Posted on 12/22/2002 7:56:45 AM PST by GeneD
GETTYSBURG, Pa. (Reuters) - The U.S. National Park Service has embarked on an effort to change its interpretive materials at major Civil War battlefields to get rid of a Southern bias and emphasize the horrors of slavery.
Nowhere is the project more striking than at Gettysburg, site of the largest battle ever fought on American soil, where plans are going ahead to build a new visitors center and museum at a cost of $95 million that will completely change the way the conflict is presented to visitors.
"For the past 100 years, we've been presenting this battlefield as the high watermark of the Confederacy and focusing on the personal valor of the soldiers who fought here," said Gettysburg Park Superintendent John Latschar.
"We want to change the perception so that Gettysburg becomes known internationally as the place of a 'new rebirth of freedom,"' he said, quoting President Abraham Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address" made on Nov. 19, 1863, five months after the battle.
"We want to get away from the traditional descriptions of who shot whom, where and into discussions of why they were shooting one another," Latschar said.
The project seems particularly relevant following the furor over Republican Sen. Trent Lott's recent remarks seeming to endorse racial segregation, which forced many Americans to revisit one of the uglier chapters of the nation's history.
When it opens in 2006, the new museum will offer visitors a narrative of the entire Civil War, putting the battle into its larger historical context. Latschar said he was inspired by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., which sets out to tell a story rather than to display historical artifacts behind glass cases.
"Our current museum is absolutely abysmal. It tells no story. It's a curator's museum with no rhyme or reason," Latschar said.
It is also failing to preserve the 700,000 items in its collection, including 350,000 maps, documents and photographs, many of which were rotting away or crumbling into dust until they were put into temporary storage.
FEW BLACKS VISIT
Around 1.8 million people visit Gettysburg every year. Latschar said a disproportionate number were men and the park attracts very few black visitors.
In 1998, he invited three prominent historians to examine the site. Their conclusion: that Gettysburg's interpretive programs had a "pervasive southern sympathy."
The same was true at most if not all of the 28 Civil War sites operated by the National Parks Service. A report to Congress delivered in March 2000 found that only nine did an adequate job of addressing slavery in their exhibits.
Another six, including Gettysburg, gave it a cursory mention. The rest did not mention it at all. Most parks are now trying to correct the situation.
Park rangers and licensed guides at Gettysburg and other sites have already changed their presentations in line with the new policy. Now, park authorities are taking a look at brochures, handouts and roadside signs.
According to Dwight Pitcaithley, chief historian of the National Park Service, the South had tremendous success in promoting its "lost cause" theory.
The theory rested on three propositions: that the war was fought over "states' rights" and not over slavery; that there was no dishonor in defeat since the Confederacy lost only because it was overwhelmed by the richer north; and that slavery was a benign institution and most slaves were content with their lot and faithful to their masters.
"Much of the public conversation today about the Civil War and its meaning for contemporary society is shaped by structured forgetting and wishful thinking" he said.
After the "emancipation proclamation" 2,000 yankee officers and 30,000 enlisted men left the federal army. They did not sign up to "free the slaves" and when Lincoln & Co. tried to turn the war into just that, the troops started defecting.
Besides that, the emanciplation proclamation did not free any slaves north of the Mason Dixon line (or below it for that matter). Wonder if the revised history of the Gettysburg park will mention that?
What use are these? I imagine they are completely unPC- let's just burn them and save some space.
And where the capitol building was being built by slaves.
That's what I asked. But of course the 1964 Civil Rights Act, as well as the Supreme Court's Bob Jones decision, shows that sometimes it doesn't matter whether something is public or private.
The existence of hard-core secessionist sentiment predating and even trying to precipitate Lincoln's election indicates that secession in many states was more than just a defensive reaction to the election and Lincoln's policies. The ground was being prepared for years in advance.
One certainly can -- and probably ought to -- distinguish between the first wave of secessions and the last which did have more of a reactive character. Doing so indicates that Southerners, like Northerners, were far from united about what to do. But to leave enthusiastic secessionism and radical Southern nationalism out of the picture is to miss an essential element.
Don't forget the draft riots in NYC. Seems to me that started up about that same time, and for the same reason.
Besides that, the emancipation proclamation did not free any slaves north of the Mason Dixon line (or below it for that matter).
Technically, it purported to free only those slaves in areas not then under federal control. Areas which were (and a number of them are specifically enumerated therein) were excluded.
The EP totally failed to impress the leaders of the British Government, one of whom was heard to remark that Lincoln was abolishing slavery only in those places where he had no authority to do it, while preserving it within his own jurisdiction. But it found traction enough with the British public, and the Government eventually came to heel. That was the point, after all.
When the Upper South refused to secede, Lincoln had in fact won a huge political victory, as Seward, unlike Lincoln, realized. But Lincoln proceeded to throw that victory away. The Lower South was not in a position to make a go of it, economically. Had the Lower South been allowed to secede peacefully -- as Seward and many others wanted -- it would probably have had to sue for readmission to the Union inside a short time.
The war, which ended up costing 600,000 lives, was thus unnecessary, and only ended up being precipitated by Lincoln's hasty actions, which were just bad statesmanship -- Lincoln totally misunderstood what Southern Unionism meant. The Southern Unionists opposed secession, but they were totally unwilling to use force to compel seceding states to stay within the Union.
You must have the same response software as Walt.
My point is in short - I don't believe this BS about "Southern bias" at the National Parks. My son visits Gettysburg a lot, I'm going to email this Reuters article to him and will be interested to get his take on it.
The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history...the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination – that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves.
Well, you can surely understand why the powers that be don't like that.
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