As the men of South Park are preparing to hold their annual American Civil War reenactment of the (fictional) Battle of Tamarack Hill, the children rehearse as a Union Army rally band.
Evidently under the impression that the reenactment is a competition of some sort, Cartman bets that the South will win the Civil War, and if it does, Stan and Kyle will be his slaves for a month, or vice versa.
The National Guard also arrives on the scene and shoots a warning flare into the air which kills Kenny (who had joined the Confederates under Cartman's promise of "lots of plunder and womens").
The army demands the Confederate States of America to be a separate country and blackmail President Clinton by threatening to release a (bluff) video of him with Marisa Tomei.
Grandpa, realizing that the drunken men still think that the entire campaign is a reenactment, gets Stan and Kyle dressed up as Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln, just in time to prevent Clinton from signing the surrender, with the added condition that the South receive a free year's supply of Schnapps.
After the production of the previous episode, the voice actor of many female South Park roles, Mary Kay Bergman, committed suicide.
[3] "The Red Badge of Gayness," along with the sixteen other episodes from The Complete Third Season, were released on a three-disc DVD set in the United States on June 18, 2001.