Here’s an interesting question:  Is it right to restage a Civil War battle in a state that never actually saw combat on its soil?  Behold the little-known Confederate push into Maine:

The Battle of Fort Knox on Saturday featured more than 200 Civil War buffs who portrayed troops from the Union and Confederate forces, their wives and children and residents of a town called Unity, a civilian encampment based on the real town of Winchester, Va., a strategic area that changed hands numerous times during the real Civil War fought from 1861 to 1865.

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The period activities -— which included military training exercises, naval and land-based battles, the execution of a Union deserter and a couple of weddings -— aimed to evoke the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of 1864, the year before the Civil War ended, said the mysterious “Miss Rose,” a key organizer who declined to reveal her modern identity.

“I go by ‘Miss Rose’ and that’s the only thing I go by because the focus shouldn’t be on me, it should be on my re-enactors,” she said Saturday.

Hey,Vic! Weren’t you just away on vacation somewhere?

The Civil War encampment event was sponsored by the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands, supported by the Friends of Fort Knox and Friends of Maine State Parks and co-hosted by the 20th Maine Company B and the 15th Alabama Company G.

“This is the largest [American Civil War re-enactment], we believe, that we’ve ever had in the state of Maine and the first of, hopefully, many to come,” Miss Rose said.

I believe that she means the first put on by these particular groups.  Otherwise, it would be the largest by definition even if only two or three gathered together.

The Maine and Alabama re-enactment groups “co-hosted this to be able to bring both sides [of the Civil War] to the state of Maine and show people that it isn’t necessarily quite the way that some folks believe it was, and to show how it actually was. We’re all living historians and teachers,” Miss Rose said.

Except that this isn’t how it actually was, since last time I checked Winchester is still firmly planted in the Great Commonwealth of Virginny.

“We wanted to bring the Civil War here to Maine for the Maine folks to see because we were so far removed that we don’t have anything actually here that pertains to the Civil War other than a number of forts and things. But this one never actually saw action. It never was garrisoned [and] it never had troops in it,” she said.

That Maine doesn’t “have anything actually that pertains to the Civil War,” ( i.e., actual historickal action) is  not completely accurate, in fact.  There are several rayther interesting and even exciting stories about Confederate commerce raiders hitting Portland, Calais and other spots along the coast.  I assume that those raids are what is meant by “naval battles” here.

I don’t have any problem with the reenacters setting up shop and going through all their paces.  But since every land battle is inherently specific to a particular geographical location, it seems a wee bit silly to me to have Yanks and Rebs facing off against each other in a place where they patently did not do so.