In Beaufort, a ‘living’ past helps us understand the present

During Beaufort’s first Union occupation in 1861, many Beaufortonians weren’t exactly welcoming. In fact, most of them fled after Southern forces lost the naval Battle of Port Royal.

Residents who attended this year’s “living history encampment” exhibit – the 2nd consecutive year of this Beaufort History Museum-sponsored event – were a bit more cordial and inviting.

Beaufort History Museum Board President Carol Lauvray describes the exhibit as “an event that brings history to life for both adults and children and lets them experience firsthand what life was like for the Union soldiers, civilians and the freedmen who occupied Beaufort during the Civil War years.”

For Wando High School history teacher and re-enactor Daniel Gidick, it’s a hobby that frequently brings him out of Charleston and into the past on the weekends.

“The Lowcountry has a real sense of historical self,” he said. “The Department of the South being located in Hilton Head and Beaufort made the coast very active in the Civil War.”

That is precisely why the area draws these living history events more than 150 years after the war ended.

Last weekend, the fire burning in the corner of the Arsenal was tended by a soldier who was slowly cooking the type of food available in the 1860’s. The only anachronism, it seemed, was us, the crowd. Wearing our smartwatches and sunglasses and Nikes left us out of place among the crude dress of those sporting 19th century fashions.

What was not out of place was the education that was happening.

Too few of us know enough about what it was like during Union occupation. Our town was changed and not necessarily for the worse. With the stationing of the Union Army’s X Corps in 1862, soldiers from all over the country made the Lowcountry their home for a period. There were enough Pennsylvanians, Ohioans, New Yorkers and Michiganders here to make Scarlett O’Hara weak with the vapors.

There’s a palpable push now, with Beaufort’s recent designation as a Reconstruction Era National Monument, to truly capture and appreciate our town’s standing now because of what happened in our past.

Penn Center has done its part.

Dr. Larry Rowland, Dr. Stephen Wise and other local scholars have certainly done theirs.

Now, with events like the one last weekend, we have a chance to put eyes and ears on what it was like to be here during that historic period. Such living history events bring new dimensions to traditional museums. As Gidick says, they allow the opportunity to “take the artifact out from behind the glass.”

And if you’re thinking of getting involved in re-enactments, there are things you can do to prepare, including, but not limited to: growing a beard, incorporating hardtack into your diet, eliminating chocolate milkshakes from your menu, wearing ill-fitting and unseasonably warm clothes and practicing re-loading heavy caliber rifles three hours a day.

It also helps, as Gidick does, to have both Union and Confederate uniforms hanging in your closet.

“Representing troops from different areas broadens your perspective,” he said. “When you research enough for multiple impressions and characters, you find more commonalities among them.”

Some of the participants this year came from Knoxville and Daytona Beach and many points in between. Hopefully, they’ll all return next year and find a new way of showing us how the war affected enslaved persons, women and surgeons as well as regular soldiers.

It’s something we can all learn in a better way by “living” through it.

And, of course, not running away.

This story was originally published March 8, 2017 at 1:30 PM with the headline "In Beaufort, a ‘living’ past helps us understand the present."