Stonewall Hinkleman Discussion Starters
Is Cyrus a good guy? How about Big Jim? Or any of the Confederate soldiers? Yes, they seem nice enough and sometimes even help Stonewall. But they are fighting a war to protect — among other things — the idea that some people can be bought and sold and used as slaves. Does that automatically make them bad guys?
The Battle of Bull Run is just the first of many, many battles in the Civil War. The men who died that day were just the first of more than half a million who died in the war. Was Abraham Lincoln wrong to send troops into the South? What if he had simply let the Southern states start their own country? Was it worth the enormous death toll to keep the federal government in power?
Time travel is a popular subject for books and movies. But could it really work? Many paradoxes have been suggested, such as the tree paradox. Say you carve your initials on a tree at suppertime. Then you go back in time to lunchtime and cut the tree down. What will happen at suppertime? Will you still be abe to carve your initials on it?
Stonewall has a long list of things he misses while re-enacting, such as video games and soda. What would you miss most if you had to pretend to live in the 1860s for a weekend? Nothing with batteries. Nothing with plastic. And no junk food.
Ashby is probably a lot tougher and braver than Stonewall when you get down to it. But it’s hard for her to do anything because of the limited role that women played in the battles. Today women have a much more active role in modern warfare. Is this better?
Stonewall has a lot of bad things to say about re-enactors, most of which is just because he is a big whiner. But he does raise on interesting point. Is it right to re-enact a war? Is it wrong to make a hobby out of what was a very real horror? Or is this a great way to bring history to life and honor the actions of the soldiers?
When an officer yelled charge, soldiers were expected to do it. Imagine that you are part of a line of men. Across a field from you are more men, with rifles loaded and bayonets sharp. You have no armor and no shield. The bullets are big, heavy hunks of lead. You know that many of the men in your line will die and it’s almost a random chance if you will die, too. Would you be willing to charge?
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