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Other stories in "Frontier history"

• Blasts from the past
  Every September, the Civil War comes to an old stagecoach inn in Wisconsin.
• Hayward's lumberjacks
  A northwest Wisconsin resort town keeps a frontier art alive.
• The first American Girl
  Before Laura, before Kit, there was Caddie Woodlawn on the Wisconsin frontier.
• Posse on the prairie
  In Madelia, the Jesse James Gang met its match — again.
• Scenes from the fur trade
  At re-created forts, meet the adventurers who shaped the Upper Midwest.
• Little sod house on the prairie
  Life on the frontier wasn't quite as romantic as we think it was.
• Grand Portage
  Once, a corner of northeast Minnesota was the center of the fur-trade universe.

Fight club

Thanks to Civil War battle re-enactors, history shows up in the flesh and blood.

It was a gorgeous fall day in southwest Wisconsin, and all we could see was heartache and misery.

"Welcome to Virginia 1862," read the sign at the gates of Norskedalen, where pioneer homesteads evoke the Civil War era.

Pushing open the door of a chinked-timber farmhouse, we encountered Nedda Blodgett, who was surprised to find strangers in her parlor but quickly welcomed us in a Southern drawl.

"Why, you must be refugees, too," she said with a nervous smile. "S'pose you're lookin' for something to eat. Ah don't have much; those boys take about ever'thing."

The "boys" were Confederate troops, who were in her back yard burning hay so advancing Union troops couldn't use it for their own horses.

"They already know we're here; they been probin' all day," one of them told us. "And the more smoke, the more people they may think we have."

Behind us, a tourist explained to her children the soldiers were taking the family's food, and Blodgett quickly corrected her.

"No, we're giving them our food," she said. "We leave all the dishonorable jobs to the Yankees."

Yankees, she said, had given her friend Becca and her friend's young daughters half an hour to leave their home, and they'd fled to Nedda's house. Now, Yankees were advancing on Nedda's house, too, and it was too much for Becca.

"I lost my house and my husband; I lost everything," she said, her voice quavering. "I'm just so fearful for my life and my children. I do apologize for my emotional state."

A soldier told her to collect her valuables and flee to the farm over the hill, so one of her daughters dashed to the stone springhouse and came back with a jar of pickled eggs. Then, we heard a boom, and the women and children ran out the door.

From a hillside, we watched as Rebels began loading, ramming, priming and firing a cannon, whose booms resounded around the little valley. Rebels with muskets took up posts along a split-rail fence as Union troops began streaming across a bridge, drawing gunfire as another group of federals ran along the creek, trying to catch the enemy from behind.

Soon, the federals had overrun the Rebels' cannon and driven them toward the farmhouse. The Union commander called for a ceasefire and sent troops to check the outbuildings for Confederate sympathizers.

Live theater

The re-enactment at Norskedalen, a pioneer heritage center whose name means "Norwegian valley," is modest as battle re-enactments go. Re-enactors use only three cannons and no cavalry, because horses tear up the grounds.

Some re-enactments are real spectacles. In eastern Wisconsin, the annual battle re-enactment near the Wade House involves as many as 50 horses and 17 cannons, which are loaded with balls of aluminum foil but use real gunpowder that delivers a charge of 18,000 pounds per square inch, enough to blow the arm off a careless loader.

Hundreds of soldiers clash on 280 acres of woods and fields, along rock-walled sunken lanes that were built by Yankee pioneers and later uncovered and cleared with the help of re-enactors.

In Southern states, re-enactments are held where battles actually took place, and they're still fraught with emotion, nearly a century and a half after the war. As near as western Missouri, where counties were devastated by guerrilla warfare, re-enactors who portray Union troops leave the field past silent, stony-faced spectators.

Each re-enactment is different. Norskedalen's is more intimate, with affecting human dramas woven into the smoke of battle.

Authentic details

As Union troops began to carry out the dead and wounded, others had to escort weeping women away from the scene. Confederate troops shuffled by, filthy and as ragged as scarecrows, followed by a dazed Union soldier, with real blood streaming down his face from a fall.

On the steps of a cabin serving as an infirmary, a wounded Rebel begged for liquor to relieve his pain, so a Union soldier tipped a flask to his lips. Another bellowed for "the butcher" (field surgeon), and in the yard a private was joyfully reunited with his sergeant.

Nedda Blodgett wandered out of the house, muttering over and over, "Ah just cain't get the beet juice off the wall," until a Union soldier pulled her back. In the yard, two women laid their heads on the breast of a dying man.

We watched the scene, transfixed, and with each sob and groan, we felt a little more shell-shocked ourselves — as if we really were in Virginia during 1862.

"Some of these people are better than a professional actor, who doesn't do as much; they live it every day," said John Thiel of nearby St. Joseph. "They practice and practice. It's really convincing. It's really hard to get out of first person. It's part of it to portray what people went through."

Thiel, who was filling in for the company surgeon, said the verisimilitude sometimes can be a little much, especially at demonstrations of how surgeons operated in the field.

"We have a litter with a hole in it, and we take some chicken guts and put the meat next to the top part of the leg," he said. "We cut right through it with a bone saw and cauterize the wound with hot metal, and when that chicken fat starts to smoke and sputter, the kids, oh man, they just walk away."

In the cabin, we met Terry Sorchy of Brodhead, Wis., who sported a black mustache and a bushy goatee. He wore a plaid tobacco bag around his neck, square-toed boots, a jean-cloth suit coat woven on a 19th-century loom and pants dyed with logwood, a tree that grows in the West Indies. Even if a detail can't be seen, he said, re-enactors make sure it's authentic.

"If they didn't have it on them 140 years ago, we don't have it on us," he said.

As a Confederate Mess No. 3 infantryman (cook), Sorchy offered us a slab of bacon bought from a local farmer and a pickled egg, dyed pink by beet juice. It was typical fare at the time, and he was pleased when we enjoyed them.

"All we put in is salt," he said. "Most people say, 'Ewww,' and then they go to McDonald's on the way home, and they're putting more preservatives and chemicals into their body than we ever do on a weekend like this."

It's easy to be authentic at Norskedalen, where re-enactors stay in pioneer cabins built during or just after the Civil War, sleeping on real straw ticks and boiling water on cast-iron stoves.

"Most places, they don't want you to touch anything," Thiel said. "Here, they say, 'C'mon in, use the stove.'"

"We love this place," said Pete Seielstad of Sparta. "One lady brings a cow, a horse and a chicken, and one guy brought in a goose. The site is so beautiful, and 20th-century intrusions are pretty much obliterated."

Seielstad and Thiel are members of Company B of the Second Wisconsin, which was part of the famous Iron Brigade. Known to Confederate fighters as "the terrible Black Hats," it became the most honored brigade in the eastern army, fighting at Bull Run, Antietam and Gettysburg, where it was nearly annihilated.

Every October, Company B takes over Norskedalen's Bekkum Homestead, a collection of 13 buildings from nearby Norwegian pioneer farms, and the Holte Cabin, a Civil War-era cabin the re-enactment group helped reconstruct on the center's grounds.

"It's a campout with 100 of your most eccentric friends," Thiel said with a smile.

Trip Tips: Civil War re-enactments

Many historic sites around the Upper Midwest, such as Old World Wisconsin and Fort Snelling, hold Civil War encampments, where re-enactors congregate to show visitors what life was like for soldiers of the era. Typically, they include military drills, medical demonstrations and a row of sutlers, who sell Civil-War-era goods.

Larger encampments may include a ball, fashion shows, children's activities and historical scenarios, with re-enactors playing such characters as Lincoln, Grant and Jefferson Davis.

Encampments that include battle re-enactments, for which re-enactors bring in the big guns and call out the cavalry, are held less frequently. It's costly for re-enactors to move artillery and horses, and logistics are complicated for organizers. But for spectators, they're an incredible opportunity to see history in all its sound and fury.

In this area, Civil War encampments with battle re-enactments in 2008 include:

May 3-4, Civil War Days at Dousman Stagecoach Inn in Brookfield, Wis. On the western edge of Milwaukee, this 1843 inn holds an encampment on its parklike grounds and includes demonstrations, children's games and an Abraham Lincoln look-alike who gives the Gettysburg Address.

Aug. 1-3, Muskets & Memories Civil War Weekend in Boscobel, Wis. This river town in southwest Wisconsin draws nearly 1,000 re-enactors and includes band concerts, a ladies' garden party, a ball and guided tours of the Union and Confederate camps. Battles are at 1 p.m Saturday and 1:30 p.m. Sunday.

Aug. 15-17, Civil War Battle and Encampment in Mason City, Iowa. More than 500 re-enactors will gather to re-create the Battle of Vicksburg in this northern Iowa town. The weekend also includes a press conference with President Lincoln and generals Grant and Lee, a military dress ball and ladies' tea. Battles are at 3 p.m. Saturday and 1:30 p.m. Sunday.

Aug. 16-17, Civil War Days in Pipestone, Minn. In the southwest corner of Minnesota, this festival includes quilting bees, etiquette and ballroom dance lessons, camp tours, children's games, band concerts and a grand ball. Battles are at 3 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday.

Sept. 27-28, Civil War Weekend at the Wade House in Greenbush, Wis. This re-enactment near Sheboygan is the most impressive in the region, with 1,000 re-enactors and battles waged in the meadows and woods around an 1860s stagecoach inn that was a recruiting station during the Civil War. Battles portray the Shenandoah Valley campaign of 1862 and are held at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

Oct. 11-12, Civil War Heritage Weekend at Norskedalen near Coon Valley, Wis. The skirmishes on this atmospheric pioneer homestead in the coulees southeast of La Crosse, Wis., don't have horses, but they feature living-history actors whose performances can leave onlookers nearly in tears. Battles are at 1 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

Last updated on July 23, 2008