Sam Casey, right, of Atlanta, fires his rifle as Daniel Garrison, center, of West Monroe, reloads, and Jared Graham, of Columbia, La., waits for the call to fire again during the re-enactment of a battle skirmish at McRaven Saturday.(Chad Applebaum The VIcksburg Post)

[7/6/03]Watching Confederate soldiers march on the grounds of the Old Court House Museum Saturday, 3-year-old Samuel Strayer felt obliged to help defend the city too.

He watched re-enactors from Texas march, shoot rifles and ask locals to join in defending against the “Northern invaders.”

Samuel must have been caught up in the moment because, his mother said, he normally isn’t allowed to play with even toy guns.

“I’ll go over there and snatch one,” he said, looking at any one of the rifles the soldiers carried.

Samuel and his family, from Birmingham, Ala., were in Vicksburg for the weekend visiting his grandparents.

The Texas re-enactors of the summer of 1862 tried to be as authentic as possible, with their uniforms being sewn from the same machines used during the War Between the States, said Cpl. Arthur Porras, 48, of College Station, Texas.

As did most of the soldiers portraying the 6th Infantry Regiment of Mississippi Volunteers, Porras dressed in long underwear, a coat of denim cloth and a wool shirt. The boots he and others wore, called brogans, weren’t even fitted for left or right feet; they molded to the soldiers’ feet as they were worn.

Porras said fighting in anything else wouldn’t have gone over well 141 years ago.

“It was unseemly for the ladies to see men any differently,” said Porras, who majored in history in college.

Some of the guys called to volunteer to defend the city were young, like drummer Justin Harris, who is 19. But he is a history buff, like the older men with whom he travels around the country “to protect Southern land from the Union Army.”

When Harris first began beating his drum with the group in Texas, his dad would wait in the car bored for him to finish. But, one weekend the group needed another Southerner to fight.

“They put gave him a gun and put a jacket on him,” the younger Harris said. “And he’s been hooked ever since.”

To keep true to the original soldiers, the men have been eating rations of cured beef and pork, peanuts and a piece of fruit here and there. They have also been sleeping in the open air without tents, just as soldiers did in 1862.

Just a mile away, re-created skirmishes between the Northern and Southern troops were happening behind the McRaven Home, 1445 Harrison St. The two sides fought to a standstill until they went into the crowd to show off their uniforms and weapons. Women dressed as Southern belles sat nearby in tents waiting for the men to get through fighting.

Andy Salassi, a coordinator of the weekend’s living history/re-enactments at the McRaven Home, which was used as a hospital during the Siege of Vicksburg, said 20 to 30 people participated in the Battle of Railroad Redoubt, which happened about a mile from the McRaven house during the Civil War.

When the 2 p.m. fight was over between the two sides, the men, including casualties from the mock battle, scattered among the crowd to show off their uniforms and weapons.

Independent re-enactor Mike Riley, 46, of Grenada, said this was his first time in Vicksburg, so he divided his time during the weekend between visiting historic landmarks such as the Vicksburg National Military Museum and showing parts of Vicksburg’s history to others through the re-enactments.

The re-enactments were to continue at both sites today.