The Slower Road

On Saturday, we arrived at Perryville around 9 a.m.: well after the sunrise skirmish, but in plenty of time to hike across the battlefield and wander around the various camps. The afternoon skirmish wouldn’t start until 2 p.m., so everyone basically had a free morning. Spectators toured the battlefield and its associated museum. Reenactors relaxed and chatted with each other. Both groups explored the era-appropriate shops. And several of the “military” units performed a variety of drills.

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I realize that you haven’t seen any horse-drawn vehicles yet, but don’t worry. In the late morning, we watched a fascinating (and loud!) demonstration of horse-drawn artillery, and that’s when the real fun started!

Today is the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Perryville, which was the largest Civil War battle fought in Kentucky.

This past Saturday, A.J. and I spent all day at the Perryville reenactment. In the afternoon, we watched one of three skirmishes (there was also one at 7:00 a.m., which was a bit early for us, and a third on Sunday) as it stretched across the battlefield’s rolling hillsides. With virtually nothing built up on or near it, Perryville is one of the most pristine Civil War battlefields in the entire country.

In addition to watching the reenactment, we wandered through the “living history village” and the various camps and had a nice long chat with the members of the only horse-drawn artillery unit in attendance. Needless to say, we took a lot of photos. So I hope you won’t mind looking back to “1862” with us all this week.

As a preview of this week’s posts, here a couple of A.J.’s photos from Saturday:

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