September 23, 1999

Champlain Valley Historical Reenactors Drill for

Middlebury College President’s History Class — Backyard

at President’s House Becomes Civil War Campground

Champlain Valley Historical Reenactors

“drilled” in the backyard of the home of Middlebury

College President John M. McCardell, Jr. during the evening on

on Monday, September 27. The demonstration was presented for “The

Civil War and American Historical Memory,” a history class

taught at the College by McCardell.

McCardell’s class is a reading seminar

of 20 juniors and seniors that focuses on how historians and everyday

Americans choose to remember and re-use the Civil War. The class

reads works such as Lincoln’s Address at Gettysburg and C. Vann

Woodward’s “The Burden of Southern History.” The students

also watch movies such as “Birth of a Nation” and “Glory,”

and discuss these topics once a week.

The Reenactors are based in the nearby

town of Salisbury, but their membership stretches from all cross

the College’s immediate local community and beyond, presenting

encampments or marching in parades from Orwell, Vt., to Gettysburg,

Penn. Led by president Michael Blakeslee, the Reenactors value

the experience of educating young and old Americans as much as

firing blank rounds and fixing bayonets.