Confederate General Robert E. Lee visits Harrisonburg
posted by Evan Dyson143 years after the end of the Civil War, Confederate General Robert E. Lee made a stop in Harrisonburg’s Court Square Theater Monday night to tell the “other side” of the story. At least that’s what 63-year-old re-enactor Al Stone would like you to believe.
The retired private investigator and Hinton, W. Va. native has been involved with the re-enactment community since 1990 and began portraying Lee in 1995 after studying the character for five years.
“I’m going to ask you to step back in time with me,” Stone said as he began his nearly two-hour presentation to a crowd of around 230 students and community members. Read the full story with images here.
posted: April 8th, 2008 by Evan Dyson
filed under events, features, news & meta-news.
Comments: 2
Comments
Comment from Seth
Time: April 8, 2008, 11:57 am
i posted this comment on even’s blog but i felt the need to put it here as well. please know that i don’t think that the south will rise again, i don’t fly the stars and bars (i prefer the bonnie blue) and i don’t have a pickup or a gunrack. i do get tired of people being told that the civil war was primarily about slavery and the whole north/south good guy/bad guy thing. most of ya’ll are smarter than that.
anyway, here’s what i had to say to evan:
mixing succession (the coming of one person or thing after another in order, sequence, or in the course of events) and secession (an act or instance of seceding) isn’t helping you here (although in fairness you actually only use succeed instead of secede once). for the record though, your poor proof reading is not really what initially drew my ire. it was the way you put “other side” (as in other side of the story) in quotation marks, seemingly casting it off as a silly notion that there is some legitimacy to what mr. stone has to say about the history of the civil war. i didn’t make it to the event but i am very happy to see someone get beyond the simple minded notion that the good north destroyed the evil south because they loved african americans and hated slavery. if we ever do “win” (please note the appropriate use of quotation marks) in the middle east (and i don’t anticipate we will) the equivalent will be the history books telling of how magnanimous america brought liberty and democracy to the middle east, pulling them out of years of poverty and turmoil, just because we thought they deserved to be free. i know it seems like a hard sell now, but winners get a lot of leeway when losers are lying burned and broken. i think it’s great that mr. stone provided information on some of the economic factors that contributed to the south’s secession and that he’s attempting to teach a new generation that this most horrible conflict in our nation’s history was a bit more complex than many of us today realize, or are willing to believe.
Comment from Seth
Time: April 8, 2008, 1:05 pm
so i’m a jerk….
evan’s quotation marks are actually quotation marks.
sorry evan
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