The Eighth Regiment Band, sweating in their wool uniforms, launched into “Nearer My God to Thee,” as members of Hardee’s Guard prepared to engage federal skirmishers in the woods below Kennesaw Mountain.
Explosions cracked from muskets, splitting the hot June afternoon, as puffs of smoke floated in the humid air, the smell of black powder mingling with the scent of wet grass.
The soldiers, the musicians, the mountain, all appeared much as they might have 150 years ago, during the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, when tourists from Atlanta took trains up to Cobb County to stand behind Confederate lines and look down on the Yankees camped out below.
But while these modern-day re-enactors were firing only shreds of paper wadding, their musician counterparts were blasting the real thing, the 19th-century songs and marches that strengthened the hearts of soldiers in battle and buoyed the hopes of families back home.
During this 150th anniversary commemoration of the Battle of Atlanta, tours, living history exhibits, re-enactments and lectures will help modern Southerners remember the events of that time. And music, from groups such as the Eighth Regiment Band, “a living museum of 19th-century emotions,” can help us imagine the feelings of the era.
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