Shades of Grey

Night in the Confederate Camp

In the final Decade of the most complicated century, .my computer and I both failed to do five things simultaneously.

I had a waiting client, phone call, reporter's question, another lawyer and memorandum due. The computer was trying to fax, print, calculate, proofread and run E-mail all at once, multitasking. It was far too much. I yelled at the lawyer, forgot the question and accidently hung up the phone. In my computer, two programs grabbed the same block of memory and everything slammed to a stop. Later, my computer technician said I needed more RAM. I shot back I could use less.

At 6:30 that night, I carried the barely finished memorandum down to the Fed Ex office. It absolutely, positively had to be there overnight. Then the day was over. I went home to pack.

I planned to camp with the Confederate reenactors at the Battle of Seccessionville, but had missed my ride. I rode out to Boone Hall Plantation in the dark with a sleeping bag, no tent and no idea where to locate my friends.

The registration center on the dirt road was lit by candles. A lady in hoop skirts was handing out instructions. There were none for me, but she directed me towards camp. I began walking. Before long a redneck style pickup truck slid to a stop beside me and the passengers offered a ride in the back. By their drawls, they were Southerners. The scraping of hooves in the trailer they were pulling meant they were cavalry.

When I arrived at the Confederate Camp, only fire and candlelight diluted the darkness. I sought my friends among the tents. Georgia was having a sing along and a member rose to recite one hundred heroic lines of verse from memory. There were no boom boxes and no cellular phones. People talked and listened in the night. They were not the people I was seeking.

Instead, I found the Milton Light Horse Artillery from St. Petersburg, Florida. They gave me a choice of white wine or red as they told the story around the fire of their three inch gun. A Yankee gun, captured by the Confederates, it had escaped the scrap pile during World War II when an iron dealer decided some metal was to precious to hurl at the Germans. After 100 years of silence, it was remounted and fired for the centennial of the Civil war. They bought it at a garage sale. Now with their six horses, they are the fast strike, long range tool of Rebel Generals in reenactments throughout the South. After sampling their story and hospitality. I moved on.

As it was late, with direction I found myself in the camp of the Palmetto Battalion of the 10th. South Carolina Volunteers, the unit of my Great Great Grandfather William E. Finklea. They had no tent to offer me, but if I liked, I could stay with them and sleep beneath the open sky.

Sergeant Manning Williams offered me part of his coal baked sweet potato and complained of Confederate hunger. He discussed the coming battle as if it were real. The men around him responded in kind. I was asked a lawyer's question about the legality of secession. I apologized I had no constitution with me. They observed that lawyer Abe Lincoln had no interest in the document either. Mostly, I listened, others talked.

When weary, I slept. At four a.m. I awoke and opened my eyes to a sky of stars. The camps were quiet. The clip clop awakening me was the passing of the mounted sentry. So well guarded, I returned to sleep. I awoke again, at dawn.

In the light, the camp appeared orderly. I observed the morning formation and saw the stainless banner raised before a thousand men in grey. When still, they looked like history. When moving, they looked alive. I stood to one side in a sweater, watching.

Joining the Army

At morning muster, Sergeant Williams again spoke of the coming battle. The 10th. was a third green troops, men drawn into the unit by a renewed interest in history. He explained that in the original battle, the outnumbered Confederates sent to the City of Charleston for every man who would come. On that long ago day, many of them had no more experience that we. I was still standing to one side, an observer looking forward to watching the events of the day.

Then Sergeant Manning turned, his rumpled butternut jacket flopping in the dew, and said, "Potential Private Hamilton, will you fight?"

At that instant, at least for me, I understood what all the historians argue about without resolution. Why did men who did not own slaves join an army to fight and die in a war? Seeing them standing there, having heard them talk of the coming battle on our own soil, the ground on which I had slept, there was only one answer a man could give. Feeling blood pull across four generations and the comradarie of these strangers who had taken me into their camp, I answered, "Yes Sir" and was put into formation. For the first time since my Great Great Grandfather was captured at Missionary ridge, our family's blood was committed to the Confederate cause. I was in the Army.

I should note in that long night of talk, I heard no racism or bigotry. Among people who did not know my liberal thoughts, my sensitive, leftist ears picked up no evidence of hatred of men based on the color of their skin or their ancestor's prior condition of servitude. I put on Glen McConnel's borrowed grey with no trace of guilt or reservation. I was loaned a 50 cal. muzzle loading rifle, a cartridge box of ammo and a bayonet.

"Do you think I could fire this thing today?" I asked, "at least once?" The corporal teaching me to shoulder arms answered, "Private Hamilton, the enemy will be here in three hours, we did not give you that rifle so you could fire it once." Then he inspected my cartridge box to see if it was full.

Sergeant Manning patiently taught us to march that morning, wheeling us about the field among the fire ant beds, lecturing us about safety. The wool uniforms were hot. On orders, we drained our canteens and sweated out their contents, refilled them and sweated that out as well.

At noon, we rested, but the booming artillery and return of our cavalry and skirmishers alerted us that the enemy was on the field. We rushed to the earthworks and Sergeant Manning yelled, "Load!" I bit off the end of a cartage and dropped it down the barrel. "Prime!" I slipped the brass cap on the nipple at the breach of the gun. "Ready." I pulled back the hammer and rested my finger on the trigger. We waited, crouched together behind the earthwork as the Sergeant intoned, "Steady, steady, they're coming, patience, no early fires, I want a solid volley, remember to be safe." Then there was a pause, a silence and following, "Aim! oblige right!" I rose, bringing the rifle to my shoulder above the crest of the earthwork to see the brave boys in blue come on, the glory of the coming of the Lord. I waited for the next command.

Awaiting the command to fire, I suddenly understood why we aimed obliquely across the field. The diagonal path of the bullets increased the chance of hitting something. To our right, I heard the command for another unit to aim in the opposite direction, at the Yankees coming toward us.

And they were coming, bayonets fixed, while we waited. It would take over thirty seconds for most of us to reload our weapons. Our first shot would have to count. I had never fired a muzzle loading weapon before; neither had the man to my left.

We could hear the shouts of Union soldiers and the stomp of feet upon the ground. Finally, when they were well within range, Sergeant Williams delivered the power of the 10th. to the enemy with the command "Fire!" Fifty Southern rifles blasted into the Yankee line. An instant later, the units to our right and left discharged. By then, we were down behind the earthwork, pouring more powder down the muzzles of our guns, preparing to fire again.

Then it was load, prime, aim and fire over and over again. The barrel of the rifle grew hot in the rhythm of combat. Only instants of the struggle were visible to us since we spent most of our time behind the earthwork, feeding our weapons. I had no idea how the battle was going.

It was all simple. Unlike my fight with computer and telephone the day before, there was only one, simple thing to think about here - having a loaded weapon ready for the enemy when it was called for. There was a smooth motion to the process of operating the rifle, and a clear objective. There were officers to worry about the why of the moment, and others to worry about the larger whys of history. The 10th. worried only about keeping the rate of fire ahead of that of the Yankee attackers.

Then the commands to fire stopped, and we rested with loaded weapons behind the embankment. Apparently the first Yankee attack had failed. We were pulled back to reserve and another unit took our place. They blasted away at the second wave until it abated. Then they began cutting down the third, which actually reached our lines.

Then there was an explosion and thirty confederate soldiers "died" on command. A huge gaping hole opened in the line and the 10th. plugged it. At the next command to fire, I stood up and braced my elbow on the rampart to take a focused aim. For the first time since the start of the battle, I saw the field.

It was no longer empty. The fire of the Confederate troops had achieved its objective and still men in blue covered the ground before us. A few lay upon the earthwork, close enough to touch. Though it was all pretend and those men were just lying there hoping they hadn't fallen on a fire ant bed, it paused the soul.

As a sincere opponent to every war fought in my lifetime, it was an instant rich in lessons. I had aimed at these men, fired at them and not thought nearly enough about it. It all felt real, meaning in my mind it had been. For my great grandfather, in a similar uniform, with the same type of gun, long ago, it had once been the absolute reality. For an instant I possessed both the benefit of his experience and the wisdom of 125 years of history and progress to evaluate it. There were no simple answers, just decisions. On that hot afternoon, my decision was to keep firing.

A shout went up that one of the Yankee soldiers was wearing a Kilt. His sartorial gesture drew the fire of half the line. I could not aim at a fellow Scot and directed my fire at the scattered remains of the last Yankee attack as it crumpled to the ground. Then aside from the constant production of the artillery, it was quiet.

We jumped over the embankment to pick over the dead and assemble for the march across the field we had earned the right to call our own. We dressed our lines, wheeled left and stood shoulder to shoulder before the spectators, heros of the day. With their cheers and ours, the war was over.

I noticed the Union Army had been resurrected when we turned to march away. Aside from sunburn, chafing and insect bites, the day had no real casualties. The careful instructions had kept everyone safe.

At the end of the march to camp was more praise and congratulation. I turned from the last formation to see my wife and son, jarringly clad in Twentieth Century clothes visiting our scrupulously anachronistic camp. The world of fiber optics and random access memory had appeared to retrieve me.

I showed Julia the rifle and equipment and demonstrated how it worked. She had not identified me in the battle, having had a better view of the Yankees. Jackson, my one and a half year old son, seemed fascinated by my hat, which I took off to show him, undamming the sweat beneath which rolled down my head. My hair was soaked, I had not shaved and I suspected I did not smell good either.

Julia leveled a wife's gaze at me and said, "this is a guy thing, isn't it?" I laughed and we went home.

Thoughts about the Battle

We carried away no photographs. On the reenactment field, camcorders and cameras are rare. There seems to be a deliberate reliance on human memory. It is the medium of choice for people seeking to carry away images of the battle and the field. Their goal seems to be to resurrect the past by action and to hold its image in the human mind. That is, after all the only place history has any power.

I have read about this war since I was a child. It has colored my life in ways I once thought universal to all Americans, but now know are peculiar to the South, my state and my own family. In the endless summer of California, on the busy streets of New York and in the passionate barrios of Miami, the past of the 1860's barely exists. Because of its problematic issues, The Civil War is barely taught in schools. In a single day, our students learn about Ft. Sumter, the Emancipation Proclamation and Appormattox. Any treatment so superficial must be inaccurate. For students so trained, Seminary Ridge will be no place and Shiloh shall evoke no prayer.

More than the fight over the Confederate Flag, this worries the re-enactors. It should worry us all. In a distant time, men and women fought and died to prefect the definition of America. Any short explanation of why will be wrong. I now know how that war felt and now for me, and those others who fought at Seccesionville, a richer peace lies over the field.