Civil War

Betcha didn't know this -- but it's the opening days of the Civil War, and Fort McHenry is a Union fort, surrounded by a city whose sentiments are openly sympathetic to the South.And you thought this was 1996 with the Civil War far, far behind us. Well, on Saturday and Sunday, the 1861 Civil War Encampment takes over Fort McHenry. The park will be open to visitors who wish to experience that period in the life of Fort McHenry. About 7,000 people are expected to attend over the two days."There are 150 people involved," says Scott Sheads, the park historian at Fort McHenry.

One day last month in the dank basement of the 122-year-old maximum-security prison in Cranston, R.I, security officer James Bailey cast a flashlight beam over scurrying vermin and piles of decaying junk.The state fire marshal's office had recommended that the basement be cleaned. But before everything was thrown out, Mr. Bailey wanted a look around.A history buff with some archaeology experience, he knew treasures sometimes lurk in creepy places. He found some buried in a waist-deep mound of moldy, half-eaten papers.

No one expects a pop song to survive a century. As the hit parade marches on, most old songs are tossed away or simply forgotten; anything that's recognized just a few years later is prized as a golden oldie.Yet "The Songs of the Civil War," a program that will be broadcast tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday at 9:45 a.m. on MPT (channels 22 and 67) is a reminder of just how many songs from the 1860s most Americans know in their bones -- not just "Dixie" and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," but "The Yellow Rose of Texas," "Aura Lee" and even the bugle call "Taps," which was commissioned as an elegy for Civil War casualties.

"My shoes are gone; my clothes are almost gone. I'm weary, I'm sick, I'm hungry. My family have been killed or scattered. . . . And I have suffered all this for my country. I love my country. But if this war is ever over, I'll be damned if I'll ever love another country."A Confederate soldier confided this to his commanding general as they trudged toward Appomattox, we are told in Geoffrey Ward's "The Civil War: An Illustrated History," (Alfred A. Knopf; $50; 425 pp., illustrated) and his tragicomic sentiments are a surpassingly apt summation of America's schizophrenic, semi-suicidal war with itself.

It's a sad, haunting melody and listeners love it.Ashokan Farewell" -- the plaintive fiddle theme from the soundtrack of Ken Burns' documentary "The Civil War" -- is off and running on at least one local country music radio station.Greg Cole, music director for WPOC-FM, reports the cut, performed by J. Unger and the group Fiddle Fever, drew a couple dozen requests, more than any other number played during the week before Christmas."In comparison with the other songs we carried that week, it was by far and away the leader," he says.

Ken Davis, he of the "Don't Know Much About History" and "Don't Know Much About Geography" best sellers, sits in a conference room of The Baltimore Sun building and makes an observation that, in these days, should be shocking, but isn't."

"Like Men of War: Black Troops in the Civil War, 1862-1865," by Noah Andre Trudeau. Little, Brown and Company. 532 pages. $29.95.On March 9, 1865, a desperate Confederate Congress gave President Jefferson Davis the power to induct African-Americans into the dwindling armed forces of the South. But this was only the last stirring of a doomed cause. These troops were mustered into service just in time to evacuate Richmond and accompany Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia on its final march to surrender at Appomatox Court House.

The Old West has spawned so many legends and myths, the truth has often been lost in the shuffle. A new 10-hour documentary, "The Wild West," attempts to tell how the West was really won."The Wild West" premieres Monday at 8 p.m. on Channel 54.Like "The Civil War," Ken Burns' acclaimed 1990 PBS documentary series, "The Wild West" features vintage photographs from the period, excerpts from diaries and letters read by well-known actors, interviews with historians and music from the era. Jack Lemmon is the narrator.

What? No Ambrose Bierce?Admirers of the greatest American writer of the 19th century who fought in the Civil War no doubt will wonder about Bierce's absence from this volume. It includes Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Herman Melville and other writers whom we Bierce fans feel couldn't have filled his inkwell, much less measure up to him in style, wit and writing technique.But absent he is, and the volume is the poorer for it. But editor Louis P. Masur may have had a good reason: Most of the writings in this work are nonfiction -- essays about personal reactions to the conflict from 1861 to 1865.

Baltimore was a divided city in the Civil War. Its allegiance may have been to the Union, but many residents' sympathies were with the Confederacy.This was strikingly demonstrated on April 19, 1861 -- one week after Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina.Marching from President Street Station toward Camden Station, the 6th Massachusetts Regiment was confronted by a stone-throwing mob of Southern sympathizers on Pratt Street. At least nine civilians and three soldiers died in the fighting that ensued.