MacPherson's Lament

A. P. HILL PARKED HER car in the out-of-the-way lot reserved for those taking part in the battle and made her way along the dirt path to the place of assembly. She was already in full regalia for the day’s event: hair tucked under her kepi cap, rimless glasses in place, and her uniform and brogans carefully adjusted to envelop her in anonymity. She looked like a very young Confederate soldier-one of the most authentic looking present because of her small stature and slender build. She sometimes wondered at the illogic of the men who controlled the hobby, who frowned upon any woman taking part, but would happily open their ranks to 250-pound men in their fifties. Accuracy, she decided, was a state of mind.

It was just past nine o’clock, and already the sun was blazing. There would be people passing out today in their wool uniforms. It was a day that you could smell the enemy from across the field. Some of the purists refused to have their uniforms cleaned ever, which was all very accurate, but it was hard on their fellow soldiers. Powell was careful to keep her uniform believably dirty, but she drew the line at actual stench.

Today’s reenactment was a large, staged battle on land that was now a national park in Virginia. The park service had seen to it that the event was well publicized, so the reenactors could expect a substantial crowd to turn up to observe the battle. That was not particularly anachronistic, either, she reflected. During the real war, at the first battle of Bull Run, sightseers from Washington had driven out to the battlefield in buckboards to picnic on the hillsides and watch the confrontation. The afternoon hadn’t quite gone as planned, though, and the spectators soon found themselves caught in the congestion of a retreating Union army, stampeding back to Washington, while the Confederate generals pleaded with President Davis to let them follow and seize the enemy’s capital.

What if they had?

Historians had toyed with that riddle for a hundred years and more. Powell herself had argued the point more than once at meetings of the Civil War Roundtable. What difference would it have made? In the long run-not much, in the opinion of A. P. Hill. Slavery was already a dying institution, thanks to new philosophies of humanitarianism and technological advancements like the cotton gin. The practice had died out in South America in the 1880s without a civil war to enforce the measure, and she thought that something similar might have happened in the Confederacy, if it had survived. Slavery would have been legislated out of existence in the South, just as the North had finally put an end to its own form of slavery: the urban sweatshops that imprisoned child workers and paid the poor pennies a day for sixteen hours of toil. The two countries would have existed separately for a while-maybe even for half a century-but she had always argued that before World War I, the two halves of the union would have come together again. After all, they would not have the bitterness that characterized sectional feeling even to this day. The two nations would have reunited for economic and political reasons. Or failing that, they would cooperate in much the same way that the United States now works with Canada, without exhibiting any particular inclination to march in and claim the northern territories for annexation.

She put away all thoughts of an alternate political future for the South. Today it was 1862, and Stonewall Jackson was going to win the battle in precisely the historical way, just as he must go on to lose the war in the foreseeable future. Now it was time to forget about the twentieth century. A. P. Hill felt that reenacting should be mental as well as physical. She tried to banish concerns about Tug Mosier’s trial and all the nagging reminders of modern existence as she concentrated on the field and the coming battle and the identity of a southwest Virginia corporal known to his unit as Andy Hill.

She was about to go in search of Ken Filban when she passed a small brick building that reminded her of one small twentieth-century convenience that she needed to avail herself of before she slipped away into the past. Squatting in the weeds without toilet paper was no fun. She decided to solve the problem before she went off to battle. Besides, she could use one last look in a mirror to check her appearance.

Three minutes later, with her hat newly adjusted and her face scrubbed clean of all lingering lipstick traces, Powell Hill emerged from the ladies’ rest room to find her way blocked by a burly man in a National Park Service uniform.

He glowered at her as if she were a potato bug, looking at the sign marked LADIES and giving her a long once-over from cap to brogans. “What were you doing in there?”

A. P. Hill scowled back. “What do you think?”

The man rocked back on his heels with a satisfied expression that was a thousand miles from kindness. “If you brought your regular clothes, you can stay and watch the battle, little lady,” he said with a smirk. “Otherwise, you can go on back to your car and leave the park. You won’t be playing soldier today.”

Against her better judgment, Powell decided to reason with him. “Look,” she said, “if you hadn’t caught me coming out of the ladies’ room, you would never have known that I’m female. Spectators fifty yards away sure can’t tell it, and my gear is a hundred percent authentic. I’ve been doing this for a couple of years now. What’s the harm in letting me take part?”

“I’m not going to argue with you,” said the park official. “I’m taking you back to your car.”

“You’re violating my civil rights,” said A. P. Hill with a mulish look in her eyes.

“We want an authentic reenactment, miss. And women soldiers aren’t accurate.”

“The hell they aren’t!” she said, a good deal more loudly than diplomacy would dictate. “That shows how damn little you know about the war! Have you ever heard of Sarah Edmonds Seelye? She fought in the Second Michigan Infantry under the name of Franklin Thompson! And so-called Albert Cashier of the 95th Illinois was female. So were about four hundred other women who disguised themselves as men and fought. At least one was killed at Antietam!”

“Reenactments are supposed to portray the norm,” said the man with a stony gaze. “Women soldiers were not the norm. Now take off the uniform or leave.”

“But there were female soldiers!”

“Not in my park. Now get going before I have you arrested for trespassing.”

An expression of holy joy lingered on Powell Hill’s face for a moment as she looked up at him, but then she remembered Tug Mosier’s trial, and she realized that she couldn’t indulge herself to fight this moron. With a look of utter defeat that was not entirely sincere, A. P. Hill allowed herself to be marched summarily back to her car. Before she drove away, she made a note of the park ranger’s name and description.

Edinbugh

In haste

Dear Bill,

I am taking the next plane over. Arriving Dulles via British Airways; Danville by puddlejumper. Don’t bother to meet me.

Elizabeth