Speaking of the Seventeenth Mississippi Infantry Regiment, which, along with the Phillips Georgia Legion, led the principal attack on Fort Sanders on Nov. 29, 1863, it’s commemorated in several reenactor groups.

The self-styled Rough and Readies of Company D aren’t in Marshall County, Mississippi, where the actual Rough and Readies were recruited. They’re in the Chicago area and do most of their presentations in Illinois and Indiana. They have the usual number of overweight farbs and anachronistic haircuts but they also have more young members than most such groups.

Two other, apparently squad-sized reenactor units styling themselves the Seventeenth Mississippi, do their thing in Aldie and Leesburg, Virginia. Their members also are stockier than you could reasonably expect an underfed Rebel soldier to be, and older—unless they’re supposed to be the “grave” part of the cliche that, by the end of the war, with the Union no longer allowing prisoner exchanges, the Confederacy was robbing the cradle and the grave.