By Schuyler Kropf
The Post and Courier of Charleston, S.C.
CHARLESTON, S.C. — Veteran Civil War re-enactor Louis Varnell of Tennessee can play both sides of the conflict, sometimes wearing Union blue, sometimes Confederate gray.
But picking a side for this morning’s bombardment of Fort Sumter was an easy choice — U.S. Army blue — so he could be on the receiving end of the thunderous rebel cannon fire expected to rattle windows across Charleston Harbor early this morning and throughout the day.
“The pivotal point is Fort Sumter,” Varnell said Monday, while safely ensconced inside the island fortress’s thick walls. “There is no question which one I was going to choose.”
Varnell and some of the two-dozen Union re-enactors camped inside the fort this week say their assignment is akin to holding a winning lottery ticket. Of the thousands of Civil War re-enactors active in the U.S. These selected few will watch the re-created battle unfold by seeing the same flash and smoke booms Union Maj. Robert Anderson and his defenders saw in 1861.
The main difference from the 1861 men? “The added comfort of knowing there isn’t a projectile following and that I’d have to run for cover,” Varnell said.
Several of the men camped at the fort Monday absolutely refused to break character ahead of today’s bombardment. Mark Silas Tackitt of Seattle, who is playing Anderson, even had a man dressed as Confederate “sympathizer” tossed from the fort at musket point until he removed a Jefferson Davis button from his lapel.
Moments later, Tackitt repeated the Union’s pre-war point of view: that any differences with the South must be settled in “Washington City, not under force of arms.”
He added that he still considered the Union whole up to that point, and that none of the 33 stars from the giant American flag of 1861 flying above the fort had been removed.
Other re-enactors said they were trying to make their Fort Sumter experience as real and as isolating as they can to be in line with what Anderson and his 85 men faced on April 12, albeit on a smaller scale.
Three miles across the harbor from Fort Sumter, a battery of 11 Confederate guns is set up to deliver multiple salvos in today’s attack. Two rebels in charge of one of the guns also refused to break character as they talked of finally getting to fire on the trapped Yankees.
“If they just surrender the fort, we wouldn’t have to fire a shot,” said Chuck Drye of Monroe, N.C.
“We’ve been asking them to leave for the last three weeks.”