Re-enactment brings Civil War to life

A chapter in Civil War history came to life this weekend.

Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate hosted a re-enactment to help spectators actually see and hear what happened more than a century ago.

The final event was called "The Battle for the Cumberland Gap."

The men in blue fight the men in grey. Union versus Confederate.

"We're studying the Civil War and about Abraham Lincoln," said spectator Annie Diegel. The fifth grade student and her family from Knoxville have a front row seat watching history re-enacted. They sat on a hill on the LMU campus.

"Gives you a real good idea of actually how things were done during the war with the lines just facing each other," said her father, Craig Diegel.

Seeing the re-enactment up close is different from what Annie imagined in Social Studies class.

"I would think they would be sort of hiding from each other a little bit, like behind the trees," she said.

Both sides facing each other in straight lines is a realistic representation of Civil War fighting. But there was no actual frontal assault at Cumberland Gap.

"What we're seeing is a representation of a lot of skirmishes that took place all around the Cumberlands," said Tom Mackie, Director of the Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum at LMU.

Cumberland Gap was strategic for both sides because it was a main transportation route.

Seeing the battle helps Annie see her Social Studies lesson.

"It helps me understand it," she said. "To see how the people fall down and the nurses run over to them to help them."

People who may never come to LMU for a lecture or to visit a gallery are drawn to the re-enactment. And it gives Annie something to tell her classmates about Monday.

"I think it's pretty cool because you can actually see them face to face," she said. "And I wasn't expecting the cannons to be that loud."

A Union general founded Lincoln Memorial University.

He was fulfilling a promise to President Abraham Lincoln to help educate the people of the area.