main federal force arrived just in time to be greeted by cannister fire from the recovered Confederate gun. A young black man from the 54th. Mass ran the U.S. colors back through a withering rebel fusillade. Finally, the South had a moment to celebrate.
From time to time, in the green fields of the Pee Dee a rusting bayonet or rifle in turned up in the Spring plowing. In the national cemetery in Florence, dozens of Federal soldiers rest far from their homes, men who reached death on the way from Andersonville. In the churchyards of the Pee Dee are the iron crosses that mark the graves of the Confederate veterans. It was all long ago now. We can only imagine how that old metal found its way into the ground, and the lives those men knew before they followed it there. A lucky few of us can also put on their uniforms and try to experience it.
As we struck our tents and packed to travel home, one of the Yankees, who are our allies in the struggle to remember, told me that the Federal reenactment units in the South were being organized into a Department of the South, a union army standing on South Carolina's soil for the first time since reconstruction.
We in the Palmetto Battalion, including the infantry and artillery units that hail from the Pee Dee, are ready for them. The next time I do picket duty, I will not make the same mistakes. The Yankees will have refined their tactics as well. Together, we will try to show our fellow Americans how a bloody war was fought long ago, and how a nation was made when honor was more than a word.
William Hamilton is an attorney in Charleston, SC.
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