Mission Statement of the Columbia Rifles
Mission Statement The Columbia Rifles was formed to provide an improved and more authentic alternative for reenactors. As such, it is expected that members of the Columbia Rifles and men who fall in with us are interested in an authentic living history experience. The group impression is a federal infantry unit of the Army of the Potomac as it might appear in the field between late 1862 through late 1863. Unless a weekend scenario dictates otherwise, the impression is that of soldiers on campaign or at a picket post. Our equipment is by necessity light, and members will not bring anything into camp that cannot be carried on their backs.
Improvement to our reenacting impression should be
an on-going process. Members are highly encouraged to
upgrade their clothing and equipment as promptly as
their circumstances allow. Although attitude is more
important that equipment, an increased attention to
correct construction and materials is both instructive
and necessary in order to achieve the look of the
soldiers we attempt to portray.
Why do we devote so much of our time and financial resources to portraying the common federal soldier in the American Civil War? Perhaps the best way to explain our sentiments is to quote from one of the most highly regarded historians of the American Civil War, Bruce Catton:
"We are people to whom the past is forever speaking. We listen to it because we cannot help ourselves, for the past speaks to us with many voices. Far out of that dark nowhere which is the time before we were born, men who were flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone went through fire and storm to break a path to the future. We are part of the future they died for; they are part of the past that brought the future. What they did-the lives they lived, the sacrifices they made, the stories they told and the songs they sang and, finally, the deaths they died-make up a part of our own experience. We cannot cut ourselves off from it. It is as real to us as something that happened last week. It is a basic part of our heritage as Americans."