Stories & Essays: At War with Ourselves

Re-enactor Scott Campbell shaves while camping out for the 150th commemoration of First Battle of Manassas. The re-enactment of the war's first major battle involved over eight thousand re-enactors and seventeen thousand spectators. Just fifty years prior, the centennial event devolved into a protest of the then-beginning civil rights movement. It was so disastrous that it led to federal regulation and a book on the ordeal which the organizers of the 2011 event studied.
Re-enactor Scott Campbell shaves while camping out for the 150th commemoration of First Battle of Manassas. The re-enactment of the war's first major battle involved over eight thousand re-enactors and seventeen thousand spectators. Just fifty years prior, the centennial event devolved into a protest of the then-beginning civil rights movement. It was so disastrous that it led to federal regulation and a book on the ordeal which the organizers of the 2011 event studied.