1st North Carolina Volunteers

11th North Carolina Regiment

Founded in 1975, our regiment in one of the oldest and continually operating Civil War reenacting units in North Carolina. Our members come from all walks of life and reside mainly in the eastern two-thirds of our state, however three states are also represented in our ranks.  We are bound together by a common interest and admiration of North Carolina’s soldiers from this time period and have dedicated ourselves to portray them as authentically as possible. We utilize uniforms, weapons, and equipment that have the highest degree of historical accuracy available to achieve this means.

Our organization has two major goals: The main emphasis is to portray the soldiers from NC during the period the period 1861-1865.  The military units we represent to accomplish this impression are the 1^st North Carolina Volunteers (the Bethel Regiment) and the 11^th North Carolina Regiment.  This allows us the flexibility to adapt to any   reenactment period and still remain historically correct.    Our other goal is to educate the general public about the many dimensions of a soldier’s life and what he might have endured including living conditions, drill, combat, weapons, food, and other aspects of his life from this period. We often coordinate our efforts with those of state and national historic sites to increase public awareness regarding the preservation and recognition of those invaluable treasures and assist in fundraising events to aid in preservation efforts.

We are asked many times why we participate in such an activity as reenacting.  Perhaps the late Bruce Catton, author of many books on the subject, best sums up our collective feelings:

“We are the people to whom the past is forever speaking.  We listen to it because we cannot help ourselves, for the past speaks with many voices.  For out of that 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 a part of the future they died for; they are a part of the past that brought the future.  What they did – the stories they told and the songs they sang, and finally, the deaths they died, make up a part of our own experiences. 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.”