Unfortunately, any discussion of anything concerning the Civil War eventually invokes its own version of Godwin's Law. Being a Confederate reenactor doesn't mean you support slavery today or then. Being a Union reenactor doesn't mean you think the deliberate starvation of Confederate prisoners at Point Lookout, Pea Patch Island, or Elmira was right or that Sherman's March through Georgia was necessary or justifiable. As Freud observed, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
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From: Craig Kilby <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2011 3:21 PM
Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] Interesting food for thought about the Civil War 150th
Indeed it is. And there were plenty of atrocities on both sides. Since you mention Missouri, how about the shooting of unarmed civilians by Union troops in St. Louis and especially the infamous Palymra massacre in Marion County?
Craig Kilby
Missouri Native
On May 19, 2011, at 11:40 AM, Finkelman, Paul <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> But, it is important to see the re-enactors in the context of a larger picture.
>
> There is also a tendency stimulated by re-enactors to avoid the hard issues surrounding the Civil War. It would be interesting, for example, to see Confederate re-enactors at Gettysburg to travel around southern Pennsylvania trying to seize black people and drag them to slavery as Lee's troops did; would they re-enact the massacre and mutilation of black troops who surrendered at Fort Pillow? Or the shooting of unarmed wounded United States soldiers in Missouri?
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