Re-enactment of the Battle of
2nd Manassas:135th Anniversary

Preface: Having grown up in Massachusetts as a victim of the public school system, I remembered preciously little about the Civil War from my history classes. Most of the military history of the "North" is taught from the perspective of the Revolutionary War and the battles of Lexington and Concord. About the most I remember of the Civil War from high school history is the fight between two teachers as to whether the war was fought over slavery or states rights. Names like Gettysburg, Antietam, and Fredricksburg really meant little to me. But after moving to Virginia in 1985, I began to gain a little more perspective and knowledge of the subject beyond the northern stereotype of Southerners as "still fightin the Civil War". Perhaps my first experience was at the 130th anniversary re-enactment of the battle of 2nd Manassas in 1992. I remember sitting on the ground in the spectator area next to a local family, and when the battle started, the mother handed out toy guys to kids with instructions to "shoot the Yankees". I figured it wasn't a good time to mention that I was originally from Boston. I also remember attending my wife's 20th reunion at Mary Washington College in Fredrickburg, VA and having the college president remark about all of the damage that was done to the campus during the "Yankee shelling." When you attend one of these battle re-enactments, with 10,000 re-enactors showing up from both Northern and Southern groups, you begin to gain some perspective on the scope of the battles and their importance. Whereas dozens of Americans fell at Lexington and Concord, tens of thousands fell at Gettysburg and Antietam.

These images were taken with a Nikon N90 camera with an 80-200 mm f2.8 AF-D Nikkor zoom lens (images 1-4) or a 300 mm f4 AF Nikkor lens (images 5-12) on Fuji Velvia (images 1-4) or Fuji Sensia 100 (images 5-12).The images were transfered to Kodak PhotoCD and opened with Adobe Photoshop 4. Minor tweeks of the Levels were made, as well as the application of the Unsharp mask Filter.