Civil War re-enactment not completely historically accurate

Civil war re-enactors will converge in Philadelphia Saturday, 150 years after President Lincoln asked for volunteers from the Union to defend Washington, D.C. Many of the soldiers taking part in the re-enactment will be African-American. But there's a problem of absolute fidelity to history: black men would not have been part of this initial call to arms in 1861, says Gregory Urwin, a military historian at Temple. "The Union was not ready to part with slavery at that time; they wanted to preserve the Union as it was in 1860."
April 14, 2011 | WHYY-FM