Corinne and I just returned home from a magnificent long weekend in Gettysburg - the annual reenactment of the July 1, 2, and 3, 1863 battle. The time spent with our colleagues in Lee's Lieutenants was, as always, priceless, and the spectators were, as they always are at this event, engaged, well-informed, and loaded with great questions.
I want to particularly report on our three, one-hour-long sessions in the Activities Tents. Each one was packed, the seating full and 3-4 deep standing around the exterior of the tent. Our group marches to and from the tents, escorted by our diligent security detail, became Pied-Piper like in their draw of spectators in to meet with us, and I don't think we disappointed in any way. Instead of a pre-prepared spiel, we treated the guests as if they were the Press Corps, and allowed them to direct the subject matter by their questions, all of which, from both young and old, were excellent.
We opened by walking up through the crowd shaking hands, as Private "Nate" Greene of the 2nd Florida Infantry played a beautiful banjo accompaniment of "Dixie." General Lee then briefly spoke of his background of having been in the U.S. Army, even donning, briefly, a blue Colonel's coat to the consternation of many in the crowd. His return to grey always brought applause. Once the Generals were introduced, the press was offered their opportunity to question.
The questions of how we chose to go South, many of us West Pointers, always took us into the defense of the Constitution as opposed to of the Union, and thence to the entire Constitutional question of secession. The point of the existence of state sovereignty vs. limited Federal power had great resonance with every crowd, and people began to see that many of the seminal issues of the War Between the States are still with us 145+ years later.
I give great thanks to and for my friends and colleagues in Lee's Lieutenants. They are all serious historians who regularly breathe life into the often dry bones of history by their portrayals of historic figures as real people with senses of humor, and all the trials and tragedies of life, as do we all today. All of them, particularly our nonpareil General Lee, Al Stone, are great historians, actors, and friends in their own right. But taken together, Lee's Lieutenants is most definitely greater as a whole than the sum of its parts.
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