Brett Kelley walked 230 miles in May to raise money for the National Civil War Museum, in Harrisburg, Pa. But this was no ordinary walkathon.
Mr. Kelley, the museum’s curator of collections, turned the calendar back to 1863 and marched for 21 days from Fredericksburg, Va., to the museum dressed and outfitted as a Confederate private, replete with scratchy wool uniform and 45 pounds of weaponry and gear. He slept in a rustic tent, ate food authentic to the period (like Johnnycakes—cornmeal gruel fried in bacon fat), and eschewed all modern conveniences other than public restrooms (“I wasn’t going to just dig a trench,” he says with a chuckle).
He called the effort “In Their Footsteps” because it re-created a march a company of Southern soldiers made on the eve of the epic battle at Gettysburg.
“I really wanted to get a feel for what they went through, and I definitely got my money’s worth,” says Mr. Kelley, whose blistered feet swelled so badly that at one point he had to cut off his socks with a knife.
His effort garnered a lot of publicity while raising $4,000 for a 10-year-old museum that bills itself as the largest institution seeking to offer an even-handed examination of the entire Civil War—which began 150 years ago this year—from the roots of the conflict through post-war Reconstruction. The bulk of the museum’s $1.2-million annual budget comes from a mix of government and philanthropic grants and admission charges. A quarter of its 45,000 annual visitors are schoolchildren on field trips.
“We really take a wide view of the war, both sides, from start to finish,” Mr. Kelley says. “We talk about slavery in depth and a lot of museums don’t do that, or glaze over it. We have a life-size diorama of a slave auction.”
Among the museum’s collection of some 24,000 artifacts and documents are Robert E. Lee’s Bible, a lock of President Lincoln’s hair, and Union General George B. McClellan’s saddle. “We also have everyday stuff—things soldiers used around camp, like spoons and canteens,” Mr. Kelley says. “As far as I’m concerned, a tin cup a soldier used is historically just as important as a saddle a general rode in battle.”
Pictured is a moment when Mr. Kelley was a mile away from completing his march and paused, hat in hand, at Harrisburg Cemetery, where Confederate and Union soldiers are buried side by side.
