Gettysburg Section Inside Vol. 42, No. 6 History, Competition And Camarader By Bruce Miller WINCHESTER, VA — The North-South Skirmish Association held its 133rd National Competition May 20-22, 2016. At Fort Shenandoah near Winchester, Virginia member units competed in live-fire matches with
Civil War period muskets, carbines, breech loading rifles, revolvers, m tars and cannons. It is the largest il War event of its kind. The N-SSA has over 3,200 individuals that mak up its 200 member units. Dressed in the uniforms soldiers wore 150 years ago, and each unit represents a Civil War regiment. Competitions are called “skirmishes” where participating teams shoot at breakable targets in several timed events. Th teams with the lowest cumulative times win medals or other awards. Women participate along with the men in all events. There are also competitions for the authenticity o Civil War period dress, both milita and civilian, as well as lectures o topics of interest. Despite a few bouts with cold an rainy conditions, the stalwarts who braved the storm competed with their usual gusto and enjoyed the competition and camaraderie. The competition began with individual matches which are available for
One Hundred forty-nine teams compet Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry won a solid time of 469.5 seconds.
e N-SSA 133rd Nationals all Civil War period firearms from rifle muskets to single shot pistol The competitors order their targets well in advance of the Nationals. For example, a competitor can order only one 50-yard and one 100-yard target for the rifle musket match. They can also order a score for the aggregate of the two targets if the choose to. There is no warm up and once the targets are shot there is reentry. Targets are retrieved by t host team staff and are taken to th Stat House where host team staff as signed there must score more target than you can imagine over the duration of the matches on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. For example, at the 133rd, they scored over 1,00 rifle musket targets, over 800 carbine targets and nearly 700 smoothbore musket targets. Competitors ar classified for each firearm they sh based on the average of their previous three matches and are reclassified after each National in which they participate. The team matches begin on Friday morning. As with individual matches, each unit is classified based o prior performance; A-1, A-2, A-3; if they enter a second team they ar classified “B” and a third or more teams “C”. Set up for the revolver team matches begins bright and early at 7:30 a.m. with phase one
ronically the 149th e-event musket match with hotos by Ericka Hoffmann)
The traditional musket match is shot whatsoever. The teams use paper cart Union Guard, (Company A, 19th Indian
immediately followed by phase 2. The favored revolver is the Rogers & Spencer, but many prefer the Remington, Colt Army and Navy models too. Seventy-eight four-person teams participated in the match of four events: 12 clay pigeons on a cardboard backer; eight hanging 6"x6" ceramic tiles; eight hanging clay pigeons and eight hanging 4"x4" ceramic tiles. With a terrific time of 139.8 seconds, the Iredell Blues finished first and claimed the gold medals. With the completion of the revolv er match, the team matches are then moved to the main range. With over 60 shooting positions, each accommodating eight shooters, this range is over a quarter mile in length. It is observed and controlled by welltrained host staff members who man their important positions in the mai control tower and three sub towers. On the ground, each team match relay requires a timer and safety offi to insure that all proper procedures are observed. Safety is always the first consideration at every N-SSA event. The smoothbore musket team match was next on the schedule. This relatively new match has become increasingly popular and, as you can imagine, a great test of skill. Competitors participate with many diffe ent firearms including the U.S. Model 1842; Confederate Macon Arsenal conversions of the Model 1842; the Hewes & Philips conversion of the
rifle muskets as issued in the Civ and dress authentically, right do ntry) won this match handily.
including the extra challenging si houette of a tiny clay pot and the Nansemond Guards bested 111 other units to finish first with a total of 188.3 seconds. Friday’s shooting adventure then continued with the concurrent bree loading rifle and Spencer team
Despite the rain and mud, 42 guns The accuracy of these guns is rema
matches. Fifty-two teams competed in the breech loading match, prima ily with Henry rifles. Competitors can load their magazine to capacit but when empty must then single load. You have to see this match t believe just how fast and accurate
these rifles can be 2nd Maryland Artill just 142.2 seconds medals. It was a bi four units that com magazine-fed Spence Illinois Infantry c seconds.
The final should of the day were the gle shot rifle matc tional musket match
ack Melton firing a 10-inch mortar at the N-SSA shoot.(Peggy Melton)
6175 Hickory Flat Hwy. • Suite 110-355 • Canton, Georgia 30115
Jack W. Melton Jr. C. Peter & Kathryn Jorgensen Publisher Founding Publishers Advertising Sales: Peggy Melton Columnists: Joseph Bilby, Greg Biggs, Stephen Davis, Stephanie Hagiwara, James M. Schmidt, John Sexton, Michael K. Shaffer, The Watchdog Staff Editorial & Photography Staff: Scott C. Boyd, Joe Bordonaro, Sandy Goss, Gordon L. Jones, Michael Kent, George Lomas, Nancy Jennis Olds, Leon
Reed, Helen S. Schwartz, Gregory L. Wade, Joan Wenner
Mike Cavanaugh, Founder - Civil War Book Exchange Book Review Editor: Edward H. Bonekemper III Book Review Staff: Walt Albro David Galli John Michael Pri
Michael Ballard C. Michael Harrington Michael Russert Greg Biggs Thomas A. Horrocks Thomas J. Ryan Joseph Bilby Brian Jordan Theodore P. Sava Richard J. Blumberg Jay Jorgensen Sean Scott Charles H. Bogart Clint Johnson David Sesser Mike Cavanaugh John F. Marszalek Paul Taylor
Connie Clowers Evan McLaughlin Joseph Truglio
Larry Clowers Richard McMurry Jeffry Wert Steven Davis Jonathan A. Noyalas Jonathan W. Whit Joseph A. Derie Jeff Patrick Frank J. William Robert L. Durham James Percoco Kenneth D. Willi
Monthly. Business and Editorial Offices: 6175 Hickory Flat Hwy., Suite 1 355, Canton, Georgia 30115, Accounting and Circulation Offices: Historic
postage prices is pending at Canton, Georgia and additional mailing offi (if applicable). Periodicals postage paid at U.S.P.S. 131 W. High St., J City, MO 65101.
Hickory Flat Hwy., Suite 110-355, Canton, Georgia 30115. Display advertising rates and media kit on request. The Civil War News is for your reading enjoyment. The views and opinions expressed herein are those of its authors, readers and advertisers and t do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Historical
– Preservation News – By Gregory L. Wade Tennessee Civil War Preservation Association Presents Annual Awards The Tennessee Civil War Preservation Association (TCWPA) recently held its annual recognition and business meeting at the Carnton Plantation in Franklin, Tennessee. TCWPA identifies for preservation and interpretation Civil War sites across the state, many often not we known or documented.
During the past year, teams from each of Tennessee’s three major regions inventoried and updated
battle site information in rural as well as urban environments. Along with reports of the progress of thi and other initiatives, the organiza presented its annual awards to thos who have furthered the cause of battlefield preservation. The Bob Ragland Award was presented by association president Joe Smyth to Billy King for his work with the Big Black Creek Historical Association near Jackson and the restoration of Denmark Church in West Tennessee. “Billy has been instrumental in getting markers erect
ed and sites registered in that are Smyth noted.
Tennessee Civil War Preservation Association President Joe Smyth
presents Billy King with the Harvey Ragland Award.
Julian Bibb of Franklin’s charge, l evolving Carter Hill Battlefield Pa
Eric Jacobson of the Battle of F tour of the Eastern Flank Battle
Bob Ragland was an early proponent of battlefield preservati Tennessee and a charter member o the TCWPA. The Presidents Partne ship Award was presented to Tenn see State Congressional Represen tive Charles Sargent for his wor helping fund several state spons Civil War Preservation projects. “Charles’s involvement has been critical in much of the work goi on Franklin’s Carter Hill Battle
including the removal of an old school gym from the site,” Smyth
President Joe Smyth presents Tennessee State Representative
Trust addresses the TCWPA (All photos Greg Wade)
said. This recognition is for a pub servant who has helped elevate Civi War Preservation in Tennessee. After the business and awards session, attendees toured Franklin Civil War sites preserved in recent years thru the reclamation efforts of several groups led by Franklin’s Charge and Save the Franklin Battlefield. Included were stops at the Eastern Flank Battlefield, Coll Farm, five acres known as Loring’s
Advance and the evolving Carter Hill Battlefield Park. Julian Bibb of Franklin’s Charge discussed how various private and public partnerships enabled local preservationists to purchase key
battlefield properties. He elaborat on the complexities presented when structures have to be removed. Bibb quipped, “we are always broke,” but with a lot of help from many groups including the city of Franklin, the Civil War Trust and others, roughly 130 acres at the cost of about twen
ty-five million dollars have been r claimed since 2005, Bibb said.
Sam Huffman leads the TCWPA annual meeting tour at Collins Farm.
Daniel Taylor of Jackson, Tennessee (Left), Jim Ogden of Chickamauga Battlefield Center and Dr. Anthony Hodges of Chattanooga at the TCWPA tour.
TO THE EDITOR: I found Professor Allen Guelzo’s review of Thomas R. Pero’s Gettysburg 1863—Seething Hell: The epic battle of the Civil War in the soldie own words in your May issue way off the mark, beginning with a startlingly dismissive introduction panning Pero as a “travel journalist” an publisher of “photograph books.” Even a cursory examination would have revealed Pero as a nationally acclaimed, award-winning author and editor. The point of a review is to review the material submitted rather than dissing the author by sly innuendo. I was also struck by the disconnects between Guelzo’s criticisms and what Pero actually wrote. For example, Pero cites 120+ different sources—not the 30 that Guelzo
asserts. If Guelzo had read the entire book, he would have seen that in total the long excerpts are fairly evenly divided between Confederate and Union participants. Of the 30 citations that Guelzo checked, eight (27 percent) were original, not previously published in full-length and 40 percent had either never been in print unedited, or were available in obscure locations not widely known to the general public. I am quite cer tain few recent Civil War anthologies, including the reviewer’s own Gettysburg: The Last Invasion, contain a similarly high proportion of never previously published material as Pero’s 27% —a remarkable feat of sleuthing 150+ years after the fact. Guelzo then goes on to complain about Pero’s reliance on contemporaneous compositions as unreliable historical guides. While Guelzo correctly notes that a combat soldier’s horizons are limited to their immediate vicinity in the heat of battle, with this criticism he reveals that h
missed entirely the express purpose of Seething Hell—that is to report on the experience of the ordinary soldiery in that terrifying environment. Further, much of the material Pero presents reveals soldiers’ emotions leading up to the actual battle or in its aftermath when the writers are not under the intense and immediate strain of combat. The point here is that Pero neither suggested nor offered his soldiers’ narrative of the great battle as an examination of the historical significance of the battle itself, but rather an illumination of the emotions and observations of its actual combatants. Guelzo’s myopia carries forward to his dismissal of Pero’s graphic de pictions of the horror of the combat as battlefield “pornography.” Again, Guelzo misses the mark widely here as these depictions are not posted to titillate, but rather as testament to the bravery and determination of
ordinary soldiers to do their duty to cause and comrades, no matter the personal risk. It is clear from these contemporaneous Civil War letters and diaries that “gray backs” and “blue bellies”
alike understood fully what lay before them and the horror that they
had passed through. I am a combat veteran and survivor of searing, close-quarter combat during my tour with River Assault Squadron Nine and U.S. Ninth Infantry Division in the Mekong Delta during the Vietnam War. I have witnessed firsthand, as a direct participant, the ca nage as well as the courage of young Americans under fire—awarding more Purple Hearts than men assigned during my one-year combat tour. It is well for the rest of us t member and appreciate the courage and determination our countrymen, past and present, to do their duty IN SPITE of what they know lies ahead. Finally, by caustically dismissing the author’s choice of title, Seethin Hell, from a quotation by Walt Whit-
man because, Guelzo says, Whitman was not personally in battle strikes
me as both puzzling and pointless. The poet had nursed and sat at the deathbeds of hundreds of maimed soldiers, listening to their horrible experiences. When the heartbreaking stories and the never-ending parade of carnage became too much for him to bear, he went home to Brooklyn. Who among us today interested in this important history would not envy Whitman what he heard? If Guelzo wishes to lob criticism at titles of Civil War books, he need look no further than his own 2013 Last Invasion. What were Confederate Generals Hood’s and Early’s post-Gettysburg armed entry into Union territory if not invasions? Iro nies of ironies, only thirty miles fr Gettysburg College, in August 1864, rebel artillery shelled Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and then burned more than 500 homes and buildings to the ground. One imagines the residents of Chambersburg most certain-
DR. GUELZO’S RESPONSE: I can appreciate Capt. Soverel’s prompt rally-round his neighbor and co-founder of the Wild Salmon Center in Portland. But that does nothing to erase the fact that Mr. Pero’s status as a “nationally acclaimed, award-winning author and editor” rests entirely on travel journalism and photography books, something anyone can see just by checking Wild River Press’s website
sure Mr. Pero knows a great deal more about salmon than I do, but when he self-publishes a book on Gettysburg which he announces as “stunning” beyond “many thousands of books about the Civil War,” then a question about credentials is hardly out of order. On Mr. Pero’s sources, Capt.
Soverel concedes that only “eight (27 percent) were original,” but he is certain that “few recent Civil War anthologies, including the reviewer’s own Gettysburg: The Last Invasion, contain a similarly high proportion
of never previously published material.” Perhaps. But then, originality
is what was supposed to distinguish Mr. Pero’s book. As his own description of the book says, “Thousands of pages of original letters, journa and diaries were combed from dozens of historic collections to creat a remarkable eyewitness narrative.” Now, as Capt. Soverel concedes, we have whittled that down to eight. Capt. Soverel objects that Mr. Pero’s dramatically-staged photographs of exploding heads and blood-soaked faces serve “as testaments to the bravery and determination of ordinary soldiers to do thei duty to cause and comrades.” Capt. Soverel is too modest in describing his own combat achievements, which include a Silver Star. But the photography featured in Mr.
Pero’s book did not contain photographs of “ordinary soldiers.” As th
son of a career U.S. Army officer an the father of a serving Army officer who did two tours in Iraq, I am repelled by images of fake carnage. The real version is bad enough. I do not understand what Capt. Soverel is referring to by “Confederate Generals Hood’s and Early’s post-Gettysburg armed entry into Union territory.” Hood, of course, departed for the western theatre after Gettysburg and never got closer to “Union territory” than Nashville. Early’s raids into Maryland and Pennsylvania in 1864 were never intended to do more than draw Union troops from the Petersburg siege, and had no design for occupying (or supplying his division) from “Union territory,” which Lee certainly did 1863. Allen C. Guelzo, Ph.D. Gettysburg, Pa
TO THE EDITOR: What a wonderful addition to Civi War News! My friends and I are ecstatic that Stepahanie Hagiwara is o your staff. The last two articles sh wrote on ‘Quaker Guns’ and ‘CSS Teaser’ have broadened my knowledge of the Civil War. My Civil War buff buddies had no idea the CSS Teaser was no only the first ship to carry and lay mines but also our nations first aircraft carrier by lauc a balloon. Needless to say we cannot wait for another ‘Through The Lens’ column by Ms. Hagiwara who is, in our opinion, the best columnist of a Civil War magazines and periodicals on the market. Tom Yockey J Florissant,
TO THE EDITOR: Sometimes your event photographs, make that often, are of the most ‘Farby’ people on the field. That just encourages the ‘Farbs’. I can count on at least one such photo per issue. There are too many photos of buys with ‘bay windows’ and women poorly disguised as men. The column, ‘Ask The Appraiser’, is great. Joe Bilby’s articles are al way very informative. Your book reviews are good because your reviewers, like Allen Guelzo, are eminently qualified and are not afraid to ‘ding a book that deserves it. Capt. D.A. Sulin Rockport, Maine
TO THE EDITOR: I was reading my June issue of issue as usual. The item that got my attention was the series of Confederate monuments that faithfully serve as a reminder to the great loss of li by the young men of the South who fought bravely to defend their states from Union armies. I am a bit envious of the spirit of the South in remembering their family heroes. There’s a different sentiment here in the North, where you really have to look hard to find a Civil War monument, and I know no body that decorates Civil War sites, except for certain national holidays, it’s hard find anyone decorating gravesites of WWII veterans. In the North there has been a tendency to forget the Civil War and all references. My wife is a retired history teacher and she told me that Civil War history has long been removed from text
has been launched to destroy anything that has historical Civil War references in the South, but stand fast and don’t allow it to happen. Yo might be surprised to hear that there is great sentiment and support for th South in the Northern states and it i not uncommon to see a Confederate flag flying alongside the USA flag, especially during July 4th holiday. Last year, while on vacation, we noted numerous Confederate flags being flown from front porches, on SUVs, fishing boats, just about everywhere. We also met some Vietnam vets who displayed Confederate flag pins on their hats in support to their Southern friends who served with them in battle. Continue to stand fast to defend your flag and Southern traditions. The handful of anti-South agitators who are seeking to destroy your heritage should be opposed, they do not represent but a small handful. I
served in the Vietnam War, and we had plenty of men from the South in our ranks, and it was routine to see some of them with a rebel flag patch on their combat clothes, no one cared or complained.
TO THE EDITOR: To comment on your editorial in the June issue, on the future of reenacting; I say to you, really? The diminishing numbers, (due to the aging out of so many participants), your answer is to overlook quality, for quantity? OMG, is this what the future of the hobby is to be The people that want to do it correctly, and emulate their ancestors as best as possible are to now lower their standards to help fill the rank Well, it will make it a whole lot eas er on the pocketbook to do. Participants can wear their Foster
Grants instead of purchasing a proper pair of period frames for glasses. Levis are a whole lot less itchy than real wool pants, and who really likes those suspenders anyway. We all knows that Brogans are slippery on rocks and wet grass, so the hiking boot is a better choice. Then there i that big heavy old fashioned musket, why a single shot 12 gauge is a whole lot lighter, and cheaper, and i will look good beyond 10 feet. Oh, don’t forget the camps, cooking over wood fires is considered a hazard to both the air quality and th participants. A good old fashioned Coleman stove is perfectly acceptable in this case. Then there is the displaying of that pesky old Confederate Battle flag, that has to go, it needs to be a museum only, since now we are all trying to be sensitive to everyone’s feelings and political views. Let’s also not force the “Newbie” into a leaky canvas tent, if he/she h a nylon one, let them use it, remem-
ber it is all about the numbers! Yes, sounds very ridiculous, and stupid, but lowering standards for the numbers is a very slippery slope. Just look at what has happened to the quality of education due to the lowering of admitting standards in the name of “Diversity”. Do we really want to be known as “Costume Campers”, rather than Living Historians, and reenactors? Gerald Drak Winchester, V Reenactor since 1991 Member of 8th Va