Saturday, July 28, 2018

Lost to history

NY Times: "The decline of the Civil War re-enactor."

There was a time when I wanted to be a Civil War re-enactor.  I had been to the 130th re-enactment of the Battle of Gettysburg and you could tell there was a special camaraderie among these men (and some women) who put on wool uniforms and marched across a hot Pennsylvania field.  (Heat exhaustion was the deadliest enemy that day).  But the hobby is expensive, starting with a Civil War-era reproduction rifle, and it requires a lot of traveling and time off work. 

By the way, stupid New York Times, it's "Battle Cry of Freedom" not "*The* Battle Cry of Freedom."

4 comments:

Mike said...

Why buy a reproduction when you can own a real Springfield 1861 for ~$1500. It's not even a firearm, you can have it shipped directly to your house.

Roger Bournival said...

Typical bullshit - lefty newspapers spend at least the better part of a decade telling us how racist and retrograde Civil War reenactments are, and now the lead lefty paper bemoans its demise? Which one is it, chumps?

Eric said...

Maybe I can head over to the Springfield Armory and see if I can find a deal.

Mike said...

Not likely the Springfield Armory is going to have any for sale. Anything Springfield sold to the government would be resold via the Civilian Marksmanship Program at thecmp.org. The place to look for them is gunbroker.com. I don't know what the rules are for reenactments, but I would not be surprised if they had a policy against "working" rifles for liability reasons. Despite the level of stupidity it would take to have a negligent discharge with a black powder, muzzle loader, given a large enough group you're sure to find one.