06/21/2006
Learning history by living it
By:Jessica Selby

Sure, you can learn about the Civil War from a textbook, but Charles Blanchette felt his students would gain more from a different approach.

Earlier this month Flat River Middle School sixth grade history teacher invited his students to put their textbooks away, come out of their classrooms and into the courtyard where reenactors from Battery B of the 1st Rhode Island Light Artillery had pitched a tent, set up a doctor's office and displayed some Civil War-period toys for them to try.

"Any type of learning outside of the regular classroom is a good tool to get the kids to focus on what it is we are trying to teach them," Blanchette said. "It makes the lesson more real for them and it works. I mean look at these kids, they are completely zoned in on what is being said to them."

Steve Hackett and Brian Smith were among the members of Battery B who talked with students about the weapons, sleeping quarters, psychological status and day-to-day lives of soldiers during the Civil War. They described the uniforms that they were wearing - exact replicas of those worn during the Civil War - and spoke about the type of fighting and of the one million casualties inflicted by the end of the war.

They brought with them a model 1853 caliber rifle made in Great Britain and a Minie ball, the first version of the conical bullet we are familiar with today. They demonstrated how the rifle was used.

"Firing a rifle like this from a distance at their enemy was one thing, but psychologically, some soldiers just couldn't handle ramming 18 inches of cold steel [a bayonet] into the enemy during close fighting, so they would turn their rifle around and use it as a club," Hackett said.

"For most of the war, though, there was more marching and sitting by the side of the road than actual fighting," Smith said. "The soldiers would set up tents and wait for a command but sleeping conditions were not comfortable. It was generally five to six men in a tent and they would all lay close together facing the same direction. That is where the term spooning came from."
Hackett also briefed the students on what could typically be found inside a soldier's carrying sack. Traditionally, he said, there would be a few personal belongings, maybe a pocket knife for "wittling," maybe a harmonica for entertaining one another, and probably a twist of chewing tobacco. One thing that would most definitely be there, he said, was a writing kit because during the Civil War this was the only form of communication. During the peak of the war, 187,000 letters were sent a day, he said.

At the opposite end of the courtyard, two female members of Battery B were detailing life as a woman and as children during the Civil War. They described a woman's role during the war and what women typically wore, and let the students get a grasp of how uncomfortable the clothing could be by letting them try things on.

"Average town women in the 1860s typically wore about 12 pounds of clothing a day all year round," said Maureen Barmenter, a Battery B reenactor. "They would start with an undershirt called a sham, then put on wool socks and their boots. Then they put on drawers, like what we today know as underpants, but theirs were different."

"There's had a hole in the middle so they could go to the bathroom without having to take them off. They also had to wear a corset that was usually made of steel bones to slim their waists, because that was the ideal look of that time period," she said.

"These corsets would sometimes be pulled so tight that women would get muscle spasms or pass out. They also had to wear what was called a privacy slip because they had to keep their ankles from showing and had to wear gloves to cover their hands. The last thing that would go on before their dress was a hoop."

The female reenactors told the students how the Red Cross was started and how mothers addressed their own and their children's ailments, such as teething (by rubbing some sort of alcoholic beverage on their gums). They also allowed students to try different types of toys that children of that time period would have played with. "If you can all imagine it," the ladies said sarcastically, "there were no computers."

At the other end of the courtyard, Richard Parmenter and Sue Smith showed the students what a typical doctor's office was like during the Civil War. They discussed options for surgery, the use of splints and where the saying "bite the bullet" came from.

"It was really interesting when the doctor described how they would remove bullets and how most injuries resulted in amputations because they just had no other options," said sixth-grader Caitlyn Greco.

Greco was part of the group of students that shifted from site to site in the afternoon period. Every sixth-grade class on Blanchette's team was allowed to go out to listen to all three reenactor presentations in shifts - either the morning or the afternoon.