The National Park Service spent tens of thousands of dollars to defend its decision to prevent a woman masquerading as a man from participating in an official Civil War reenactment event at the Antietam National Battlefield in Sharpsburg, Maryland. The woman, who has studied the Civil War extensively and who was unexpectedly found out after being seen exiting from a bathroom marked "Ladies," claims that she had identified sixty-six women who fought as men during the conflict. A park historian conceded that "perhaps two or three" women were among the 126,000 combatants at the battle on September 17, 1862, but that the female presence was only 3/126,000 or 0.00238 percent.

†