Georgia Civil War re-enactors to march in inauguration parade

<p>A group of Civil War re-enactors from Cobb County are headed to Washington next month to march in President Bush's inauguration parade.</p><p>The group, called the 21st Ohio Re-enacting Unit, was invited by Vice President Dick Cheney after Cheney discovered his great-grandfather was a captain in the 21st Ohio Regiment.</p><p>"We thought as a group that it would really be kind of a tribute, not only to the vice president and his great-grandfather but to the 21st Ohio, to be in the inaugural parade," said unit member Bradley Quinlin, a 50-year-old Suwanee resident who works as a route manager for a vending company.</p><p>The re-enactors perform at Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park, Andersonville and Chickamauga. They'll will march in the second division of the five-division inaugural parade, somewhere behind the "The President's Own" United States Marine Band, Quinlin said.</p><p>At Chickamauga, members of the 21st Ohio were heroes of sorts, Quinlin said.</p><p>The men held the line for six hours, firing more than 55,000 rounds of ammunition at the Confederates, enabling the Union army to withdraw back into Chattanooga.</p><p>"So they took quite a lot of casualties and stood and held their ground," he said.</p><p>Quinlin said marching in the inaugural parade is quite an occasion for the re-enactment group. The 1.6-mile parade route that passes the White House is the same route the regiment took during the Union Army's "Grand Review" march in May 1865, which celebrated the end of the war.</p><p>"All of us are kind of amateur historians. So, we love that anyway," Quinlin told the Marietta Daily Journal. "But the honor to march in an inaugural parade in itself, to realize the country that we have and that we can have peaceful exchange of power and then to be able to march in a festivity that has been going on for 55 inaugurations, is a thrill."</p><p>___</p><p>HASH(0x2865bf0)</p>