Do you know any historical reenactors? You can find about 100,000 of them in the United States alone. Sixty thousand of those are Civil War reenactors. That’s enough to fill a small city!

If you’ve ever attended a Civil War reenactment event (such as Gettysburg’s Remembrance Day in November) you might have felt like you saw every single Civil War reenactor there is! Women in large hoop skirts bustle along sidewalks. Large groups of ragged soldiers march by. If you didn’t know any better, you would think you’d been sent in a time machine to the heart of the Civil War! Reenactors create that atmosphere. For them, it means dirty, hot work.

Imagine this: A Civil War reenactor opens her eyes in the morning. She is sleeping on a cot in a tent. Many other, old-style tents sit nearby—a whole “tent city.” She cooks breakfast on an open fire. If non-reenactor visitors come by, she explains how soldiers cooked during the Civil War. She teaches them about the herbs used back then for cooking and treating the injured.

While she works, her husband and sons get ready for battle. Older men carry rifles. Young boys help deliver messages. When the battle starts, men march out onto the field. You can tell they have studied the soldier’s life hard. Their beards are clipped just the right length. They know who will win the battle they are about to fight. They even know which positions to “die” in! But none of them want to die too soon. It’s no fun to play dead in the hot sun for a whole hour-and-a-half battle!

Reenactors eat bland hardtack, apples, and stew. They bat away mosquitoes. They go home soaked by rain or sweat. Then they have to get ready for the next battle. They clean their canteens and guns. Many scrub their expensive clothes by hand. After all, real soldiers didn’t have washing machines!