STUDENTS GET LESSON ABOUT WAR; REENACTORS OFFER GLIMPSE INTO PAST

CAPE GIRARDEAU -- Fifth and sixth grade students at Franklin School got a lesson on the Civil War Thursday ... but it wasn't out of a history book.

"Textbooks tell about important battles ... and important generals, but we want to show you what it was like for soldiers who were actually fighting the Civil War," said Jeff Shrader, a Civil War reenactor and history student at Southeast Missouri State University.

Dressed in a Civil War uniform, Shrader, along with fellow student Anna McCoy and professor of history Frank Nickell, told the students things like what soldiers of the era carried in their knapsacks and what role women played in the war.

McCoy, in period dress including corset and hooped skirt, answered questions from students, like "Did women always have to wear dresses?" and "How many hoops do you have on under there?"

McCoy explained that women "basically kept things running. They gave the men all the support they could."

Shrader carried a replica of a 1859-issue 58-caliber musket, the standard weapon used by the infantry.

Shrader, who said he made the musket about three years ago, participates in Civil War re-enactments throughout the United States. He has also appeared in the movies "Glory" and "Dances With Wolves" as an extra.

Both men's and women's roles in the Civil War are important to study, Nickell said, because the Civil War was fought on two fronts.

"The first war was fought by soldiers and the second was lived by the people left back home," Nickell said. "That is true with all wars, even the Persian Gulf War."

Nickell, the director of the Regional History Center at Southeast, called the Civil War the "great American tragedy."

The Civil War, fought from 1861-1865, claimed more than 600,000 lives, approximately 200,000 killed in battle and 425,000 who died from disease.

"You have to remember," he said. "The Civil War was fought before we knew about germs."

Soldiers shared common cups, field doctors didn't sterilize surgical equipment, and "germs and disease spread like wildfire," he said.

Soldiers were issued uncooked meat, and often carried it with them for long periods of time, said Shrader as he pulled a block of bacon out of his knapsack.

"Actually, this is left over from a re-enactment I did about three weeks ago," he said. "Don't try this at home."

Nickell explained that one of the most serious side effects came about as a result of morphine being discovered just five years before the war began. It was before doctors knew that such drugs could be addicting.

So many soldiers became addicted to morphine as a result of it being administered to them after being wounded, that the addiction became known as "soldier's disease," Nickell said.

"More than 600,000 people died. That's a lot of people, a lot of suffering and a lot of pain."