Infantrymen gripped polished muskets, slung leather pouches decorated with gold “US” pendants over their shoulders and lifted swords in the salty air of San Francisco’s Fort Point on Saturday as part of the annual re-enactment commemorating the American Civil War era.

Dozens of men dressed as Union infantry and artillerymen marched into Fort Point and lined up in the open-air fort, the Golden Gate Bridge stretching just over the fort tower above their blue-capped heads. Onlookers lined the entrance of the fort and watched in silence as re-enactors raised the American flag on a flagpole visible from the bay.

Visitors strolled along the length of a series of wood tables where items such as tobacco, smoking pipes and bricks of tea were displayed. Some people picked up bricks of hardtack — a thick cracker-like food that kept soldiers’ bellies full — and tapped the rocky food on a piece of wood, generating loud thunks.

They peered through dusty green bottles of “Wizard Oil” and other high-alcohol-content liquids that were consumed as beverages and used as home remedies for ailing soldiers. Others opted to take selfies in front of the cannons on display and followed volunteers with the National Park Service on a guided tour of the grounds.

John Gee, an Army veteran, was one of dozens of people who slipped into a Union uniform. He portrayed Col. René De Russy, who commanded the defense of Fort Point and other “local fortifications of San Francisco Bay.”

“I’m kind of a history enthusiast, and I think the past is infinitely fascinating and the past has a whole lot to do with the way we are now,” Gee said. “The Civil War made the United States. The war united us, like it or not.”

While Fort Point never saw battle during the Civil War, Gee and other re-enactment participants said the San Francisco base is the ideal location for teaching people about how Union soldiers lived during the 1860s when they were battling Confederate troops in the war that ended the enslavement of African people in the U.S., and how the war changed the course of the country’s history.

Dawn Wilson, 46, dressed in a purple, ankle-length skirt, white-collared blouse decorated with a brooch and black lace gloves, stood behind a long wooden table meant to be a sutlery, which were Civil War-era merchants that sold anything from sewing kits, candle holders that doubled as cups, cutlery, soaps, tobacco and even condoms to soldiers. She peered down beneath a black-brimmed hat and encouraged children to play with wood spinning tops and other toys strewn about the table.

In 1986, when Wilson was a teenager, she said she joined her family at a Civil War re-enactment at Roaring Camp in Felton (Santa Cruz County), where the whole family fell in love with portraying life in the 1860s. The family — including Wilson’s mother, father, husband and other relatives — have participated in various “living history” events for several decades.

She joked that her 19-year-old daughter has participated since she was in utero. Wilson’s husband, Tom Wilson, 47, said he “married into” Civil War re-enactments.

“It’s a family thing. You don’t have a choice,” Wilson joked, gesturing to the rest of her family running the sutlery with her. “But of course we’re not trying to glorify war or glorify the Civil War in particular, but we’re trying to show that it wasn’t that long ago and to look at how far we’ve come.”

Wilson’s mother, Judy Mabie, 75, said the family has participated in re-enactments around California, including in Felton, San Jose, Milpitas, Fresno, Murphys (Calaveras County) and Mariposa.

“I think we need to educate the public not only how there was a Civil War, but the things that went with it,” Mabie said. “The Civil War was just not about slavery, it was about people.”

San Jose resident Andrew Crockett, 34, said he’s been participating in re-enactments since 2008, when his wife introduced him to living history events. On Saturday, he was dressed as an artilleryman, with light blue pants, dark blue coat with red lining and gold buttons, and a leather belt wrapped around his waist. Slung on his back, he wore a “1852 edition knapsack, the forerunner to backpacks.”

“I had always been ... into the idea of dressing the part and interacting with the public and talking about history in unstructured and direct manner. In school, everything is issued by a bureaucracy trying to satisfy all the interests involved to make sure that no one complains,” Crockett said. “There is a lot of history that gets left by the wayside that is increasingly relevant in our modern era.”

Crockett, a self-proclaimed “history buff,” said he hopes his involvement in recent years has taught people that it wasn’t just white Americans fighting to end slavery in the United States — Mexican Americans in California also joined the effort.

“They don’t know the fact that Spanish-speaking Californians enlisted in the Union military in the First Battalion cavalry and fought to end slavery. They fought for the cause of the Union, for the cause of a free nation,” Crockett said. “These ideas simply are not common parlance. So much of that history simply gets left out of the picture, and I want to make sure that they get the full breadth of the picture.”

Lauren Hernández is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: lauren.hernandez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @LaurenPorFavor