Pantheon

SUNDAY: Day of Rest

Richard Russell, confederate reenactor at Raymond, Miss. I go in search of Rob Hodge and find him camped behind an 1834 plantation house. It turns out he never made it into combat the previous day. "I was a shirker and slept through the battle," he says, cooking sowbelly over an open fire. Today, he joined the dawn fray--though only long enough to become a casualty. "I took a hit from canister shot--right in my bowel," he says nonchalantly. "I'll have to wear a diaper for the rest of my life." At least this spares him the humiliation of using one of the Porta-Johns surrounding the Union camp. "I wanted to dig a latrine but apparently that's against county regulations here," he gripes.

A 19th-century market is in full swing beside the plantation house, filled with Civil War merchants, called sutlers, as well as Southern belles and other "civilian" reenactors. One comely Scarlett sashays past in her wide, rigid skirt, and rebel soldiers pause to tip their hats. "Hoop dreams," one whispers as she passes.

Another woman pulls up her skirts to reveal a petticoat stitched with small rebel flags. "This is authentic," she tells me. "When men came home on furlough they'd take belles on 'flirtation walks' and give them buttons and flags like this." She lowers her skirts. "Of course, a woman back then wouldn't do what I just did. A true Southern belle should be subtle in her charms."

Trish Wallace showing off her petticoat at Raymond, Miss. As the soldiers muster for yet another round of combat, I decide to flee the faux-battlefield for the real one at Vicksburg, 20 miles west. Here, at least, there is no shortage of battle dead. Modern Vicksburg has grown up all around the sprawling battleground, so it's impossible to travel in any direction without bumping into a monument or graveyard honoring the thousands of men who died during the long campaign to subdue the rebel stronghold.

The first boneyard I come to is a "Confederate Rest" where 5000 rebels lie beneath stone stumps scattered across a slope. Most of the dead are unknown, while others are known only in fragments: "Gusta," "Butler," "Blince." One stone bears the name of a nurse, Sarah Durriest. Others are arranged by state. The stones marking the Louisiana dead bear mellifluous names evocative of the French Quarter and Cajun bayou: Alex Broussard, Francois Thibodaux, Felicien Toups.

At the center of the cemetery stands a stone rebel clutching a musket and gazing solemnly across the ranks of dead. Etched on the pedestal is a characteristic bit of Lost Cause doggerel.

    "Here rests some few of those who vainly brave, "Died for the land they love, but could not save."
A few kudzu-choked bluffs away lie the graves of 17,000 Federals, the largest collection of Yankee dead anywhere in the nation. Many were gathered from hastily-dug graves all through Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana, and reburied here after the War. In all, the remains of some 300,000 Union dead across the South were disinterred and relocated in "national cemeteries" like this, a remarkably ambitious and grisly business. Despite this heroic effort to honor the dead, more than half of those buried in national cemeteries are labeled, simply, "Unknown."

But the most unusual monument in statue-studded Vicksburg has nothing to do with the Civil War. A simple obelisk, it sits on a back street and reads: "Erected by a grateful city to the memory of Dr. Hugh Bodley, murdered by the gamblers, July 5, 1835, while defending the morals of Vicksburg." Bodley led a citizens' raid on one of the gambling dens that infested this riverside town in the 1800s. Despite Bodley's death, the raid succeeded and gamblers were evicted from Vicksburg.

In the long run, though, Bodley's sacrifice on behalf of Vicksburg's morals seems to have been in vain. Just down the bluff from the monument lies Harrah's, one of the riverboat casinos that have become the economic engine of Vicksburg and other river towns. I step inside, grateful for the air-conditioning, and survey the scene: men with duckbilled caps and heavy key rings that clank against their Levis as they yank one-armed bandits; women in waitress and nurse uniforms, spending their break at the craps table; a church group of elderly blacks, clutching bags of coins and feeding them slowly to the slots.

At a roulette table, I spot several men in Civil War uniforms. "We're deserters," one amiably explains, eyes trained on the tiny metal ball swirling around the roulette wheel. "It was too hot to fight. So we took our hits early, resurrected, and came down here."