In honor of Memorial Day and the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, the History Channel has been running a much-hyped week-long Civil War event with two-hour productions of the Battle of Gettysburg on Monday and Lee-Grant yesterday.
Tonight Pickers and Pawn Shop will be focused on Civil War artifacts, which should be greatly interesting as well. Thursday and Friday will be repeats of the first two productions.
The Battle of Gettysburg show was accurate, but extremely gory. My brother e-mailed that he thought it was too gory as well. He said Mom had started watching it, but turned it off because of the blood and guts.
I had heard of the story about the Union sergeant Hummiston who was identified because of the photo of his children several months after the battle. One of the war's truly sad stories.
Then, there was Union General Sickles, quite a character. I found the vignette on Gen. Barksdale of Mississippi interesting.
You have to wonder why commanders on both sides continued to use Napoleonic tactics even in the face of new technology that rendered them not only useless, but resulting in deaths and suffering beyond comprehension.
I imagine all the gore was an attempt to get kids to watch the shows, what with their gory computer games.
Bringing History to the People. --Old B-Runner
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