07.04.13
Wrong Flag Day
Or, shit WhiteManistan thinks.
It was obviously not as much fun being on the Union side.
From a USA Today piece on the re-enactment in Gettysburg, yesterday:
Kevin Farrar, a Confederate re-enactor from Lovettsville, Va., said it was “mind-boggling” to think of the mile-long march that Confederate troops endured under heavy fire. “It’s like the beaches of Normandy,” he said.
[Um, no, wrong on too many levels.]
No photo subject was more popular than a smartly dressed Gen. Robert E. Lee, played by Don Vanhart, a 58-year-old surgical technician from Maine, N.Y.
One noticeable feature of the recent faddy Gettysburg stories is that in interviewing the folk of WhiteManistan, they’re mostly only interested in talking about the South.
In reading Shelby Foote’s three volume history of it (I’m on the first book), the author states that after about the first six months, troops on either side which had been in battle were on equal footing.
This, counter to the common myth that the Confederate soldier, used to hunting more and “living outside,” was superior to “the pasty-faced mechanics” of the Union.