Historical reenactment is an educational or entertainment activity in which mainly amateur hobbyists and history enthusiasts put on uniforms and follow a plan to recreate aspects of a historical event or period. This may be as narrow as a specific moment from a battle, such as the reenactment of Pickett's Charge presented during the Great Reunion of 1913, or as broad as an entire period, such as Regency reenactment. While historical reenactors are generally amateurs, some participants are members of armed forces or historians. The participants, called reenactors, often do research on the equipment, uniform, and other gear they will carry or use. Reenactors buy the apparel or items they need from specialty stores or make items themselves. Historical reenactments cover a wide span of history, from the Roman empire to the major world wars and the Korean War of the 20th century.
The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) is an American hereditary association of Southern women established in 1894 in Nashville, Tennessee. The stated purposes of the organization includes the commemoration of Confederate States Army soldiers and the funding of the erection of memorials to these men. Many historians have described the organization's portrayal of the Confederate States of America (CSA), along with its promotion of the Lost Cause movement, as advocacy for white supremacy, and have asserted that promotion of the Confederate tradition has been led by the UDC. Until recent decades, the UDC was also involved in building monuments to commemorate the Ku Klux Klan.
The Battle of Olustee or Battle of Ocean Pond was fought in Baker County, Florida on February 20, 1864, during the American Civil War. It was the largest battle fought in Florida during the war.
Alberta Martin was once believed to be the last living widow of a Confederate soldier. This has been contradicted by Maudie Hopkins, but Martin appears to have been the last widow whose marriage to a Confederate soldier produced offspring.
An old soldiers' home is a military veterans' retirement home, nursing home, or hospital, or sometimes even an institution for the care of the widows and orphans of a nation's soldiers, sailors, and marines, etc.
Heinrich Hartmann Wirz, better known as Henry Wirz, was a Swiss-American officer of the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. Wirz was the commandant of the stockade of Camp Sumter, a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp near Andersonville, Georgia, where inhumane conditions led to a high mortality rate of Union detainees. After the war, Wirz was tried and executed for conspiracy and murder relating to his command of the camp, and was one of only two people convicted for war crimes during the American Civil War.
The Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) is an American nonprofit and charitable organization of male descendants of Confederate veterans headquartered at the Elm Springs in Columbia, Tennessee. The SCV was founded on July 1, 1896, at the City Auditorium in Richmond, Virginia, by R. E. Lee Camp, No. 1, Confederate Veterans. It is known for erecting and maintaining American Civil War memorials and graves, observing Confederate Memorial Day, and encouraging Southern historical study. Activists have placed new emphasis on the controversial right to display Confederate symbols in public.
Maudie Hopkins was an American woman believed to be the last publicly known and identified surviving widow of a Civil War veteran.
The Lost Cause of the Confederacy, or simply the Lost Cause, is an American pseudo-historical, negationist ideology that holds that the cause of the Confederacy during the American Civil War was a just and heroic one. The ideology endorses the supposed virtues of the antebellum South, viewing the war as a struggle primarily to save the Southern way of life, or to defend "states' rights", in the face of overwhelming "Northern aggression." At the same time, the Lost Cause minimizes or denies outright the central role of slavery in the buildup to and outbreak of the war.
American Civil War reenactment is an effort to recreate the appearance of a particular battle or other event associated with the American Civil War by hobbyists known as Civil War reenactors, or living historians.
Alfred Iverson Jr. was a lawyer, an officer in the Mexican–American War, a U.S. Army cavalry officer, and a Confederate general in the American Civil War. He served in the 1862–63 campaigns of the Army of Northern Virginia as a regimental and later brigade commander. His career was fatally damaged by a disastrous infantry assault at the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg. General Robert E. Lee removed Iverson from his army and sent him to cavalry duty in Georgia. During the Atlanta Campaign, he achieved a notable success in a cavalry action near Macon, Georgia, capturing Union Army Maj. Gen. George Stoneman and hundreds of his men.
The Confederate Memorial at Indian Mound Cemetery in Romney, West Virginia, commemorates residents of Hampshire County who died during the American Civil War while fighting for the Confederate States of America. It was sponsored by the Confederate Memorial Association, which formally dedicated the monument on September 26, 1867. The town of Romney has claimed that this is the first memorial structure erected to memorialize the Confederate dead in the United States and that the town performed the nation's first public decoration of Confederate graves on June 1, 1866.
Star of the West was an American civilian steamship that was launched in 1852 and scuttled by Confederate forces in 1863. In January 1861, the ship was hired by the government of the United States to transport military supplies and reinforcements to the U.S. military garrison of Fort Sumter. A battery on Morris Island, South Carolina manned by cadets from the South Carolina Military Academy fired upon the ship, effectively the first shots fired in the American Civil War.
The Southern Cross of Honor was a commemorative medal established in 1899 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy to honor Confederate Veterans.
Richmond, Virginia, served as the capital of the Confederate States of America for almost the whole of the American Civil War. It was a vital source of weapons and supplies for the war effort, and the terminus of five railroads.
The North Carolina Monument is a North Carolina memorial of the American Civil War commemorating the 32 Carolina regiments in action at the Battle of Gettysburg. The monument is a public artwork by American sculptor Gutzon Borglum located on Seminary Ridge, West Confederate Avenue, in the Gettysburg National Military Park.
The commemoration of the American Civil War is based on the memories of the Civil War that Americans have shaped according to their political, social and cultural circumstances and needs, starting with the Gettysburg Address and the dedication of the Gettysburg cemetery in 1863. Confederates, both veterans and women, were especially active in forging the myth of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy.
The modern display of flags used by and associated with the Confederate States of America started in response to the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s and continues into the present day. Their revival began with Senator Strom Thurmond's Dixiecrats in reaction to growing public support for racial equality, alongside opposition to civil rights in 1948.
For decades in the U.S., there have been isolated incidents of removal of Confederate monuments and memorials. Several U.S. states have passed laws to hinder or prohibit further removals.
