5th Virginia Volunteer Infantry, Company E, "Augusta Greys"

Reenacting is an expression for those with a animated love for history. On the surface, we are honored to portray American life during the formative years of our nation’s greatest conflict.

Outwardly, we are pleased to lend our gifts and talents to honor those whose legacy we now live. Our heritage, their lives, is central to why we portray their history. History forgotten betrays their memory and erases the path on which we travel.

In a deeper sense, however, living history is the expression of ideals and lifestyle. Whether it is fierce Yankee nationalism, or the Rebel’s ceaseless struggle for freedoms lost, the reenactor lives his own convictions through the portrayal of the time when those beliefs were tested by fire.

Today we are barraged with media, freed from toils through technology, even spoiled by convenience. Never the less, we cry out for another time, those times before we traded that less complex life for the advantages of today.  In the heart of every reenactor dwells the spirit of another life, lived when “freedom” meant that the fruits of one’s labor could not be taken and “rights” meant that no man was wrong in fighting for his freedoms.   JMC