News : Throwback Thursday: Civil War camp lessons cover marching, rifles and baseball

The musket lesson is among the favorites of Mr. Vasquez' annual Civil War marching drill.

Rebecca Steffen helps Mr. Vazquez demonstrate Civil War firing protocols Thursday.

Students played a game of baseball with this 19th Century bat and ball.

Grace Petzrelka helps Mr. Vasquez demonstrate how Civil War soldiers stood in two rows to fire.

One of the lessons that Vinton-Shellsburg Middle School 8th graders most eagerly anticipate each year took place on Thursday, when history teacher Alex Vasquez again put on his Civil War uniform.

Each year, Mr. Vasquez wraps up his Civil War unit with an outdoor marching demonstration. He teaches the students how a century and a half ago, new enlistees learned how to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, from tallest to shortest.

After a short march in which gaps naturally appeared between the students, Mr. Vasquez gave the command to “right dress,” showing them how to return to the proper formation.

“It was all very choreographed,” Mr. Vasquez explains to his students. The discipline was necessary to avoid gaps in the line as the soldiers marched into battle.

As each session began, the teacher and students recited the oath soldiers repeated upon joining a Civil War regiment. They vowed that they have never supported any other government other than the U.S, and promised to support the Constitution.

The top students in each class earned the right to march while carrying on of the weapons in Mr. Vasquez’s collection, including a muzzle-loading rifle and a Henry repeating rifle which he inherited a few years ago. The teacher, who has been part of a Civil War re-enactment battery in the past, demonstrated the muzzle-loader. He explains a little bit about how a battle would look, sound and smell, and answers questions. He explained that soldiers typically stood in two firing lines, with the soldier in the back line firing over the shoulder of the man in front of him. He explained the impact of the Henry repeating rifle, which could fire much faster than the musket. Students learned how that even the best soldiers were limited to about 3 rounds per minute when they had to reload their muzzle after every shot.

One of Thursday’s questions was about left-handed soldiers. The teacher – who says he learned to become right handed when the nuns at his old-style Catholic school tied his left hand to the desk – explained that lefties in the Civil War had to learn to file a weapon the right-handed way.

Other lessons that Mr. Vasquez teaches during these marching days include how to set up and quickly tear down camp and how a soldier carried everything he needed in his back pack.

Mr. Vasquez, who is the grandson of a World War II sailor and also descendant of a Union soldier who survived being shot in the face, also leads a public Pearl Harbor Memorial ceremony each Dec. 7.

Baseball lessons

One of the new lessons this year was baseball. Using an authentic, mid-19th Century baseball and bat, and wearing his hand-sewn corduroy night cap, Mr. Vasquez led a short game on an impromptu field. He explained the rules (a fly ball caught on one bounce is an “out”) while pitching to several students. When one batter hit the ball over everyone’s head and circled the bases, Mr. Vasquez told the students that in the Civil War era, hitting the ball over the fence would result in an out, because there were so few baseballs available that the players could not afford to lose one.