spoken for

Last Saturday, the 22nd, Steve and I went down to Pilot Knob, MO for the Civil War battle re-enactment at Fort Davidson. They do this re-enactment only every few years, I think the next time will be in 2010. This has been on my calendar since I missed it in 2005 and so I really wanted to go, having never been before. Now, I did take Sarah and Elijah to the Living History day last September, but this wasn’t the same thing. That was much, much smaller and pretty much just tents set up and some canon firing. Of course, after the first time the canons fired, we had to leave because Elijah totally flipped out. So this time? Yeah, got my most awesome, wonderful, generous neighbors to watch him for us. :)

This is what I wrote before regarding the actual battle:

In 1864, the Civil War was raging, and Fort Davidson was a Union post. September of that year saw an attack by Confederate troops. The Union troops of only about 1,450 men successfully defended the fort from about 12,000 Confederate troops. They were pushed into the fort but all attempts by Confederate troops to overtake the fort were unsuccessful and only resulted in many lost lives. Late into the night, the Union troops passed through the sleeping Confederates to safety. A small group of volunteers stayed behind to explode the powder magazine. Of course, the blast woke the Confederates, but the guy in charge wrongly assumed that there had been an accident in the fort and a surrender would be imminent. Boy, was he surprised in the morning.

The battle was supposed to take place at 1:30pm, we ended up getting down there around 12:30. Good thing, too, I guess, since we ended up having to walk a very large distance. Not like before when we got to park in the little parking lot where the museum is, on the battlefield! There were all sorts of booths set-up, too, like a craft fair, only better. Well, they did have a craft fair section but it was separated from everyone else and the battlefield. We didn’t bother to visit there, I get enough of craft fairs with my candles and all anyway. The other booths were past the battlefield and past all the tenting display area and they were made up of Civil War replica items and some authentic, that kind of thing. I took a lot of photos in the booths, here are some of my favorites: