TUNNEL HILL, Ga. — Soldiers, sutlers and other civilians involved in this weekend’s re-enactment of the Battle of Tunnel Hill consider themselves links to America’s past rather than play actors.
“We are reliving history,” said Ken Sumner, the brigadier general commanding the Alabama division of re-enactors and overall commander of the battle.
Since 1993 Mr. Sumner has been coordinator of the annual re-enactment event, which includes a spectator-friendly battle, but also offers living history demonstrations to educate area schoolchildren.
This year about 750 students visited the re-enactment site’s woodlots and pastures adjacent to the Clisby Austin House and the town’s namesake railroad tunnel.
Re-enactors for this battle — infantry, cavalry, artillery, sutler and civilian — dress to approximate proper period attire and see themselves as walking, talking historians and not as mannequins in a museum. Sutlers were civilian merchants who sold goods to soldiers and armies.
This has been a busy summer for re-enactors as many of the Civil War’s pivotal battles — Gettysburg, Chickamauga, Chattanooga — are having special events to commemorate their 145th anniversaries.
IF YOU GO
What: Battle of Tunnel Hill re-enactment; living history demonstrations.
When: Today and Sunday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Cost: Adults $5, children ages 6-12 years $3; under 6 years free.
How to get there: Interstate 75 south to exit 345, Ringgold/Tunnel Hill. Turn right, travel south 4 miles, turn left onto Oak Street and follow signs to Tunnel Hill. Heritage Center is on the left.
“I did quite literally cry when I realized that, in order to join in at Chickamauga, I must sacrifice my beloved Tunnel Hill,” Jenny Ray, a regular for the last 12 Tunnel Hill re-enactments, wrote in an e-mail.
“I wish more people could see the prep work that goes into our impressions. We don’t take our duty to educate the public lightly,” she wrote. “It takes a great deal of patience, perseverance and attention to detail to get all of our things ready for the public to view and ask questions about.
“And it isn’t enough to simply have the things lying about or just looking the part in our costumes, is it? No, we must be sure we know what we’re talking about when the event comes around at last and the spectators are there in camp asking about the war and the people we portray who lived during it.”
Participants say it is a passion for the past that makes them want to share the results of their labor and research.
“We could go home right now. We don’t need the battle, because we’ve accomplished our goal,” Mr. Sumner said Friday, as platoon-sized groups of students watched demonstrations of 1860s-era civilian and military life.
“We are re-enacting for the love of a people who lived that history in that time,” he said. “Our aim is to take the printed word off the page and bring it to life for them.”
That aim is right on target, according to Cohutta Elementary School teachers Tim Wright and Jennifer Voyles, who seemed as entranced with the re-enactors as their fifth-grade students.
“Living history is much better than book history,” Mr. Wright said.
“The girls will talk about the clothes, the boys will talk about the guns,” Ms. Voyles said.
“They will draw on this throughout the year,” Mr. Wright said. “The thing they take back most are the stories they hear, the personal touches, from the re-enactors. That’s what they talk about on the bus back to school. That’s what they tell their parents.”
Preparations for the 14th re-enactment of the battle of Tunnel Hill have taken months of planning, site preparation and considerable personal expense.
But for Civil War aficionados, it is priceless to relive the past on the very grounds where in 1864, after a winter’s wait following the Union’s breakout from Chattanooga, Gen. William T. Sherman spent six days preparing final plans for the Atlanta campaign.
As part of their research into the period’s history, many re-enactors discover some ancestors fought for the Union while others fought with the Confederacy.
“I’m a direct descendant of a member of the 19th Tennessee,” said Willard Breedlove, a lieutenant with the Confederate 19th Tennessee Infantry Regiment re-enactors, who plans to battle this weekend and at Chickamauga in two weeks. “This is what I love to do.”
Mr. Wright said 13 years ago he fell in love with re-enacting at the Battle of Tunnel Hill, and Civil War re-enacting led to his falling in love.
“My wife and I met online doing research in 1999,” he said. “We got married in antebellum attire at the Battle of Bridgeport in 2002.”
Mr. Sumner, a widower, postponed his remarriage at the Tunnel Hill Heritage Society’s Clisby Austin House, a building that sheltered both Confederate Gen. John Hood and Union Gen. William T. Sherman during the Civil War, due to this year’s re-enactment.
“This is all-consuming,” he said.
