American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

I did attend the reenactment all four days. Some of it was real good and some of it not so much. They announced that fourteen thousand reenactors participated, but I don't think more than a third of that number were ever present at the same time. Pickett's Charge had the most reenactors, I think. They also had 95 cannon operating in that reenactment. Some stirring moments.

They held a couple of reenactments each day. Normally, a cavalry reenactment was scheduled for the morning at 11:00 AM and an infantry reenactment at 6:00 PM. The cavalry reenactments were pretty good, right in front of the bleachers, with the cavalry mixing it up and a lot of saber clashing.

Except for Pickett's Charge, the infantry reenactments were in a field too far off where you could barely see what was going on.

Bottom line is I'm glad I went.

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MG Mike Mihalik
Forrest's Cavalry Corps
AoWest/CSA

Mike,

I was in the middle of the second day battle, just behind the wheat field (where the barns and farm house were) posing as a southern war correspondent and it was the largest battle reenactment I've ever seen, it was however not a good one to watch as a spectator as it covered so much area, much of which was not visible from the spectator area, the wheat field as well as the Devil's Den/Little Round Top were some of those areas.
They billed the event as by reenactors for reenactors..."spectators welcome"...so I'm assuming they weren't concerned with making it 'stadium' seating as much as presenting the broad expanse of a large battle. It was 4 hours of continuous fighting, in the 25 years of reenactments I've attended nothing even comes close, there are video and stills from the second day scenarios of things that I didn't even see as there was much fighting done in the wooded areas above the open fields. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... 5KW5096D4c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... Q57dOk14KA about 3/4 way through the second video you can see a white barn and wooded area in the right center, I was on the edge of the woods and for a time held the flag for Hurts' Alabama Battery, a single 3in rifle which was one of the horse drawn artillery units, (these guys had come from California, horses, gun and limber!) I think they were just moving in to place at the very end of this video.
There were also two scenarios on Friday that were not open to the public, one in the morning and one at 8PM
The spectators were charged 10.00 per day which is inexpensive compared to most reenactments so it was kind of a trade off, though the Sunday folks got more for the buck with the Pickett's charge scenario.

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Hi, Bob,

The one I attended was the one that ran from July 4th through July 7th. I think yours was the earlier one. They charged us $35 per day, plus $15 a day if we wanted to sit in the bleachers. I can't speak to whether one was any better than the other because I didn't see the first one, but there were an awful lot of reenactors at the one I went to as well.

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MG Mike Mihalik
Forrest's Cavalry Corps
AoWest/CSA

Mike,

Oh...my bad, being you were taking about the lack of spectator viewing and the cavalry battles at mid day I thought it was the June one...seems they both did similar events. The $35 per day was a bit steep for spectating, hopefully some of that was going to preservation. I've heard the one in June had close to 20,000 reenactors and the July one did bout the same, I'm sure a lot of the folks that came from some distance stayed the week and did both events.

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Here are some pictures of the reenactment frm the NYT.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013 ... 30728&_r=0

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MG Mike Mihalik
Forrest's Cavalry Corps
AoWest/CSA