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Here is an article from the Richmond Times Dispatch about the event this past weekend. Click here to read the article at the Times-Dispatch.
Trees, Trenches Heighten Realism of Re-enactment in Chesterfield
BY REX SPRINGSTON AND GRAHAM MOOMAW
Richmond Times-Dispatch Richmond Times-Dispatch
In a Chesterfield County forest, amid dogwoods, ticks and musket fire, the South rose again.
Blue-and-gray-clad men faced off in a re-enactment commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Bermuda Hundred Campaign, an ill-remembered Civil War saga that represented one of the South’s last battlefield successes.
“C’mon, Johnny,” a Yankee yelled as the Rebels advanced Saturday through trees and brush on federal troops firing from behind the logs and dirt of an entrenchment.
Visitors watched from behind a rope along a gravel road close to the action. When one Rebel, shot by a Yankee, fell a few feet from the road, a nearby woman laughed in surprise.
The Union beat back the Confederates in that day’s skirmish but, over several days in May 1864, the Confederates repulsed a Union effort to advance on Richmond. On Sunday morning, the Confederates had the upper hand, sending their enemies in a sprinted retreat through the woods.
“As it got toward the end of the war, the federals really wanted to take Richmond, and the Confederates were not going to let that happen,” said Amy Sheets, a Chesterfield spokeswoman.
The re-enactment, put on by the county and several partners, was held at Horner Park in western Chesterfield.
Re-enactors and county officials said this event was different from many others, which are often held in fields.
Not only was this one held in a forest, but the re-enactors used spades, hatchets and other hand tools, with some early help from Chesterfield workers, to create their trenches. They added horizontal tree limbs to make breastworks.
“This is a more authentic-style experience,” said Joshua Mason, 35, who portrayed a Union captain.
“Most of the time, it’s like we’re out on a golf course so the public can see us,” Patrick Hubble, a Confederate re-enactor from Lynchburg, said as he reclined in the dirt next to an 1841 model six-pounder artillery gun. “This is a lot more authentic.”
This re-enactment involved a lot more manual labor than normal, said Andrew Potter, 32, of Ashland, Ky., one of the Rebels. “It’s been fun. … Normally, we do a lot of marching.”
Re-enactors don’t usually get to dig trenches because landowners don’t want their land torn up, other re-enactors said.
The event drew more than 400 re-enactors from more than 40 states, county officials said. It drew a Saturday audience estimated at 700 to 800.
After Sunday’s battle, a much smaller crowd watched as Union prisoners were marched along the road, prodded by a Confederate saying, “C’mon Yanks. Keep movin’.”
At the camp, the prisoners were harangued further as their captors made dark promises of scurvy, dysentery and other maladies waiting in the prisons.
“Whoa-ho boys! Bacon!” a bearded Confederate yelled from atop a log as his comrades rifled through supplies seized from the prisoners.
Elsewhere in the camp, young spectators were given a taste of hard tack biscuit and a demonstration of the lengthy process of loading and firing a Civil War-era rifle.
On May 5, 1864, Union Gen. Benjamin Butler landed with the 35,000-strong Army of the James at Bermuda Hundred, on a peninsula in eastern Chesterfield between the James and Appomattox rivers.
The plan was to establish a base and then advance on Richmond. The Confederates, under Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard, had other ideas.
Butler’s army made some tentative advances, but that ended at the Battle of Drewry’s Bluff in mid-May. The federal soldiers fell back into a defensive position at Bermuda Hundred.
The following Confederates dug entrenchments that became known as the Howlett Line. Those trenches held in Butler’s army, as Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and others noted later, like a cork in a bottle.
Union and Confederate troops faced each other in trenches at Bermuda Hundred until the end of the war in April 1865.
“So many people think of trench warfare and associate that with the First World War,” Sheets said. “It really got its origins here in the Civil War.”
The Bermuda Hundred story was eclipsed, however, by the bloody fighting between Grant and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee on the way to Petersburg.
“The Bermuda Hundred campaign was almost a lost campaign in Civil War military history,” said George L. Fickett Jr., a Chesterfield historian.
The county has protected 10 properties that were part of the Bermuda Hundred Campaign, and the re-enactment was designed to restore the fight to memory.
Sylvester Reid, 41, of Chester, who served in the Marines and Army, reflected on technology and heroism as he watched the pretend soldiers move, find cover, shoot and fall.
There is plenty of bravery today, but the military can also avoid face-to-face contact by, say, sending in a missile strike.
That kind of technology “makes war easier,” said Reid, a veteran of the Persian Gulf War and the Iraq War.
“It’s my opinion and my opinion only, but I believe the soldiers back then were braver, North and South,” Reid said. “They were men.”
Lt. Col. Anthony Taylor, an Army reservist stationed at Fort Lee who watched Sunday’s event, had similar thoughts.
“I’m a soldier,” he said. “I don’t know how good a soldier I would’ve been in these conditions.”
rspringston@timesdispatch.com (804) 649-6453 gmoomaw@timesdispatch.com (804) 649-6839
Click here to read the article at the Times-Dispatch.
Here is an article from the Richmond Times Dispatch about the event this past weekend. Click here to read the article at the Times-Dispatch.
Trees, Trenches Heighten Realism of Re-enactment in Chesterfield
BY REX SPRINGSTON AND GRAHAM MOOMAW
Richmond Times-Dispatch Richmond Times-Dispatch
In a Chesterfield County forest, amid dogwoods, ticks and musket fire, the South rose again.
Blue-and-gray-clad men faced off in a re-enactment commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Bermuda Hundred Campaign, an ill-remembered Civil War saga that represented one of the South’s last battlefield successes.
“C’mon, Johnny,” a Yankee yelled as the Rebels advanced Saturday through trees and brush on federal troops firing from behind the logs and dirt of an entrenchment.
Visitors watched from behind a rope along a gravel road close to the action. When one Rebel, shot by a Yankee, fell a few feet from the road, a nearby woman laughed in surprise.
The Union beat back the Confederates in that day’s skirmish but, over several days in May 1864, the Confederates repulsed a Union effort to advance on Richmond. On Sunday morning, the Confederates had the upper hand, sending their enemies in a sprinted retreat through the woods.
“As it got toward the end of the war, the federals really wanted to take Richmond, and the Confederates were not going to let that happen,” said Amy Sheets, a Chesterfield spokeswoman.
The re-enactment, put on by the county and several partners, was held at Horner Park in western Chesterfield.
Re-enactors and county officials said this event was different from many others, which are often held in fields.
Not only was this one held in a forest, but the re-enactors used spades, hatchets and other hand tools, with some early help from Chesterfield workers, to create their trenches. They added horizontal tree limbs to make breastworks.
“This is a more authentic-style experience,” said Joshua Mason, 35, who portrayed a Union captain.
“Most of the time, it’s like we’re out on a golf course so the public can see us,” Patrick Hubble, a Confederate re-enactor from Lynchburg, said as he reclined in the dirt next to an 1841 model six-pounder artillery gun. “This is a lot more authentic.”
This re-enactment involved a lot more manual labor than normal, said Andrew Potter, 32, of Ashland, Ky., one of the Rebels. “It’s been fun. … Normally, we do a lot of marching.”
Re-enactors don’t usually get to dig trenches because landowners don’t want their land torn up, other re-enactors said.
The event drew more than 400 re-enactors from more than 40 states, county officials said. It drew a Saturday audience estimated at 700 to 800.
After Sunday’s battle, a much smaller crowd watched as Union prisoners were marched along the road, prodded by a Confederate saying, “C’mon Yanks. Keep movin’.”
At the camp, the prisoners were harangued further as their captors made dark promises of scurvy, dysentery and other maladies waiting in the prisons.
“Whoa-ho boys! Bacon!” a bearded Confederate yelled from atop a log as his comrades rifled through supplies seized from the prisoners.
Elsewhere in the camp, young spectators were given a taste of hard tack biscuit and a demonstration of the lengthy process of loading and firing a Civil War-era rifle.
On May 5, 1864, Union Gen. Benjamin Butler landed with the 35,000-strong Army of the James at Bermuda Hundred, on a peninsula in eastern Chesterfield between the James and Appomattox rivers.
The plan was to establish a base and then advance on Richmond. The Confederates, under Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard, had other ideas.
Butler’s army made some tentative advances, but that ended at the Battle of Drewry’s Bluff in mid-May. The federal soldiers fell back into a defensive position at Bermuda Hundred.
The following Confederates dug entrenchments that became known as the Howlett Line. Those trenches held in Butler’s army, as Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and others noted later, like a cork in a bottle.
Union and Confederate troops faced each other in trenches at Bermuda Hundred until the end of the war in April 1865.
“So many people think of trench warfare and associate that with the First World War,” Sheets said. “It really got its origins here in the Civil War.”
The Bermuda Hundred story was eclipsed, however, by the bloody fighting between Grant and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee on the way to Petersburg.
“The Bermuda Hundred campaign was almost a lost campaign in Civil War military history,” said George L. Fickett Jr., a Chesterfield historian.
The county has protected 10 properties that were part of the Bermuda Hundred Campaign, and the re-enactment was designed to restore the fight to memory.
Sylvester Reid, 41, of Chester, who served in the Marines and Army, reflected on technology and heroism as he watched the pretend soldiers move, find cover, shoot and fall.
There is plenty of bravery today, but the military can also avoid face-to-face contact by, say, sending in a missile strike.
That kind of technology “makes war easier,” said Reid, a veteran of the Persian Gulf War and the Iraq War.
“It’s my opinion and my opinion only, but I believe the soldiers back then were braver, North and South,” Reid said. “They were men.”
Lt. Col. Anthony Taylor, an Army reservist stationed at Fort Lee who watched Sunday’s event, had similar thoughts.
“I’m a soldier,” he said. “I don’t know how good a soldier I would’ve been in these conditions.”
rspringston@timesdispatch.com (804) 649-6453 gmoomaw@timesdispatch.com (804) 649-6839
Click here to read the article at the Times-Dispatch.