# Historical enactors-when to stop? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 20, 2007, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-enactors-when-to-stop/412551 "2007-07-20T16:28:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2007, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-enactors-when-to-stop/412551/61 "2007-07-25T20:43:59Z")
As I understand it, the battles my family participates in are somewhat loosely scripted. For one thing, as someone mentioned above, they might say one side wins in the morning battle, and the other side wins in the afternoon. Or they might say they will perform certain major maneuvers which, to appear at all realistic, should have certain responses. Say they might want to have a bayonet charge, they might want to have the artillery play a certain role, have set lines or moving skirmishes. That sort of thing. It really is a cooperative effort in order to pull it off. In all but the biggest events you are using pretty small groups to give the impression of what larger units would have done. Really sucks when you have a few individuals or units who have a rep for refusing to die. The other issue is that these folks are playing with heavy, pointy things that explode. So you want some conventions for safety reasons. Generally, folks elevate their guns slightly rather than shooting right at opponents, and I believe there is a minimum distance under which you aren’t supposed to shoot at someone. You can generally tell the more experienced re-enactors, because they tend to die in the shade! My family all have back stories, tho there is wide variation among re-enactors. One thing is re-enactors are generally quite insistent upon appropriateness. So, for example, my youngest daughter is quite the clotheshorse, so they had to come up with a historically acceptable explanation for why she would have clothes of a certain quality while hanging around with an army unit. Having a back story also helps if a re-enactor wishes to interact with the public. The individual units are all historically documented. None of them are just generic “redcoats.” Instead, you’ll have the 55th, or whatever. And members of that unit know why they are wearing each piece of gear they have, what battles their unit was involved in, etc. In Williamsburg at UTR, they had actors playing Cornwallis and his staff. I hung with them a bit - they were a hoot! ---
**Author:** ![Full\_Metal\_Lotus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/df705f/32.png) [@Full\_Metal\_Lotus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Full_Metal_Lotus)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2007, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-enactors-when-to-stop/412551/62 "2007-07-26T01:37:59Z")
hmm 160 yrs from now… Arguing over the well dressed Viet cong vs the average booner rat? FML ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Miskatonic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.miskatonic/32/310_2.png) [@Mr.Miskatonic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Miskatonic)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2007, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-enactors-when-to-stop/412551/63 "2007-07-26T13:47:44Z")
[QUOTE=hotflungwok] Are there southern Civil War reenactment groups? [/QUOTE] Yup. > [@](#): > > Are they revisionist? Some. There is a reason why I do not reenact the Civil War…I don’t reenact any war still being fought. > [@](#): > > I’ve met southerners who are still mad about the civil war. I’m having a hard time imagining them wanting to immitate it. Remember that they won a lot of the battles. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Miskatonic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.miskatonic/32/310_2.png) [@Mr.Miskatonic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Miskatonic)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2007, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-enactors-when-to-stop/412551/64 "2007-07-26T13:49:19Z")
[QUOTE=Elendil’s Heir] At the events I went to in the Nineties, you were free to decide who you’d shoot at among the enemy troops across the field (you couldn’t bump the rifles of other troops in your ranks to point at someone “at the oblique,” though, unless ordered to). You also got to decide when you’d “die.” No one wants to die in the first minute of the battle after driving hours and hours to get there, so you’d hear a lot of jokes about “ironclad Rebs” who take twenty shots before they’d die. Some of our TBGs would decide to die when they got winded or overheated. At a few events, our officers would shout months of the year now and then, and anyone whose birthday was in that month would have to fall down as killed or wounded. [/QUOTE] The death of a soldier in the smaller Rev War units usually co-incides with running out of ammunition or having a faulty musket (flintlocks can be tempermental!). ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2007, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-enactors-when-to-stop/412551/65 "2007-07-26T13:55:32Z")
Another thing I was thinking about - at least with most rev war re-enactors there is no targetting of specific individuals simply because the muskets were not sufficiently accurate. Instead, you most often have masses of men firing volleys in the direction of other masses of men. (All pedants, please note the general use of qualifiers.) ---
**Author:** ![appleciders](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@appleciders](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/appleciders)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2007, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-enactors-when-to-stop/412551/66 "2007-07-26T21:29:14Z")
One Civil War reenactment that I’ve been to (it’s near Portland, OR, so there aren’t more than a hundred guys and they don’t even pretend it’s anything but a skirmish) has the “generals” flip a coin on the morning of the event to decide who wins. They also have a method of determining deaths that I haven’t seen mentioned above- some cartridges (bullets? Something that you reload every shot) have a black dot on them, and after you fire that shot, you have to die. You do, occasionally, spot a dead soldier getting back up and fighting for a while. I tell you, the guy that impressed me was the one who reared his horse, fell off backwards, and died as the cavalry charge broke and ran off. At least, I’m impressed assuming that he meant to do it. > [@](#): > > I’ve met southerners who are still mad about the civil war. I’m having a hard time imagining them wanting to immitate it. Are you kidding? They’re bitter that they lost, but proud that they fought. Plenty of Southerners have such a deep interest in the Civil War that you’re bound to find quite a few who want to carry the Stars and Bars into battle again. It’s the closest they’ll ever come to actually rebelling again. Besides, the Rebels were so ragtag that it’s easier to piece together a uniform- having a coat, boots, saddle or canteen that’s period but not standard issue is completely plausible. ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2007, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-enactors-when-to-stop/412551/67 "2007-07-26T23:42:06Z")
[QUOTE=Cat Fight] Civil War re-enactments are so old school it hurts. All the cool kids are hading down to the wetlands and pretending they’re in 'nam. [/QUOTE] Actually, the cutting edge is now [Lebanese Civil War re-enactment.](http://www.aqoul.com/archives/2006/04/civil_war_reena.php)\* \*Okay, not really. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/historical-enactors-when-to-stop/412551.md?page=3)