Biggest misinformation items

[billwatson2]

I was going to post this in the Whine Cellar, but saw that it's for items from which, generally, no good can come. This one starts off that way, but the ultimate intention is definitely to do some good.

Like many of us, I've heard well-intentioned and not-so-well intentioned reenactors misinform the public. "The battle was at Gettysburg because the Confederates went there looking for shoes" is a typical example. Pretty much everybody in both armies was always looking for shoes, especially when the armies were on the move and shoes were wearing out quickly, but that's not why Gettysburg became a battle site. It's just a yarn, a kind of urban myth, that become attractive over time: "Just think, all these people dead just from shoes." That's one type. The other is confusion: 51,000 dead at Gettysburg. No. 51,000 casualties. That's dead, wounded, prisoner/missing.

I'd like to try to clear some of that up before the 150s begin.

I'd like people to spell out the most serious misconceptions or plain wrong statements they've heard reenactors perpetuate in presentations to the public.

Then I'll add a section to an upcoming book for living historians. It will briefly lay out the misconception or misstatement or misunderstanding, and include the pertinent undisputable information to clear the smoke, set it straight, keep it in perspective, whatever.

It's a book in the paradigm of "by us, for us." It's not about history as such. It's about us trying to recreate it. Obviously I'm working up a series of books around the same theme, history and reenacting. "Seize the Day" is out there to give bored same-old-same-old reenactors a reason to go on living in the 19th Century. "The Little Book of Civil War Reenacting" is going to be posted and available any day now, to help recruit. I'm partway through writing "Are you going to EAT that?!" about cooking in camp with 1860s equipment and techniques and living to tell about it. I'm thinking a good book for all of us would simply be called "The Bigger Book of Civil War Reenacting," subtitled something like "How to interpret history and keep your friends in the process." You get the idea. Part of it would be "learn from our mistakes," and what I'm asking right now is for people to help me inventory our mistakes, specifically the ones made in explaining history to the wide-eyed public.

I've certainly spread my share of misinformation. I remember being obliquely set straight by Gary Byrd of the 20th SCVI during a living history. I'd explained something about Confederate rations to the spectators, and got it wrong. A concerned fellow reenactor said nothing to me (it was really South Carolina, obliqueness is a way of life) but he went to Gary, the officer. Gary simply waited until the same question got asked of me that had led to the wrong information, then he jumped in and answered it, and I could see immediately where I'd gone off the rails with what I was trying helpfully but inaccurately to explain. Then he immediately turned back to me and said "Now, go ahead and explain about wool uniforms lasting longer. That was good stuff." That was 1993 and I haven't forgotten: No need for confrontation, no disparagement, no need for "aha, you're wrong," just set the record straight with no loss of face and we all move forward with what that aspect of our hobby is all about, explaining the past accurately to the present.

So that's what we'll do in that part of "The Bigger Book." It's just dying to have a witty chapter name, too, but I'm stumped. All suggestions welcome.

Bring it on.

[indguard]

Here's a few I often hear:

-All Confederate uniforms were brown (butternut) later in the war because they couldn't get gray dye for their cloth.

-All shoes were made without a left or right foot during the Civil War.

-Confederates didn't drill because they were not like the "regular army."

-Jeff Davis tried to sneak away in women's clothes at the end of the war.

-The war was never about slavery (oooo that will cause a firestorm).

WTH
The WhoSaidThat mess

[billwatson2]

That's the style!

[Army30th]

BUT, that slavery was the only thing behind it. A lesson in mid-19th century politics in 10 minutes.

[Pvt Schnapps]

Myth: Casualties were so high because they were using Napoleonic tactics with modern weapons.

Fact: Tactics had been re-written specifically to deal with the new weapons, the tactics represented the culmination of 400 years of European experience with black powder weapons, tactics further evolved during the war based on both sides' combat experience, and casualties, while horrendous, were not more so than in the Napoleonic wars or the Seven Years War.

[Blair]

Of course, that assumption could be be wrong?
But, then one might have to read the Articles of Secession as they were declared in their original documents, to know and understand this concept proposed.
Good lord! We can't have any of that sort of research now can we?

But then, this is not what this question is about. Is it? Or am I mistaken?

[Pvt Schnapps]

Here's another: If a boy stood on a piece of paper with the number 18 written on it he was considered "over eighteen" and could join the army.

For some reason I find that particularly irksome.

[ScottWashburn]

Myth: Casualties were so high because they were using Napoleonic tactics with modern weapons.

Fact: Tactics had been re-written specifically to deal with the new weapons, the tactics represented the culmination of 400 years of European experience with black powder weapons, tactics further evolved during the war based on both sides' combat experience, and casualties, while horrendous, were not more so than in the Napoleonic wars or the Seven Years War.

Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!

This is my personal pet peeve. Every year at our NPS living history at Gettysburg I try to tell this to anyone who will listen. And yet the myth just will not die. TV shows and otherwise reputable historians continue to dish out this nonsense. I think it's a mixture of lazy historians (tactics is just SOOO boring and complicated) and the fact that it makes such a good sound bite that it turns up again and again.

[Quickstep]

Major General Abner Doubleday invented baseball.

[billwatson2]

Yow, it's coming fast and furious.

WE can deal with slavery in 15 minutes. Not 10. In bold strokes: The role of slavery depends on who you're talking about, when you're talking about, and where you're talking about. And what you're talking about, secession or war. If your name was Wade Hampton, well, that's one obvious answer. If you're a patriotic South Carolinian and think gibberish-speaking one-eyed aliens from Massachusetts are invading, slavery isn't a direct motivator. And if you're an abolitionist from Massachusetts, it's been about slavery for 10 years -- although you don't necessarily want any black people to move next door, either. Yeah, like Napoleonic tactics, we can oversimplify and get it wrong, we can deny and look silly, or we can explain it as something more than a yes-or-no question and answer and maybe get the ideas across that one man's fight over property was another man's fight over home and a third man's fight over human rights and a fourth man didn't want to fight at all, just secede.
Probably we'll leave that issue number ten on the list rather than issue number one.