How authentic?

LindaEadesBlackburn · Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 9:14 pm Post subject: How authentic?

I am an Artist and I go to the reenactments to get reference material for my Civil War Series that I am working on. I am concerned about the degree of authenticity regarding clothing, well, pretty much everything used during the reenactments.

O'Bruadair · Posted: Sat Mar 15, 2008 4:24 pm Post subject:

I’ve been engaged in the madness called “re-enacting’ for a long time and I guess I’ve pretty much seen it all. Re-enacting is like any other human endeavour. The quality will vary. This is true of events, units and individuals.

If you are looking for total authenticity in the individual soldier (and by this I mean every minute detail of uniform and equipment as close to original as possible or at least as close as you are gonna get in this life unless you have access to Mr. Peabody’s way-back machine) then find some so called “hardcore” events. These are small (usually no more than a few dozen participants) and are by invitation only.

These folks are somewhat cliquish and will not tolerate women, children, modern civilians, spectators or anything else that they deem inauthentic for very long, but if you start hanging out at the “authentic campaigner” forum and let some of them know what you are looking for, you should be able to wrangle an invitation to at least show up and take a few photographs (ALL re-enactors even the “stitch *beep*” love “having their image struck” even if it is with a modern camera!)

For large numbers of troops and battle scenes I would attend some of the national events. This is the 145th for Gettysburg and that one should be a big one. It’s also the 145th of Chickamauga (which of course would be a lot closer for you)

LindaEadesBlackburn · Posted: Sat Mar 15, 2008 7:41 pm Post subject:

I thank you so much for your reply. This has been most helpful information and I will certainly follow up on it.

Again, thank you! Very Happy