The American Revolution updated

[Tex Jones, SASS 2263]

This is a rather lengthy article from the Wall Street Journal on November 16th titled: Where have all the American Revolutionary War Re-Enactors Gone?  Similar issues to CAS/SASS.

 

Patrick Mantle, an East Rockaway, N.Y., history buff, needs a few good men and women—and even children—to fill the ranks of the Huntington Militia.

Mantle isn’t some radical firebrand. He is commander of a storied American Revolutionary War re-enactors group whose membership has dropped in recent years as an older generation retires or dies out.

Younger recruits, he says, are harder to come by in an age of endless distractions that include organized sports, the time-suck of social media and a culture more interested in being entertained than in joining something. Cost is also an issue, Mantle says, since a full Revolutionary War soldier’s kit, including uniform and musket, can run $3,000 and upward.

The Ancient and Honorable Huntington Militia, as it is known, was formed in 1653 to protect the village of Huntington from hostile Dutch colonials nearby. By the outbreak of the American Revolution, the militia had thrown in its lot with the Continental Congress and would go on to fight in several Revolutionary War battles.

Re-enactors like Mantle accouter themselves in authentic (or as authentic as possible) colonial-era garb and weapons, and gather at historic sites to re-enact battles, military-camp life and even the British occupation of American towns. Another touch of authenticity: As was true during the Revolution, soldiers are often joined in camp by their wives and children.

The Civil War dominates

The U.S. has some 240 Revolutionary War re-enactor groups representing about 4,500 hobbyists, according to the Brigade of the American Revolution, a Pennsylvania-based umbrella group that tracks membership. By comparison, Civil War re-enactors number about 25,000 to 30,000. During the run-up to the 1976 U.S. bicentennial, as many as 20,000 hobbyists signed up to participate in Revolutionary War re-enacting events, according to the Brigade.

Mantle’s Huntington Militia has about 40 members, with about half that many attending events, down from a peak of 50 when Mantle joined in 2013. Three other Long Island re-enactor groups are having similar recruiting issues.

“It’s all about keeping the history alive,” says the 34-year-old Mantle, a TV news photographer who majored in history with an American Revolution focus. “To do that, we have to find a way to keep the hobby going,” he says.

The recruiting slump is all the more pressing as the nation prepares to celebrate its 250^th birthday—the U.S. semiquincentennial—on July 4, 2026. While Revolutionary War battles are celebrated and re-enacted every year, many in the re-enactor community were expecting a surge in membership as the 250th anniversaries of key battles and other historic events draw nearer. But so far the community has mostly been disappointed, says James McKane, a Brigade board member.

“We expected new recruits would be joining up left and right,” says McKane, a 25-year-old Scranton, Pa., resident who works for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. “But unfortunately that has not been the case for every unit.”

John Rees, a 68-year-old New Hope, Pa., Postal Service retiree who has been re-enacting since 1994, doesn’t belong to a particular group but floats among several units in the Pennsylvania area, typically attending smaller-scale events that emphasize authenticity. While membership in some of these groups has dropped off in recent years, he still finds the movement “vibrant.”

Rees, who has written on the overlooked participation of women and Black people in the Revolutionary War, says that young people tend to be more receptive to that research. “We need to reach out,” he says. “The core of any group should be the younger generation,” he says.

On the battlefield

Appealing to a younger cohort is important in another way, too, says Rees, who dresses as a private. “You really shouldn’t have a unit where everybody is in their 40s and 50s and 60s,” he says. It isn’t representative of the typical Revolutionary War soldier who, according to research, was in his early 20s, with some as young as 14 serving.

McKane, who is also the commander of the 3^rd New Jersey Regiment, or Jersey Greys, says his group—which George Washington called “the flower of all North American forces”—is trying to recruit in the 18-to-34-year-old demographic, the same people who flock to wildly popular combat-action videogames. The Greys also try to appeal to younger participants with their style of field tactics. While older re-enactors tend to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in sprawling lines and fire at each other with their muskets, McKane says, his Greys tend to be much more active.

“This means a lot of running, quick movements,” in addition to period-campaign-camping styles, “that sort of thing,” says McKane.

Similarly, Austin Duebel, a 28-year-old recruiter and coordinator for a group of mostly New Jersey and Pennsylvania re-enactors, has embraced social media, posting videos and photos of events as a recruitment tool. He communicates by email with about 110 people, although average turnout at events, he says, is about half of that.

His group also has a YouTube channel that helps streamline training with guides on musket cleaning, close-order drills and other skills. The idea, again, is to make joining easy and not simply throw people into the field at an event where “the guns are going off and people are saying, ‘Gee, what’s going on?’ ” says Duebel.

That’s all to the good. But Daniel Murphy, a 19-year-old member of the 43^rd, shows how real-world demands and logistics make Revolutionary War re-enacting tough for young people. Murphy, a history major at Susquehanna University, says he loves re-enacting, a hobby he started in high school. But between his college classes, the tennis team and plans to study abroad, he has had to put re-enacting “on the back burner for now.”

The same is true, he says, for many of his generation, who “sign up in high school only to leave or become disinterested in the hobby due to entering college and adulthood.”

In search of authenticity

For some re-enactor groups, an effort to modernize attitudes has helped keep membership steady. To Niels Hobbs, captain of His Majesty’s 40th Regiment of Foot, that has meant convincing 20- and 30-somethings that his re-enactor group is dedicated to a more “progressive” and inclusive take on the Revolutionary War than was sometimes seen in the past. The unit, which portrays a storied British regiment so relentless in combat they were known as the “bloodhounds,” has about “50 members on paper” who come from Massachusetts, Rhode Island and several other states, says Hobbs.

“Younger folks coming into the hobby expect better and more rewarding experience, usually tied with more immersion and historic authenticity,” says Hobbs, a University of Rhode Island biology professor. It isn’t just a matter of having the “correct camp gear…or, essentially, glamorizing battles,” Hobbs says. “It’s portraying the stories of the invisible or forgotten people of the period—the soldiers, the lower-class civilians, the enslaved.”

Another major change that has helped recruitment, Hobbs says, is erasing of gender and racial barriers. “Traditionally, units often have been very gender-restrictive, but this is really starting to change,” he says. “Currently, our unit is primarily men portraying soldiers and women portraying the civilians who followed the army as wives and nurses. But our membership includes both men, women and queer/nonbinary folks. And, while most of our membership over the decades has been Caucasian, we’ve had several people of color in our ranks.”

There are still re-enactors performing who were part of the bicentennial surge. For retiree Paul Loane of His Majesty’s 43^rd, a former director of alumni relations for Rutgers University, the hobby gives him an outlet for his love of American history and the Revolutionary War period.

Jim Gallagher of Yorktown, Va., shares those sentiments. After a 27-year career as an Air Force aviator and a stint at the State Department, Gallagher signed up as a re-enactor in the 7th Virginia Regiment of the Continental Line. Gallagher also appears regularly at the American Revolution Museum at Yorktown portraying Thomas Nelson Jr., a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Done properly, says Gallagher, re-enacting reconnects the public to a “palpable feeling” of the spirit and times of America’s Revolutionary War fervor.

Loane agrees. Movies and books are one thing, he says, “but there is nothing better than actually wearing the uniform, carrying the equipment, learning the drill used in the 1700s. Maneuvering over a smoke-covered field at a battle re-enactment just as they did at Germantown or Monmouth will give you the best clue as to what being a Revolutionary War soldier was really like.”

[Alpo]

31 minutes ago, Tex Jones, SASS 2263 said:

Re-enactors like Mantle accouter themselves in authentic (or as authentic as possible) colonial-era garb and weapons,

They accouter themselves.

 

I like that. I suppose you accouter yourself with accouturements.

 

I've never heard that word before, but I do like it.

[Eyesa Horg]

I know several reenactment type folks! Not counting CAS!

[Pat Riot]

Younger folks have fun with Cosplay and more recent sci-fi roles. Dressing up like characters from Star Trek, Star Wars and various Anime characters. 
 

I also think people like to dress and emulate their favorite characters or personas without feeling like they’re in a military type group hierarchy. 25-30 years ago I was interested in joining a Revolutionary War group out in SoCal. It looked like fun. I got invited to a big event where there were Mountain Man, Revolutionary and Civil War reenactors were doing their thing. 
I was invited to shoot in a competition firing at Folgers cans hung at various distances from 50 to 100 yards. I just couldn’t seem to miss. I was using a friends flintlock. 
All of a sudden I had all these guys wanting me to join their group or Companies. 
Then some “leaders” came over and were giving me the lowdown on how I was going to be a “Private” and follow orders and do tasks as if I were a soldier in the militia at that time and the words of Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon entered my mind…”I’m getting too old for this s***!” And I bowed out gracefully. I didn’t feel like taking orders from a butcher, a baker and a candlestick maker - literally. 
 

 

[Subdeacon Joe]

I think several things are going on.  

First is that many of us can point to a family tree and see 2X or 3X great grandfather, or ggg-uncles on one or both sides of the War of 1861, very few of us can go back to the Revolutionary War and point out relatives.  Especially on the Tory/English side.  So there is no personal connection to the Revolutionary War. 

 

Second us that so little is taught about that era, and much of what has been taught for the last 20 years has been focused more on slavery and the treatment of Indians than on the political system that drove the Revolution.  Civil War reenacting has also suffered from this. Especially with the current climate,  some venues telling Confederate reenactors that outside of the battle scenarios they can't display any of the Confederate national flags or battle flag.

 

Third is the press and political bias against firearms and weapons of any sort, and those who are interested in firearms are more interested in modern firearms and have almost no interest in the history and development of firearms. 

 

Fourth, which is related to the third,  is a general lack of interest in history of any sort.   No curiosity about how our ancestors did things. 

The intense interest people showed when watching the ordinary tasks of mending a shirt with needle and thread, or laying a fire - and explaining why I did it the way I did , and why I was starting the fire at the end of the trench away from the gridiron and griddle,  was amazing.   People had never thought about such things before.   

[Cold Lake Kid, SASS # 51474]

If you want to see Redcoats in action, we have War of 1812 reenactments for The Battle of Fort Erie and Crysler's Farm. 

Edited November 18, 2024 by Cold Lake Kid, SASS # 51474

[watab kid]

i had an old marine friend that did the rendezvous stuff back when but he passed away a year ago ,