Four things you might not know about the Civil War from local re-enactment expert

sarahemmaedmondsorfrankthompson.jpg Sarah Emma Edmonds poses here as a man. She used a man's persona to escape the confines of female life and later enlisted in the Union Army.
FLINT, MI--When he's in uniform, Robert Helsel gets a lot of questions about the Civil War.

That's because when he's in uniform, he's dressed as a Civil War soldier.

As the vice president of 2nd Michigan Light Artillery reenactment group, Helsel will be at Sloan Museum Oct. 6 from 12-4 p.m. acting as a Civil War soldiers with other members of his group in an effort to kick off Sloan's latest Civil War exhibit.

They'll be setting up a Civil War encampment that will show visitors what it was like to be a soldier during the war between the states, and taking questions from visitors.

When asked what people were usually the most shocked to hear, Helsel came up with four answers:

There were lots of women in the Civil War.

"That’s probably one of the most amazing things for people," Helsel said.

Smithsonian Magazine estimated that about 400 women served in the war, pretending to be men. And one of those women, as Helsel pointed out, was from Flint.

Sarah Emma Edmonds served in the Civil War, and abandoned the fight after she was injured, fearing that a medical examination would expose her true identity.

Helsel, a Vassar man, said she's well-known throughout the country.

As Helsel pointed out, women who were found to have served were disgraced at the time, though they are now considered heroes.

Soldiers lived on a diet of crackers and bacon.

Specifically, the rations soldiers were given came in what was called hardtack and salt pork.

Hardtack was a thick kind of cracker that Helsel said was manufactured by the well-known cracker company Nabisco.

Salt pork, he said, was essentially just another name for bacon.

"That was the main rations. Anything else they had to fend for themselves," he said.

Artillery men were paid $13 per month

And that was considered good -- at least, more than the average infantryman would make, Helsel said.

According the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator (which only goes back as far as 1913), $13 in 1913 would be worth just over $300 today. Go back to the 1860s, and you're looking at even lower pay. According to another inflation calculator, it's about $280.

What people are most often interested in, however, at least with Helsel's group, he said, is the gun.

Well, technically it's a cannon.

“Cannons are called guns and the rifles are called muskets,” he said, apologizing for the Civil War jargon. 

The coolest part: Not only is it a cannon from the Civil War, it's a cannon from Flint.

The cannon actually dates back to the Mexican-American war, and was one of five of its kind issued to Flint-based military units. Of those five, it's the only one still in existence that the group knows of, Helsel said.

"Back in the Civil War, they were able to fire that gun two-three times per minute, and when you see the loading procedures, it’s pretty amazing that they could do it and that they were as accurate as they were," Helsel said.

Most of the questions he gets, he said, are based around the cannon. But he said by this point, he's heard it all.

"I just talk to them about anything that they come up with. I guess I’m never really surprised," he said.