The Appalachian Chronicles: Shades of Gray

by Seneca Fox

  Chapter XV

  7:45 pm

  Someone standing behind me asked, “Dexter, have you been talking about Daddy Roe again?”

  I turned to look and there stood two black men dressed in blue uniforms. I was certain they were two of the men involved in the hand-to-hand combat during the battle earlier in the day. One of the men looked down at me and said, “Where’d this hardcore come from?”

  “He ain’t no hardcore, not yet anyway,” said Bob.

  “He ain’t,” the same man said before he bent down, shook my hand and introduced himself. “My name is Reginald, people call me Reg. This is Darin,” he said pointing to the man standing beside him, “and if you’ll excuse me for a second I need to do a little follow-up with – Bob.” Reg looked up and said, “Bob – if he’s not a hardcore, then how do you explain that fine beard and uniform he’s wearing?”

  Everyone turned towards Bob to hear his answer. “This is his first reenactment, he hardly knew what a hardcore was until we explained.”

  “Come on, Bob, you know a man doesn’t choose to be a hardcore, hardcore chooses him.”

  “Reg, are you going to start with that hardcore business again? You’re as bad as Dexter.”

  Flapp leaned over and said to me, “Bunch of us work together and these two go on like this all the time. The other day Reg started talking about how he sees hardcores showing up everywhere. As he puts it ‘they can’t help themselves.’”

  Bob looked at me and said, “Reg and Darin are part of our regiment. They’re registered with us and they pay our dues, but they won’t wear a Confederate uniform.”

  “Not hard to understand why. In fact,” I said raising my voice so Reg could hear me, “I’m surprised they don’t find the whole reenactment thing offensive.”

  Reg responded by twirling his finger around as if including all the men sitting around the fire. “I don’t find this offensive, but now” – he pointed toward the other end of camp where the large tent was positioned – “I might find something over there offensive. That’s a different regiment over there – that’s the neo-Confederate army.

  “Darin and I work with most of these guys; they’re the ones that got us into this stuff. They’ve tried to get us to go hunting with them, but I told them I’m not too interested in being around when the real bullets start flying.”

  “So, how did they convince you?” I asked Reg.

  “One day at work Bob, Flapp, and a couple of other guys were talking about reenactments. They didn’t know it, but when I heard that word I began listening, very carefully. I had always associated reenactments with hate groups, but I was confident that these guys, guys I’d been working with for years, were not members of some kind of hate group. And as I listened, I didn’t hear anything indicating that I was wrong. Later that day I asked Bob what they were talking about. After a long explanation – I required a long explanation – Bob said to me, ‘Reg, why don’ t you come along next time?’ My immediate reply was ‘Honky, you’re crazy.’ But, I said I’d think about it.

  “That day when I got home I started doing some research on the Internet. Like you, I didn’t expect to find anyone like me involved in reenacting. I started my search and at first I didn’t care too much for what I saw, but then I typed the words – African-American Civil War reenact. I got a long list of hits. I double-clicked one and the next thing I knew I was reading about the 54th Massachusetts. That’s the regiment that was portrayed in the movie Glory. I read on and found out that there’s a group of 54th Massachusetts’ reenactors. Blacks only, that was an interesting twist.

  “Anyway, I clicked more hits and found out that there are quite a few African-American men doing this stuff. The one that really surprised me, though, was the guy from Virginia that reenacts for the Confederacy. When I saw that, I decided I had to come along – I wanted to talk to that man.”

  Bob spoke up. “Reg is our historian. If you want to know anything about the Civil War, just ask him. Once he got started researching we couldn’t stop him.”

  I wondered what Darin thought about reenactments, so I looked at him and asked, “What do you think?”

  “It’s like Reg said, it’s easy to get caught up in it all once you realize how much black Americans took an active part in the war.” Darin reflected for a moment and added, “Of course it’s not for everyone, and many people, both black and white, ask us why we do it.”

  “What do you tell ’em?” I asked.

  “If they really want to know, we tell them the same thing Reg just told you.”

  Bob stirred the fire and a flurry of firefly-like sparks and white-ash drifted into the dark sky.

  “I’ve heard about the 54th Massachusetts,” I remarked. “But I don’t know much else about black Americans’ part in the War.”

  Reg spoke up. “More than a hundred and eighty thousand black troops fought on the Union side, and nearly thirty thousand died on the battlefield. Obviously, things were different on the Confederate side.

  “Many Southerners didn’t want blacks fighting for the South. One general wrote Jeff Davis to say that if slaves were made into good soldiers then the whole idea of slavery must be wrong. I laughed when I read that letter – sure supports the argument that the war was about slavery. Maybe it was about other things too, but there’s no doubt it was about slavery.” Reg turned to Darin. “What was that General’s name?”

  “Cobb, I think,” answered Darin.

  “That’s right, Howell Cobb. He was from Georgia. Anyway, it’s hard to get a reliable count of the number of blacks who actually fought for the Confederacy. Some estimate that it was tens of thousands.

  “As to why they fought, who really knows? Some historians deny that blacks actually fought for the South. They argue that many were forced to support the war effort in a variety of ways – jobs like cooking, maintaining clothes and equipment, you know, behind-the-lines kind of work. Others argue that they fought to preserve their way of life, but that doesn’t make much sense to me, especially if they were slaves.”

  As Reg talked it became clear that different people had different interpretations of the Civil War. For a moment I wondered if only the pure historian’s priority was to document history as accurately as possible. It was a mild revelation to me to hear that others might try to use historical facts and figures to their advantage – at the expense of discovering the truth. I should not have been surprised, but I was.

  “Maybe,” Reg said when I once again began to follow his words, “a few free blacks fought for the South, hoping to protect their freedom. Maybe others fought to defend women and children. It’s easy to believe that some hot-headed Yankee officer would give orders for everyone on the Confederate side to be killed – when something like that happens, almost anyone would pick up a gun and defend themselves and the defenseless ones around them.”

  Everyone sat quietly listening to Reg. “Sometimes the black men who fought for the North didn’t have it much better. I read that half the 28th USCT died in Petersburg, while the Union generals sat in a bomb shelter getting drunk. Realizing that the odds of that battle weren’t good, the generals selected the black regiments to lead the charge. At least their white commanding officers fought and died beside them.

  “Like Bob said, when I got started studying, I couldn’t stop. I can quote you all kinds of facts and figures, give you details about different battles, but the one thing that’s hard to understand sometimes is people’s motives. When you try to understand what made people willing to sacrifice so many lives you just end up with a convoluted, mixed-up mess of a story. Look at Lee, a man who apparently didn’t believe in slavery, serving out of loyalty as the commanding general of the South. I suppose that when he sorted things out, his feelings about slavery weren’t as strong as the loyal feelings he had for the South. He weighed things out,” Reg motioned toward Dex, “just like Daddy Roe weighed them out, but Lee and too many others like him cared more about something other than how wrong it is to p
ut a lash to a man’s back to get him to work for a little food and shelter. Interesting, how a man can make a single decision and become a hero to some people and something like a demon to others.

  “I don’t always get it,” said Reg, “but those guys over there, the ones in the inner sanctum” – he pointed to the area surrounded by tents – “I’m sure they can explain it for you – they’ve got all the answers.”

  One of the men who hadn’t spoke since I arrived picked up a cup and dribbled spit into it, while a few of us watched him. When he finished, he sat down his cup and two other men picked up their own cups and did the same thing. Thankfully that no one else followed.

  “So Reg,” said Flapp, “who’s going down tomorrow?”

  “It’s your turn, Flapp,” Reg told him.

  “Listen, fellas,” interrupted Bob. “Too many of you are not going down when you should. Anytime an army shoots a few hundred rounds from fifty yards and only two guys die, it’s not right, is it?” Most of the men shook their heads.

  Dexter spoke out. “I seen every bullet that was fired at me today, Bob, and I ducked every time one got near.”

  “Real funny,” Bob replied. “Now listen, guys, we’re going to play some high card draw, and the five guys drawing the highest cards get to live tomorrow, the others must die.”

  “Fair enough,” said Dexter. “How about you, Ian, you want some of this action?”

  I should have deferred. Instead I said “Why not?” knowing that I would not be there the next day.

  Dexter said, “You know that means you’ll have to fight with us tomorrow.”

  “I understand.”

  Bob informed everyone, “Okay then, with Ian in, the six high cards get to live.”

  One of the men pulled a deck of cards from a haversack, shuffled the cards and passed them to Dexter. Dexter pulled out a card and said, “I’m a dead man.” He showed us the three of diamonds. When it was my turn I pulled out the jack of hearts, and as it turned out I was one of the lucky six – I hoped there wouldn’t be an argument about who would take my place.

  Reg’s comment about the “inner sanctum” made me realize that I needed to spend some time inside the circle of tents. Intending to make my way into the core of the camp I stood up and announced, “Well, gentlemen, I think I’m going to move on. Sounds like there’s a lot to see out here.”

  “You goin in there?” Dexter asked as he motioned toward the tents.

  “I was hoping to.”

  “I’d tell you to say you’re from the Virginia 1202nd,” added Dexter, “but they’d probably throw you out.”

  “Tell them you want to know more about the Cause,” suggested Reg.

  “The Cause?”

  “Yeah,” Dexter interjected, “’cordin to them the war was about the North imposin a way of life on the South. The Cause is all about fightin for a way of life. Reg told ya, it wasn’t about slavery.”

  “I’ll be sure to ask.”

  “Dexter, don’t scare the man to death,” said Flapp.

  “He oughta be scared if’n he’s goin in there.”

  I tipped my hat and said, “See you gentlemen later.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow,” I replied and stepped away from the circle. Instead of walking between the tents, I began walking toward the Union encampment.

  “Look, he’s chickened out,” someone said.

  “Better get another uniform if you’re going up there,” someone else called out.

  “Don’t step on any spooners” was the last comment I heard as I laughed along with a group of men who couldn’t hear me.

  Meandering my way across the battlefield to the Union side, I looked for hardcores along the way. I walked along the dilapidated stone wall, the edge of the battlefield and the outcropping of rocks that the Confederate reenactors had used for cover during the mock battle earlier in the day. I was disappointed not to find anyone and presumed that they were all hanging out in the camps waiting until bedtime to endure the cold and loneliness that I had been led to believe was the trademark of a hardcore’s life. Somewhere along the way, I began to think that I had led myself on the proverbial “snipe hunt”.