Civil War Weekend in Bellefonte returns for its second year May 1-3 with three days of reenactments, lectures and experiences to commemorate and educate about American history.
The weekend will include a variety of free events — highlighted by an encampment at the waterfront — taking place at locations around Bellefonte.
Joseph Griffin, president of organizer the Bellefonte Historical and Cultural Association, said the weekend reflects not only on the nation’s past, but also it’s future, noting that polarization has been part of the American experience since the country’s founding.
“The question is what to do about it,” Griffin said at the April 21 Centre County Board of Commissioners meeting, when the commissioners approved a proclamation for Civil War Weekend. “If we can’t avoid polarization, the best thing to do is to learn how to manage it, and a good first step in learning how to manage it Is to study the best documented example we have of polarization in its early stages and its height and in its resolution, or semi-resolution, and that’s the American Civil War.”
Civil War Weekend will feature 10 scholars and authors from central Pennsylvania and around the country giving talks at the American Philatelic Society on the issues, battles and people of the war in what Griffin called “almost like a little academic conference.”
It starts on Friday with Philip Ruth discussing Centre County’s role in the fallout from the Harper’s Ferry Raid. Penn State meteorology professor Jon Nese, author of “The Weather Gods Curse the Gettysburg Campaign,” will deliver a presentation on how extreme weather impacted Union and Confederate forces at the pivotal battle.
Friday will also include Penn State professor Wilson Okello presenting Frederick Douglass’ post-war piece “An Appeal to Congress for Impartial Suffrage,” and at 6 p.m. Chuck Young will lead the first of three weekend tours of Union Cemetery, with a focus on the Civil War soldiers buried on its grounds, wartime governor and Bellefonte native Andrew Curtin and Gen. James Beaver.
Saturday’s activities at the Philatelic Society will feature a giant Civil War book sale and eight more lectures separated into a “bellum” track focused on people and battles during the war and an ante-bellum and post-bellum track looking at issues before and after the war.
The most visible event will be the encampment from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the waterfront across from Talleyrand Park dubbed Camp Songer (a nod to property owner Tom Songer). It will feature reenactor artillery and infantry detachments who will talk with visitors display equipment and perform demonstrations at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.
The encampment also includes exhibitions of Civil War era money, children’s games and toys of the period, war rations and cooking, a medical station with a replica 1860 Army ambulance, an embalming surgeon and a reenactor presenting the historical Confederate perspective.
Among the units on hand will be reenactors of Independent Battery C, a Union light artillery battery.
“Over the years, Independent Battery C has done hundreds of school programs… and we always tell the students, ‘The most important lesson from the Civil War is not to do it again,’” Gary Hoover, longtime captain in the battery, said. “When things go out of living memory, that’s when human optimism kicks in and people feel, ‘Oh, OK, it can’t happen here. It can’t happen again.’ So we can never let our guard down because it can happen again.
“We have a responsibility to all those who gave their lives to preserve the union and uphold the national government bever to let something like that happen again. It’s a duty of every citizen.”
The 46th PA Regiment Band will perform a concert of Civil War-era music at 5 p.m. at the Talleyrand Park gazebo, and Young will present another Union Cemetery tour at 5:30 p.m. To wrap up the day’s events, Michael Kinney will appear as “Keystone Lincoln” at 5:30 p.m. at 120 W. Lamb St. to deliver Abraham Lincoln’s famous 1858 “House Divided” speech.
On Sunday, the encampment returns from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. At 2 p.m., St. John’s Episcopal Church will host an interfaith service led by Rev. Ruth Ferguson that will include Muslim, Jewish, Quaker and Episcopalian representation for an “Abrahamic Endorsement of Peace.”
The weekend wraps up at 3 p.m. with Young leading the event’s final cemetery tour.
The second Civil War Weekend in Bellefonte is “bigger and better than last year,” Griffin said, but he added that the event needs support to continue growing.
“Hopefully, next year it’ll be bigger and better than it is this year,” Griffin said. “But it’s delicate, and we need all the help we can get. We’ve had a little trouble acquiring sponsorships. I think we’ve just about made our target, but it was a hard lift.”
See the full schedule for Civil War Weekend in Bellefonte here.
