Through re-enactor, Gen. Robert E. Lee rises again

The night before the Battle of Fort Stevens, Gen. Robert E. Lee and I trolled the seafood buffet in a crowded restaurant.

His dark-blue Ford F-150 XLT Triton V8 in the parking lot had his name emblazoned across two quarter-panels and the rear, and his Virginia license plate read "GenR Lee," but nobody inside seemed to recognize him, nor did they particularly notice Gen. Jubal Early or Brig. Gen. Maxcy Gregg, who were with us.

It was a Friday evening. A tour bus was parked outside and all attention was focused on the food, even though we were hip-deep in Confederate generals.

They were dressed in civvies yet given away by their luxuriant facial hair. But this being all-you-can-eat heaven, no one noticed any of the three, not even Phil Carpenter of Chincoteague, an island son with an eerie resemblance to Robert E. Lee.

From April through October, Carpenter attends Civil War re-enactments as Lee, and from November through March he makes speeches and appearances as Lee. He is not paid for it.

"My friends at home all think I'm nuts," Carpenter said. "But I love it. I really do."

Even though the real Lee had not been present at the Battle of Fort Stevens in 1864, Carpenter couldn't stay away from the re-enactment in Frederick, Md. He intended to remain off the battlefield during the fight, which was scheduled for 2 p.m. Saturday if the Union forces showed up, which they hadn't when we had left the campground to look for dinner.

But in reality - if three Confederate generals facing down 15 pies a la mode can be real - everyone expected the opposition to be there when daylight came, Lord willing and the creek don't rise.

In a shady grove of walnut trees carpeted with violet leaves, Carpenter set up his tent - and when I say "his," I mean Lee's.

As nearly as he can make it, based on photographs and close examination of the real things, Carpenter has re-created Lee's tent, right down to the saddle (hand-made, carbon-copy down to the wear-and-tear on the leather) and the bed (hand-forged, iron and wood). The side table is arranged with antiques or authentic replicas of binoculars and other small items owned by Lee.

"I've never done anything halfway," Carpenter said. "When I do it I want it to be right. I am an obsessive-compulsive."

He should know. Dr. Phil Carpenter, Ph.D., was a psychologist for the Maryland prison system until he hurt his back on the job and retired.

Carpenter is 59. He has been a Civil War re-enactor for 40 years, and Gen. Lee for 15. A friend says the tent could be a centerfold for Tent magazine, but let's get real: There is no such publication.

If there was, the intricately patterned carpet that covered the grass, the three flags posted out front, the washstand and the chest and the traveling desk and the Windsor chair and the sword and the boots and the clothing would look fabulous in it. But there's not.

So Carpenter/Lee's tent is admired only at re-enactments and living history encampments by legions of shorts-clad spectators, known around the campfire by the shortened term "taters."

This is part of the re-enactment vocabulary. Hard-core players who want to really live the Civil War experience, sleeping on the ground and living off the land, are called "campaigners." "Farbs" use equipment or clothing that is not period-authentic. "Stitch Nazis" are the guys who point that out.

Carpenter is none of the above. His uniform is perfect. His knowledge of Lee is encyclopedic. But his hospitable streak wants everyone to be comfortable, including himself, and that means enjoying the role and no criticism of others' enjoyment of their roles.

A tray of plums and apples on the traveling desk welcomed re-enactors who came to pay their respects to the general as they arrived in early July at Rose Hill Manor Park. They were gathering to replay - more or less - a skirmish that during the Civil War had tested the defenses of Washington, D.C. The fruit had bar-code stickers on it.

Events would begin on Saturday morning. Carpenter arrived on Thursday, towing a large trailer that matched his truck. He selected a prime camping spot at the base of a gentle slope in the shade of carefully spaced walnut trees, backed up to a trickle of creek between high banks, and there he would become Lee.

There are many Robert E. Lees in the re-enactment world, and the resemblance varies.

"I am the same height, same eye color, same hair color," Carpenter said. "I am just about 100 pounds overweight. I need to lose that. And I will."

Carpenter knows the petty details of Lee's life and dislikes and pets, and he says his portrayal has the endorsement of Lee's descendants and those of the Custis family, too, the family of Martha Washington and of Lee's wife, Mary Anna Rudolph Custis.

He relaxed under the tent's spacious overhang, called a fly, as other re-enactors - foot soldiers - set up little A-frame tents a respectful distance away from the general and threw their bedrolls on the ground. It is good to be Lee.

Carpenter's people are barrier islanders by heritage, Coast Guardsmen by profession. He did four years.

"I honestly hated the military," he said. At Chincoteague High School, Carpenter says he was known as an athlete. After he went to college, they called him an intellectual. And now?

"I think most people on the island think I'm a little screwy," he said.

The island's librarian, Harriet Lonergan, calls Carpenter a "renaissance man," who composes music, likes opera, loves cats and was known for 26 years as the man who threw the annual Titanic party.

In the back of the Ford is a photo album of one of those parties. Everyone is dressed in period clothing, they have tickets and luggage stickers and had to pass through customs after coming up the gangplank Carpenter had built into his house.

They dined on such things as roast squab and cress, filet mignon Lili, vegetable marrow Farci and consomme Olga, much of which Carpenter cooked himself. From the back of the truck he can pull the menu for the 10-course meal, even though he quit doing the parties several years ago when he moved to a smaller house.

Carpenter portrayed Titanic's second-in-command. "I was never pretentious enough to be the captain," he said.

Carpenter's brother, who is 18 years older, has accused him of living a fantasy life, but after attending a Titanic party, amended his opinion. "He said, 'You're not really crazy,' " Carpenter recalled.

"He said, 'You're honoring these people.' "

A light rain began falling on the campground.

A fellow re-enactor, Buddy Clarke, rode up on a bicycle and accepted a chair under the fly. This is what Carpenter likes best about re-enactments: the camaraderie.

Thunder rolled, and lightning flashed. The week before, at Gettysburg, five re-enactors sleeping in a tent had been struck by lightning.

"Rain is a fact of a re-enactor's life," Carpenter said, and the open lid of Lee's storage chest blew shut in the wind.

"This really isn't that bad," Clarke said, but he scooted his chair more toward the center of the fly. Rain began to come down by bucketfuls.

Carpenter retrieved Lee's dress hat, which was a handmade replica, from the splash zone. He furled the headquarters' flag because he thought the red dye might run.

We decamped into the tent as the downpour increased until it was like sitting underneath a waterfall. The A-frame tents disappeared behind a white curtain of water too dense to be called just "rain."

Suddenly, we noticed that our feet were wet and that water was coming up through the general's carpet.

"Not much you can do about it," Carpenter said, crossing his arms and gazing serenely toward the back of the tent and his brand-new bed, about which he expresses justifiable pride, as it is a hand-forged duplicate of Lee's camp bed and took a year and a half to acquire.

"Isn't there a creek back there?" Clarke asked, also casting a look toward Lee's bed, whose coverings were now soaking up water where they touched the ground.

A park staffer ran down the hill and stuck her head into the tent. "General, I think you might want to shift some of your stuff," she said, and when we popped out we were shocked to see that the little trickle of creek had become a flash flood. It was inundating the walnut grove, threatening cars and trucks and trailers and Lee's tent.

The muddy, roiling water knocked down two artillery tents just a few steps away.

But the general's tent remained standing and the creek dropped quickly after the cloudburst ended, leaving 4 inches of rainwater nicely filling Lee's wooden bucket so he could wash his face in the morning.

At 4:30 p.m., the cavalry came over the hill and parked next to Lee's tent.

"Oh, that's Gen. Maxcy Gregg," Carpenter said. Gregg, who in civilian clothes may or may not be known as Tony Virando, peered into Lee's dripping tent and asked, "Henrietta OK?" - meaning Carpenter's life-size ceramic chicken, which portrays a bird that lived under Lee's bed and laid him an egg for breakfast every morning.

Henrietta, sitting in a puddle, was fine.

We left for dinner, and while we were eating, Carpenter said he buys his uniforms from a family that lives the Civil War lifestyle 24/7/365.

"There's a fine line between a love of history and insanity," Virando observed, and just then Mike Sipes joined us. Sipes portrays Gen. Jubal Early, the Confederate commander at several clashes around Frederick. Between refills, Sipes declared that the July 9 re-enactment was a chance to educate the taters about the only clear-cut Confederate victory north of the Potomac.

"When we put on those uniforms, we're Confederate officers, and we behave like Confederate officers," Sipes said. "I don't refer to it as a hobby. It's a mission."

Unfortunately, the mission he was talking about was not the mission he would be taking part in. The Confederates had, indeed, won the nearby Battle of Monocacy on July 9, 1864. But to avoid potential conflict with programming at the nearby Monocacy National Battlefield, Rose Hill Manor Park had decided to re-enact the Battle of Fort Stevens. That fight, on July 11-12, 1864, was notable mostly because Abraham Lincoln came out to see the Union repel Early's attack. Sipes was so enthusiastic it was tempting to wonder which battle he would actually re-enact.

"Think this war's over? It's not," he said. "The shooting's just stopped."

But Carpenter-the-peacemaker said, "It's a play. We all have our part and we play our part, as our predecessors did."

And Early said, "Let's get some realism in here."

On Saturday morning, Carpenter transformed into Lee. The day was shaping up to exceed 100 degrees, but he was dressed in wool pants, a wool vest, a wool coat and tall boots. He had a bottle of Excedrin for his sore back.

"I do not portray Gen. Lee," he said. "I play Phil Carpenter, dressed up like Gen. Lee, and people respond to that."

Carpenter had very kindly borrowed a camp dress from one of his many acquaintances and loaned it to me for the day.

"Don't you feel like you've stepped back in time?" he asked, when I appeared in the long-sleeved, long-skirted, long-necked, long-ago dress.

Perhaps it was the tank top and cargo shorts I wore underneath, but the unvoiced honest answer would have been "No." I felt like a tater and looked like a farb, because my wristwatch, which I removed, had left a tan line.

A uniformed man wandered up and saluted Carpenter: "Sir, Gen. Grant is on the premises."

"Is he in fair spirits?" Carpenter asked.

"He's in fair spirits."

And Sipes said, "Nobody's shooting at him yet."

Sipes had brought his horse, Dale, which was tied to a rope strung between the trees alongside two Union cavalry horses. Carpenter held Dale's head while Sipes mounted, with the aid of a hay bale, and Dale drooled on Lee's wool vest.

Carpenter also has a horse, a gray thoroughbred he calls Traveller, after Lee's real warhorse. Carpenter's Traveller is a great-granddaughter of legendary racehorse Secretariat. Traveller had stayed home because of the heat.

However, Carpenter had brought a life-size Fiberglas horse because he figures a lot of kids have never seen a real horse and they'd get a kick out of sitting on it for photographs. But Dale was there and undeniably real, so "the plastic horse," as Carpenter calls it, stayed on the trailer.

Taters started to appear. Carpenter left the shady grove and slowly climbed the hill in search of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, as played by old friend Albert Keyser. Twice, Carpenter stopped in the shade to wipe sweat off his face and to rest his back.

Outside the restrooms, he ran into Grant/Keyser, who was carrying a cigar and a bottle - of water. They made their way back to Lee's tent, which was many degrees cooler than the Union camp perched in the sun on the hilltop, and sat down under the fly. A family walked up and hesitated.

"Y'all can come in," Carpenter said, and a woman trailed by two kids said, "Generals had the nicest tents," as she ducked her head and went in.

An overweight tattooed tater posed ramrod straight behind Carpenter, relaxing in his Windsor chair, for a photograph. Two re-enactors dressed as Prussians posed with Lee next. No one asked for a photo with Grant.

Keyser's vest pocket started playing a jaunty tune, and he pulled out a cellphone: "Please don't call me again unless it's an emergency."

Carpenter, when dressed as Lee, carries his cellphone in a period-correct binoculars case slung over his shoulder.

"I try not to look stupid, and I try not to make Gen. Lee look stupid," he said.

A tater asked for directions to something in the park, and Carpenter said he didn't know.

"You're a general, aren't you?" the tater said.

Not always.

Once a foot soldier in re-enactments, Carpenter swore after a long, hot hike to join the cavalry so he could ride, and he did. While being fitted for that uniform, the tailor asked if he'd ever considered portraying Lee.

"I live in Virginia," Carpenter said. "I would never be presumptuous enough to think I could be Lee."

But the tailor had a Lee uniform handy, and he told Carpenter just to try it on and walk around. So many people saluted that he never looked back.

Now, he says, he is such a realistic Lee that even Civil War ghosts are fooled. One once stood guard outside his tent all night, Carpenter said, and in a set of photographs taken in Gettysburg, ghostly handprints appear in various places on his uniform.

"Seems like everywhere I go, I have this kind of stuff happen," he said.

Union re-enactors marched over the crest of the hill and into the field where the battle would take place. The Confederates took their positions. Gunshots and powder smoke filled the air, backed by the drone of traffic on U.S. 15, just behind them. Artillery fire set off a car alarm in the parking lot.

A Union soldier "died" on the field, collapsing into the grass in the blistering sun. A buddy thoughtfully retrieved the fallen soldier's hat and put it back on his head. A young soldier with a canvas bucket full of ice moved along the lines. A rebel filled his hat with cubes, then clapped it on his noggin.

Under the trees along the creek bank, Carpenter relaxed in the shade with a cold drink and watched. On a stifling day like this, without a role in the battle, it is great to be Lee.

"I played a dead guy in a TV show once," Carpenter said. "We didn't realize at the time there were anthills all over the field." He took a drink, and continued: "The director would yell: 'All you dead guys! Action!' "

As a boy, Carpenter had a bit role in the 1961 movie "Misty," based on the famous children's book "Misty of Chincoteague." He would like to be cast as Lee in a movie now.

A child scampered past, trying to get a better look at the battle, and exclaimed, "Look, Mom! Someone's dead!"

"That's pretending, honey," the mom said, and the child gave her a withering stare.

"I know that, Mom."

As the battle ended, a tater behind us said, "This is Gen. Robert E. Lee's tent," and Carpenter left his chair to give a tour. I heard him, inside, say, "It doesn't get any more authentic than that."

Sometime in the afternoon, I was bitten by the Civil War bug.

It was some kind of fly, and it nailed me on the ankle. I slapped it away.

Five or six small tater boys, after a visit to the vendors' booths, were skirmishing with wooden rifles along the hill.

A woman in a hoop skirt swept past. Young girls in bonnets and ankle boots skipped through the grass. I dug through my voluminous skirt to reach my cellphone - time to return my camp dress and go back to the 21st century.

Carpenter would stay in character one more day at Rose Hill, and watch the battle re-enacted one more time. Then he would reluctantly pack the truck and trailer and go home for a few days, until it was time for the next weekend's re-enactment.

I climbed the hill so I could transform from Civil War to tater outside the camp, to avoid breaking the spell for anybody.

When I returned to Lee's tent with the dress, Phil Carpenter was sitting in his chair, arms folded and serene, portraying Phil Carpenter portraying Gen. Lee. He does it very well.

The only time I saw him crack was when we were sheltering in his tent during the downpour, and he had looked around at his perfect re-creation of Robert E. Lee's life - bed, saddle, chicken, dresser, desk, sword, Bible, boots - and then glanced at the water rising around our feet as the creek overflowed and muttered, "This is unreal."

He was absolutely right.

Diane Tennant, (757) 446-2478, diane.tennant@pilotonline.com