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The Revolution is always popular, in part because the British uniforms were dazzling. These were not just the well-known red coats, but kilts for Scottish outfits and suits of splendid foppishness for officers. Lord Cornwallis is not required to surrender every weekend, but when he is played by Ken Siegel, he does so in the highest style. Siegel, 42, a management consultant from Needham, Mass., wears high silk stockings, brown-top riding boots, leather-lined, white wool breeches closed with gold buttons, a white waistcoat with a gold pocket watch, a crimson sash, a general's coat in scarlet wool with blue lapels and velvet cuffs studded with 20 14-karat buttons, a white wig and cocked bicorne hat, and a $15,000 18th century sword, inlaid with gold. "I come off as a totally arrogant, pompous ass," he says with pride.
Siegel belongs to the British Brigade, a fifth column with members in 17 states. The brigade can field 600 men, including a mounted general and staff, 20 mounted dragoons, a battalion of artillery with five to seven cannons, four large infantry regiments, and ten additional companies of foot soldiers, including four units of Highlanders in kilts. The cavalry even has two professional stunt riders who can spill their horses. Next year the brigade is taking its act to England, possibly so that Cornwallis can get new instructions.
Despite the strength of the British Brigade, the colonists have the fervor to keep winning. Authenticity is pursued to the point of obsession, and anyone wearing polyester would be laughed off the battlefield. Shirts are handmade of ; linen, often by the soldiers or their wives. Buckled colonial shoes for officers are available from an outfit in Valley Forge, Pa., and flintlock muskets (made in Japan, though this point is not stressed) can be had for $285. Among the strictest reconstructionists are the 1,000 or so members of the Brigade of the American Revolution, a group founded in 1962 to re-create the life of the Revolutionary soldier. This brigade will not allow women to fight, though it does accept women and children as craftspeople and water carriers, which would have been their roles in the 18th century. "Most working-class women of the 18th century were virtually treated as beasts of burden," explains National Commander George Woodbridge, an artist for Mad magazine.
Well, maybe. But when Becky Anderson, 20, an attractive brunet carpenter from Bowling Green, Ohio, swings into battle at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Mich., she wears the uniform of the 10th Virginia Regiment, Wayne's Corps of Light Infantry, carries a musket and is addressed as Nathaniel. Her parents took her to re-enactments when she was 14, but "as a girl you had to wear dresses and sit around the campfire cooking. I didn't like that."
Anderson is a member of the North West Territory Alliance, which accepts women as combatants. So is Dennis Farmer, the curator of a historical museum in Monroe County, Mich., a lieutenant in the 10th Virginia Regiment who has spent some $10,000 on such items as camp gear, uniforms, a musket and a pair of authentic 18th century eyeglass frames. "The Revolutionary War is my favorite time period," he said one hot Saturday at Greenfield Village before a fight with the dreaded British. "As wars go, you can't find a better one that was fought for a clear-cut cause."