I am not a reenactor, but I would like to take a stab at this:
There are several different levels of interest in any historical event (or collection of events, like a war). WW2, WW1, and the U.S. Civil War are all events that profoundly changed U.S., if not world, history, and may also have affected a particular individual’s family history.
Some people have zero interest in these past wars, as they feel that those events don’t have any bearing on their current day to day life. It don’t pay the bills, as it were.
I, myself, am fascinated by these events, there causes, and what lessons we can or should draw from them. But my level of interest is generally limited to the buying (dozens of) books, and reading them on my own time.
Others will want to go to museums and historic sites, see the exhibits, see the physical items, see the gravestones. I have visited the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial twice. Both times, it “touched” something in my subconscious, in a way I can’t describe. But visits were sobering, and it also makes this history seem more real to me.
A few people will be so interested or fascinated by a subject that they will want to experience for themselves what it might have been like to be there, actually participating in events much bigger than one man. They put on uniforms, they reenact, they volunteer as tour guides. I presume this can bring an even more… deeper?.. connection to the past than I experienced at the Arizona Memorial.
My family are civil war “living history” buffs. We live near a well-known underground railroad site (the Milton House in Milton, Wisconsin). We hold “School Days” where 2000+ 4th graders come and learn about history - from the underground railroad to fashions to making bullets and firing cannons. I mostly work with my daughter who demonstrates clothing, showing how corsets were actually practical, for example. She also teaches on etiquette, midwifery, and a variety of rather “earthy” homemaking issues such as waste disposal. The kids and their teachers are fascinated. Our group has a blacksmith, several musicians, and we usually are able to get an Abraham Lincoln “impersonator” as well as someone who plays the role of Sojourner Truth. We do it because we have studied the history and love to portray it. Also, it can be seriously cool to dress up in hoop skirts a few times a year and behave in a “lady-like” manner…
My brother is rebel re-enactor and he is ‘Mad as hell’…i am conflicted at best…i live in the south,raised in southern schools,he’ll one of my cousins was named Dixie…i don’t remember studying Robt.E.Lee in history class…i member some civil war talk…we were integrated when I was in 8th grade…i never had any problems…though I remember the adults and teachers were upset…but anyway…i am a perfectly unjudgemental person now…i credit my mother for that.
I was talking about the terrorist who drove a car into a crowd of people at the Charlottesville Klan rally a couple weeks ago. Those wounds are still fresh, and while it’s going overboard, I don’t think it’s entirely inappropriate to reschedule someone with the same name as the guy whose statue sparked the attack to another assignment that isn’t in the affected region.
Though there’s an argument to be made that Lee was a terrorist, I think “traitor and leader of a treasonous army who fought in support of slavery” is bad enough, and accurate.
