After the roar of cannons and muskets had ceased and the smoke from the skirmish in the small town drifted away, the bodies of men in gray uniforms could be seen scattered along the dirt road. Then the blue-coated soldiers marched abreast down the narrow road, stepping over the bodies until they reached the town square and formed up to raise the American flag.
“Recall!” someone shouted and the dead began to rise.
And the audience applauded Saturday.
“We are a Civil War reenactment and living history organization that does school days like the one we did yesterday where we had 300 kids to be educated in hands-on Civil War experience,” said Andrew Crockett, a full-time accountant in San Jose, part-time Confederate soldier and treasurer of the National Civil War Association. “We also do the Civil War reenactments on the weekends and this is Tres Pinos Civil War Days.”
Crockett said the group formed in 1983 as a unique Civil War reenactor organization, and currently has about 280 members. He said the group is growing because it presents stories not commonly told about the Civil War.
“We’re the only one in Northern California that not only does the eastern theater where the fate of the nation was determined, but we also do the Pacific theater, where the fate of California was determined,” he said. “The thing that is really special about the Tres Pinos event is that this is where we have been pioneering opening up the stories about California’s role in the Civil War and how this event transformed it from a frontier backwater state into the modern state that we know today.”
Scott Spence, president of NCWA, is fond of saying, “History is messy.”
He does so because, as he explained, people today are either totally ignorant of the past or they view it through modern biases, as evident by recent moves to ban the Confederate battle flag and take down memorials to Confederate military and civilian leaders. He said California has joined the movement to remove any connection to the country’s past.
“The California legislature passed a law yesterday,” he said. “They don’t want any streets or schools named after a Confederate war hero or politician. Basically, our elected officials don’t want to roll up their sleeves to create a just and equitable society; so they pass boneheaded legislation so they can stand there and claim they did something, when they haven’t done anything at all.”
Spence feels that the law, if signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, will have unintended consequences.
“It’s stupid because history is not pretty,” he said. “You have to engage in history as it is and not whitewash it. You can uncover new narratives. That’s what we’ve been discovering, the variety of people who were in the war. You can open up the narratives and that doesn’t diminish the narratives you already have. It just makes the story bigger.”
While those who come to see the spectacle of the reenactment of decisive battles between Union and Confederate armies, Crocket said most know very little about what the war was actually about.
“A lot of people have the basic black and white history of the Civil War: the Confederacy versus the Union, with slavery at the core of it,” he said. “The thing that’s important to know is that this conflict gave us our modern nation-state. Before, we were a collection of sovereign states that were, in effect, in a treaty with each other for mutual protection. After this conflict, they said we have to be more than that in order to survive as a nation. And that was when these reconstruction amendments were added that said if you are born here you are an American and we are together as one people.”
As Crockett showed a display of recently published books about the Civil War, he went on to explain that those who put everything on the line to fight and die weren’t just white northerners and southerners.
“We have books covering the American-Indian experience,” he said as he held up a book, “This book came out last week and is about the four companies that formed the first battalion of native cavalry, which was a Spanish-speaking unit raised here in California.
He said the first company was raised in downtown San Jose.
“We’re demonstrating California’s role in putting down the Confederate uprising. We also have Asian and Pacific Islander experiences in the Civil War, which a lot of people don’t realize that there were about 2,000 who fought in the Civil War on both sides.”
Spence pointed to the flag flying over the town square.
“You notice this flag is a little different. This is a first National Flag of the Confederacy. Southern sympathizers would fly them in denial of local laws and ordinances,” he said as he went on to describe how the first battle reenactment of the day would demonstrate how men died over flags.
“What’s going to happen here is this town has raised the secessionist flag and a bunch of Union soldiers are going to come in and take it down and send up the stars and stripes. Then some of the townspeople are going to revolt and try to put the first national flag back. There were actual events like this that took place in California during the Civil War.
Spence said when people come to watch the reenactments they often watch through modern-day lenses and are sometimes skeptical of what they see.
“They think we have some sort of modern political agenda, like we’re all rabid Republicans or Democrats,” he said. “They think the reason we fly the Confederate battle flag is that we have a racist agenda.
“I do this because it’s important for people to understand how people thought in the 1860s. They had different ideas about the world and about politics and the role of government. There was a breakdown of communication and problems this country in the terms of slavery and abolition. Those were the big issues of the day and they had been delaying doing anything for decades.
“Unfortunately, modern people have a problem when they look at any era in the past and apply their own values and judgements to what was going on. We’re trying to present history and the mindset of the people of that time.”
Fred Ray has personally experienced the resentment from those who interpret history from a modern perspective. Ray is a black man who portrays a black man, Silas Lewis Johnson, who fought for the Confederacy. He renamed his character, though, after his grandfather, Silas Hurd. Ray said the actual Silas Johnson was the son of a runaway slave and a Choctaw woman. He said the Confederacy had an entire Choctaw unit. He added that it wasn’t an easy decision to play a black man fighting for the Confederacy, especially after the murders of nine people in a black Charleston church.
“The murders have caused a dialogue for myself and why I play a black Confederate soldier,” he said. “Once I got into the research, I began to realize that the social norms for that Confederate soldier was that it was their way of life. A lot of people don’t want to believe that they fought hard for the South. They did not want to change their way of life.
“That’s the mindset that I have when I come out and play a black Confederate soldier. I’m challenged at this point by the black community and my family. In modern times I totally understand what’s going on and I’m very aware of it. I play a period piece, so please don’t take me out of that. I also bring up the point—since they talk about the Confederate battle flag—I say let’s go to the red, white and blue and remember what has been done to Afro-Americans under that flag. That usually stops the debate because they don’t want to look at the ugly history of both flags. They’re emotionally charged. I was emotionally charged when that happened in Charleston. But I also say there’s a lot of me that wants to portray that black Confederate soldier.”
Midirise Arnold, of Oakley, vice president of the NCWA, did most of the planning for the Tres Pinos event.
“I’ve been doing this for 12 years,” she said. “I like working with the kids on school days, teaching them about the Civil War. Most of the time you just hear about the battles, but you don’t hear what happened to the civilians or how it affected the women. We try to portray the Civil War as it really happened and do it in a proper manner that is respectful and teachable.”
Don Pidd, Caretaker of Historical Park, said the San Benito County Historical Society plans all year for Civil War Days.
“Our primary goal is the school day, the Friday before the weekend event,” he said. “This year, we had over 350 kids come out here. Some of the reenactors come early so they can educate the kids on various aspects of life during the Civil War era. They cover everything from cannons to laundry. The kids really enjoy that.”
