A Dozen Inexpensive Ways to Improve Your Personal Impression: By Cal Kinzer

[DougCooper]

Reenacting is more than a hobby. Pastimes such as stamp collecting, building model airplanes, or tending a garden are ends unto themselves, and carry no particular higher connotations. But ours is a greater calling, and involves a responsibility to accurately recreate some of the darkest, most important days of our nation's past. Therefore, we have an obligation to do it right, and to the best of our abilities. We owe this to history, to the memory of those we represent, to our fellow Americans - and to ourselves!

Cal Kinzer

Can we post this on the home page of the A/C forum? It is the ultimate mission statement for what we do...or should be doing.

[3rdbattvet2002]

Amen brother!!

[Charlie Newman]

Thanks for who all posted.This has helped my impression by a big margin.

[sf46]

Looks to be a lot of very good and useful advice in there.

[plankholder]

Good to see an old throwback from the days when you had to actually use a book(remember them?) to research instead of "Googling" something and having it spoon fed to you. The Hardcracker Handbook is to this day one of my most prized publications. I am sure that Cal is flattered that his words can spark 5 pages on a forum from nearly 20 years in the past. Great article, but keep in mind that is geared more towards the beginner or mainstreamer, where this forum caters to the more progressive side. I have said it a 1000 times that this article(and the Hardcracker Handbook) should be handed to every new reenactor-which we did in the 90's, before everyone got so "cyber-lazy". Thanks for reposting this.

[Old Reb]

Cal sighting or was it a haint? Either the flesh and bone Cal was present along Wilson's Creek recently or his spirit. Harrison Holloway claims it was a haint that looked like Cal, but since Cal seems to be amongst the living, I believe it was him in a flesh body. Holler can describe this haint sighting if he wishes to defend his claim.

[Johnny Lloyd]

"I have said it a 1000 times that this article(and the Hardcracker Handbook) should be handed to every new reenactor-which we did in the 90's, before everyone got so "cyber-lazy"."

Yeah, mostly agreed... I'd counteroffer that there are some great resources online for the authentically-minded as well as some out-of-date written material out there from back in the day when those books were still known as "cutting edge" research information. There are a few dated references in Cal's article (such as the hat brass issue) that can be well-documented into the later stages of the war. Cal's article is in a very good spirit regarding the mainstream reenactor's mostly-incorrect habits, though. Look upon this as a general primer for authenticity... we must learn the incorrectness of our ways in order to correct them...

Just because technology has caught-up with the research-end of the hobby doesn't mean it is all bad. Like with college-level research on the internet, great care must be taken to completely understand the intent of the resource one is studying and quoting from.

My 2 cents- Johnny Lloyd

[seth graham]

A good knapsack will also help your impression. Troops would have protected there blankets and their gear by puting it in their knapsacks, yes there would have been bed rolls, wear it along with your knapsack.
seth graham

[Butternuts and Bluecoats]

Thanks for the info! Great help and yet so simple...wait for it...a caveman can do it! Keep up the amazing posts!

[8th Iowa Infantry]

This article has many many great discussion points as the many replies would indicate. I have been a soldier and now an airmen, and I have been to war. With the knowledge and experience I have mixed my knowledge of the Civil War I would say that most 99% of this article is spot on. However, the point about the gators. Its the one point that you use research of all kinds against the use of gaitors. Now my personal opinion is that I don't like gaitors and would not use them and I have not seen many pictures at all of soldiers wearing them. But is there evidence, in the written form, of soldiers' opinions against gaitors? Are there written accounts of soldiers not liking them because they also thought gaitors looked "stupid"?