St. Joseph high school student studies Civil War through re-enactments

ST. JOSEPH, Mo. -- Springtime arrives with much to do for a high school senior. Finish class work. Prepare for graduation. Fire a cannon.

Scott Easter holds a wooden handle on the thin rope that leads to an igniter of the light field six-pounder, an artillery piece common during the Civil War. On orders, he pulls hard, down and away, using his hips for leverage. Smoke follows fire out the muzzle, and the concussion pushes air from your chest.

Chaos ensues 200 yards down range. Limbs crackle as the round, with its scattering of inch-wide lead balls, crashes into the trees behind the plywood and cardboard targets.

The 18-year-old, in the company of older re-enactors, finds a sort of spiritual kinship in this spot behind the cannon. Most Civil War combatants were between 16 and 26. And Easter, a student of the war more than half his life, knows the small, human stories of that conflict generate as much interest as the big-picture battles.

"To be able to understand it, you've got to know both stories," the Savannah High School student said. "You want to be able to put yourself in their position, live the way they lived, think how they thought."

America's own war hooked him at age 8. On a trip to Springfield, Mo., his family toured the Wilson's Creek battlefield. Easter found something to which he could identify, the notion of combat close to his home soil. He sponged up all varieties of writing on the war.

"I didn't realize that 10 years later I would have a library full of it," he said.

He marvels at the number of firsts in the war -- the first aerial reconnaissance, the first submarine, the first income tax. The war touched off weaponry changes, with early versions of the machine gun, hand grenade and even a crude rocket launcher.

All the reading found life a couple summers back when his family went east for a tour of Civil War battlefields. Each stop in Appomattox and Chancellorsville and Antietam sharpened the history for him.

"You get caught up in the moment, thinking about what happened here, all the guys that lost their lives," he says of the landmarks. "You stand where so many men have fallen."

Nine years ago, Easter attended his first battle re-enactment, an experience he never turned loose. More recently, he learned of a local re-enactment group, the Landis Battery, when attending a meeting of the Border War Society.

An appeal to his supportive parents yielded a caveat -- "You have to pay for your own uniform" -- but permission to join the unit. His bedroom closet holds his great coat and shell jacket and gray trousers. Nearby is his gunbelt with Bowie knife.

He rounds out the uniform with two pistols, an 1858 Remington .44 and an 1851 Colt Navy .36.

The high-school senior plans to follow his graduation with courses at Missouri Western State University. He will continue his self-inspired scholarship in Civil War history but wants to study accounting and business in college.

But Saturdays find him in a blustery field, the air smelling of fireworks and the flattened corn stalks crunching underfoot as the re-enactors examine their targets.

The education spans more than 140 years of American history, and Easter wants to keep learning.