Stuff up with which I will not put

[Rob Weaver]

I would like to see less ridiculous, fake Irish accents. It makes us look like a bunch of clowns.

Funny, though. I know Irishmen; they talk with Irish accents. There were at least 150,000 Irishmen in the Federal army. How many reenactors should be Irish, then at the average reenactment. I'm of Irish background myself (my grandmother's name was Maggie Burke) and I don't really mind the accents. To really know Ireland is to know sorrow, and I get a little tired of the "shure n begorra" stuff, too, but there are really few tangible ways of drawing attention to the Irish presence in the Civil War.

[MudDuck]

True, and I have Irish ancestry too (none that were in the war), but a great many reenactors are going over board with it, and are making caricatures of being Irish. I think a lot of it is just innocent messing around, but the spectators see it and get the wrong, if not bad impression.

[flattop32355]

....but a great many reenactors are going over board with it, and are making caricatures of being Irish.

That's because it's much easier than doing a Dutchman impression.
There were a lot of them, too.

[Rob Weaver]

True, and I have Irish ancestry too (none that were in the war), but a great many reenactors are going over board with it, and are making caricatures of being Irish. I think a lot of it is just innocent messing around, but the spectators see it and get the wrong, if not bad impression.

Not to quibble, but many of us are more "re-en" than "actors." We're weekend, amateur thespians at best. I think if you're putting yourself out there as an Irishman, you should be prepared to take the whole ball of wax, not just the whiskey and the brogue. At 125th Wilderness (yes all those years ago!) several of my pards and I worked out a scenario and got "captured" so we could see the interior of the Muleshoe the evening before the battle. Through a mix-up, we ended up being detained longer than we'd thought. We built a fire and prepared to spend the night. At the same time, there was an "Irishman" in a glengarry who was "captured" and came in looking for his "brother." The Johnnies kept him, too and pushed him off onto us. I said: "Paddy, you go make you're own fire. This one is American." My pards picked up on the "No Irish need apply." When last I saw him, he was forlornly picking up sticks for his own lonely fire. My wife hates when I tell that story because it's so mean, but I think he learned something about being Irish that night.

[welshman15]

That's because it's much easier than doing a Dutchman impression.
There were a lot of them, too.

Yes, there were. Although my last name is Welsh, my lineage is largely German. My family hails from southern Indiana along the Ohio River, where there were large communities of 'Dutchies'. In fact even today it's not unusual to hear folks down there talk about feeding the 'spatzies', which is a corrupted form of the German word for sparrows.

[TB1861]

So how do you plan on stopping stupidity? A kind word before the event that no one who needs to hear it will listen to? A harsh word that may lead to blows during the event? Finding and talking to their "officers"? A well reasoned, short, honest and informative talk during formation might help, you could send it out in the form of a General Order for the commanders to read but that would have to come from the event command staff. You try this on your own with people you don't know and it might not end well. There is an almost military like quality in how reenacting is organized, use that.

[billwatson2]

I find the idea of thousands of people running around spreading misinformation, disinformation, myth and surmise as if it were handed down on stone tablets this morning by Robert E. Lee and U.S. Grant from the top of Lookout Mountain vaguely troubling, that's all. I can live with the speckleware. Turning the people we impersonate into something they wouldn't recognize, especially in conveying their beliefs and their actions, just strikes me as unfair.

I don't plan on stopping it. I plan on showing people an alternative.

The idea anyone can be made to do anything they don't want to do in this arena is a dog that won't hunt. However, Tom Sawyer not only got his Aunt Polly's fence painted, he got people to pay him to let them do it. Same psychology here: For those who try to do this history thing right, the payback is huge in terms of satisfaction, and it's sure not "if it's not perfect it's no good." Every step you take to improve yourself and your unit comes with its own allotment of "happy." Let that shine through everything we do and more people will want to do it.

Keep going, though, Tom and Hank and everyone; every post helps me clarify my thinking. Now that the fiction novel is finally published and out there, I can focus again on this. Plus I can maybe move this week on the kitchen remodel; I'm waiting for countertops the way Burnside waited for his pontoon bridge at Fredericksburg. Disaster looms. And there's something wrong with the pool. It came with the house. I didn't even know I wanted a pool. I'm going to change my signature line soon: Author and poolboy. Really, by comparison to my real life, getting a few thousand people to more or less adjust their suspenders and their story line doesn't seem insurmountable.

[Bill_Cross]

There were a lot of them, too.

America in 1861 was very different than today. A good deal of us were FOB back then (fresh off the boat). How many times do I read about someone in the war who had been born in a land other than here? There were no immigration quotas or exclusionary laws, people just came. It's another reason the South went to war: the realization that unlimited immigration in the North was going to swamp their previous stranglehold on the Congress. The immigration paved the way for rapid industrialization, too, but that's another thread.

Their accents and brogues and speech cadences are mostly lost now, though some writers capture the different speech patterns reasonably well (Dickens on his travels in America and of course, Mark Twain). Nearly 100 years of radio and half that much of TV have planed off the rough edges of our cultural identities, so that now we all talk pretty much the same, to the point that shows like "Jersey Shore" and movies like "The Town" or "The Fighter" are considered quaint because of their strong local accents.

If you want to get a sense of how things likely were, look at Hispanic immigration in this country now: the second generation is usually fluent in English with little or no accent, but the vibrancy of the old country is just below the surface.

I don't think we should overdo the "Lucky Charms" bit, but I'm not sure we can overdo the amount of Irish in the rank & file. Maybe just keep Rich Hill in check and we'll OK.

[RJSamp]

Not to quibble, but many of us are more "re-en" than "actors." We're weekend, amateur thespians at best. I think if you're putting yourself out there as an Irishman, you should be prepared to take the whole ball of wax, not just the whiskey and the brogue. At 125th Wilderness (yes all those years ago!) several of my pards and I worked out a scenario and got "captured" so we could see the interior of the Muleshoe the evening before the battle. Through a mix-up, we ended up being detained longer than we'd thought. We built a fire and prepared to spend the night. At the same time, there was an "Irishman" in a glengarry who was "captured" and came in looking for his "brother." The Johnnies kept him, too and pushed him off onto us. I said: "Paddy, you go make you're own fire. This one is American." My pards picked up on the "No Irish need apply." When last I saw him, he was forlornly picking up sticks for his own lonely fire. My wife hates when I tell that story because it's so mean, but I think he learned something about being Irish that night.

Yea good one, prisoners of war turn your back on your own and so quickly after a shared common experience. So much for the Federal Army (Ok so it is of ONE) and your own Irish in your 'regiment'. You definitely weren't reenacting Iron Brigade that day (they would have brought him to the fire).....my guess is you were trying to portray a New York Regiment

[TB1861]

Did the numbers quickly based on Fox's Regimental Losses.
Round numbers:
2,000,000 Federal soldiers
of them:
75% US born
8 3/4% German
7 1/2% Irish
2 1/2% English
2 1/2% Canadian
3 3/4% Other

So realistically you shouldn't hear Sgt. Schultz or a Leprechaun in blue very often as many of the ethnic soldiers were in regiments of like ethnicity.

And to the just off the boat comment, an interesting aside is the history of police departments in America, as urban poor from Europe increased in numbers so did crime, many large cities did not have police departments until this problem became bad enough to warrant the cost. The "night watch" wasn't so much a police force as a fire watch and not really able to deal with violent criminals. Some interesting reading can be found in the net if you cast it in the right directions, make for good first person conversation as it was happening during the lifetime of the soldiers of 1860-1865.

.0375% bonus Easter egg