A COUNTRY, A COUNTY DIVIDED-A CIVIL WAR REENACTMENT

Updated at October 21, 2009 20:10

If you are signed up or planning to sign up for the Civil War Reenactment at Kingston, Missouri, then huzzah! If you are not coming or on the fence, then you are going to miss the reenactment and party of the year… tsk! We have established our cash bounties. Cavalry is $50 per horse, infantry is $150/ 10 armed men. Cannons are $200 each, but we are “topped off” with those signed up or pledged to sign up. We appreciate the effort that you make and the expenses that it takes to attend events. We know that we are just making a dent, but this is our first event and we are doing the best we can. We are also providing basic provisions, but Saturday night is covered, so you probably won’t be doing a whole lot of cooking. We’ll have a lot of food vendors, too, and their menus look promising. Also, we have excellent entertainment lined up for all three days! We are also having a quilt show and Abraham Lincoln will be here. If you can be here on Friday, the focus will be on schools and the Cornstalk Fight, which is a historic October, 1861 skirmish. If you can’t make it due to work, we totally understand! Saturday is the “big ‘un” with the historic July, 1864 Thrailkill/Taylor raid on Kingston. You’ll actually raid Kingston and end up in a big battle just west of town. If you are itching for reality, this is your chance. Saturday night features a buffalo dinner for the reenactors and a public dance by torch light on Main Street. The Shortleaf Band will provide music for the dinner and dance. There are two tracks on Sunday. First, church service. Then, a choice: Track one: We need help to honor the two CSA fellows who were executed just outside of Kingston. We know where they are buried and who they are, but they are in unmarked graves. We will have a public dedication and we will need an honor guard for the ceremony. Track two: “Tacticals” like you have never experienced. We will have a panel of judges who are in active military and/or historical battle subject matter experts. We will have two or three military objectives. We will be looking at your ability to establish runners, spies and map makers, not to mention getting planning, positioning, and executing your plan. You’ll have to prove to the judges that you have command and control in the field, Civil War style. This is not being advertised to the public and a lot of real estate is in play. Also, if you have high-speed access, check out our DVD trailers at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca0A6uY4MPo and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clXuLBcGJqs. These were produced by the Elliot’s Scouts’ own Bob Green and are superb! We are selling these on our website. After we reach our goal of paying free distribution to any school that asks for a copy, the net proceeds are going to the Elliot’s Scouts for all the work that they put into it. Lee Teter Creates a Civil War poster for Caldwell County Lee Teter, who created the ubiquitous poster Viet Nam Reflections, recently moved from Wyoming to Livingston County, Missouri to establish a new art studio. You may not know that Lee dedicated the copyright of the painting’s image to the VFW in memory of the heavy price paid by Viet Nam War veterans. In a similar act of unprecedented kindness, Lee created a painting and poster for rural Caldwell County to help develop Civil War tourism. This poignant poster, Imperfect Love, captures a moment of a young Confederate soldier giving his wife a final embrace while mounted on his horse. Lee is very knowledgeable about both art and history. Lee was a frontier culture advisor and visual arts consultant for the 1991 version of the movie Last of the Mohicans and designed the Native American costumes. Caldwell County is fortunate beyond words that Lee has offered to paint a Civil War period work just for us as a fundraiser. This is his first oil painting about the Civil War, but not his last. The posters, which are 12 × 22, are priced at $50 and are available at Caldwell County’s “A Country, A County – Divided” website and eBay. Our first Civil War and Living History weekend is June 5-7, 2009.

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