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.
Do you have a cancelled check to prove he received the monies? He was already on record stating that he would return any monies - even the entire amount if necessary.
Lee met with secession leaders in direct violation of his 1855 oath while still under obligation to the United States. The War Department didn't -have- to accept his resignation at all. But because of his parochial outlook, it was probably better that he leave the AUS any way.
Walt
The secessonists were levying war on the United States. Lee was their aider and abettor.
You sound like Bill Clinton trying to dodge the definition of "is".
Walt
I assume you are talking about the Union men involved in a plot to murder Confederate men, women, and children and take over Confederate arsenals in North Texas? ...the Unionists who contacted the Union army to plan action against the Confederates (a crime punishable by death under the Confederate Articles of War)? We've talked about them before.
The great bulk of the Unionists arrested on this occasion were released. Simply being a Unionist was not a crime. Murder, like the Unionists did to the prosecutor during the trial, was a crime.
A mob of Confederate sympathizers, enraged by the threats against their lives openly bragged about by some of the convicted Union terrorists/guerrillas, took matters into their own hands and hung a bunch of them, mostly those who had been shown in court testimony to be members of the plot. (Don't mess with Texas, Walt.)
A few were hung who may not have been connected to the plot. Others were convicted and hung by the court, not the mob.
You keep avoiding the question. Would you have starved Confederate prisoners to death like some of the 600 were starved to death?
Nonsense - the Confederacy defended their territory just as Washington et al did in 1776. While Lincoln lied to Justice Campbell & Nelson, he attempted to send reinforcemnts to Ft. Sumter - how noble and honest < /sarcasm >. The Confederacy was more than willing to pay for any federal property within her borders. Lincoln waged war to subjugate the South. US Supreme Court Justice Wilson had long before wrote that treason could only be conducted against those owing allegiance to & receiving protection from the federal government - neither of which applied to the Confederacy.
You sound like Bill Clinton trying to dodge the definition of "is".
Nonsense, it is Lincoln that was the master of the spin, and with Clinton , Lincolnites et al, he has worthy sucessors.
Nonsense, what part of renunciation don't you understand? Where in his oath does it state that he could not resign, where does it state that it is "perpetual", and where does it state that it applies to non-citizens of the US?
The War Department didn't -have- to accept his resignation at all.
But they did. But what would they do? Fight a war to make him remain and fight against the state that was the grantor of his citizenship?
But because of his parochial outlook, it was probably better that he leave the AUS any way.
The US couldn't have men of honor, integrity and religous morals as military leaders?
Confederate sympathizers act as though Virginia was a nation and the United States were not, but the same logic can be carried further: what should we think of those who fought for the secessionist states against unionist neighbors closer to home in a given town, village or county? The result is anarchy, as is so often the case in civil wars.
Valid criticisms can be made of the actions and theories of the unionists, but the opposing idea of the divine right of state sovereignty -- that the rights of states are more important than those of individuals, that states can command authority and compel obedience that the nation cannot, that interstate violence is more legitimate than intrastate -- is no improvement.
There's much that's appealing about the agrarian view. What's appealing includes many of the mythic elements of a lost Eden. It's a marvellous story, though as with many myths of paradise or innocence lost, a villain is required to make the thing work. It's not clear though, how true the myth is or how edenic things were before the Fall.
From Mark Twain to this year's "Gangs of New York" there have been debunkers of Jacksonian America, who questioned just how free we were before the fall. The hand of the federal government was light on the citizenry, but state governments came down hard on those who were denied freedom or a say in what they did or how they were governed. Violence and tribalism and mob rule were not unknown in those days. The age was one of promise, but had the conditions of those days persisted we would have remained an "underdeveloped" country with all the frustrations and deprivations that that implies.
I prefer the old myths to the new, but the truth lies somewhere in between. Scorsese's film is an urban view of the period, but Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is a veritable encyclopedia of agrarian America and its discontents.
The Jacksonian political order was conditioned by the frontier. Sale of government lands made a major contribution to the federal budget. Such sales also acted to keep land and power in fewer hands, hence the later push for the Homestead Act. Jacksonian voters could move west when times were hard. When the supply of open land dwindled, they looked for other means to relieve their discontents, hence the welfare state.
The Jacksonian interlude couldn't have lasted. Even had there been no Lincoln or no Civil War it still wouldn't have endured. There might have been more anarchic conditions and more tumultuous politics, stronger state and weaker federal governments but that earlier condition of frontier freedom would not have persisted and could not have been revived.
The willingness of the party of Jefferson and Jackson to adapt and promote big government, ostensibly in support of the same ends, indicates the impermanence of Jacksonian conditions, and even in the 1830s, Tocqueville saw the growing appeal of commerce, wealth and markets, that would transform the American character.
Americans chose a market system that would make them richer throught their own efforts. Riches gave us greater opportunities in life and a higher "standard of living." Pursuing wealth, though, meant losing the older frontier independence, self-reliance and autonomy. But such was the price of greater wealth. We could not have had one without the other.
A bigger economic pie enabled most of us to escape from numbing physical toil. The price may have been middle class, 9 to 5 conformity and staying a step ahead of the bill collectors for most of us, but it's a price most have been willing to pay, especially when we look at societies caught in agrarian mass poverty. And had we not chosen the commercial-industrial path, the exclusion of this road to wealth and security would have made the pursuit of security and riches through politics and the state more, not less prominent.
Arguably, in an agrarian America, politicians would be more prominent and politics would be more of a path to riches than they are today. Particularly if the alternative commercial or industrial way wouldn't have been available. Look back at 20th century Southern politics. The theory may have been "state's rights" (which did not mean minimal government), but the reality was the struggle for pork. Not that Northern politics were so different, but the pretences were.
You're spamming, in other words.
Why? Because the pay packet was late? Get real.
Your laying a charge of treason against Lee's acceptance of his Virginia militia commission and speaking to the secession convention, which was, need I remind you, the People of Virginia in convention assembled, does not support the charge of treason as defined in the Constitution. Which was irrelevant anyway, since neither Virginia nor Robert E. Lee were any of the U.S. Government's business any longer, after April 17th.
As of April 25th, Virginia was at peace with the United States. There had been no contest of arms. Armed conflict is required to support a charge of treason. We've been over this before in other threads, and here you are raising the same old accusations and calumnies, to gall other participants, after you had been corrected on other threads and admonished about keeping your facts straight.
This is an example of that tendentious, lynch-mob mentality I warned you about earlier. You're letting your mouth overload your back again.
Why? Because the pay packet was late? Get real.
That's really treason.
And Lee knew it.
Lee was indicted for treason. It was the opposition of General Grant, the words of President Lincoln from the grave and the natural magnaminty of the victors that kept a noose from around his neck.
Walt
A few gems from Whiskey Papa:
"I'll say again that based on what I knew in 1992, I would vote for Bill Clinton ten times out of ten before I would vote for George Bush Sr." - WhiskeyPapa, 11/15/02
- - - "All these deaths of U.S. citizens --the death of EVERY U.S. citizen killed by Arab terror in the United States, can be laid directly at the feet of George Bush I." - WhiskeyPapa, 11/15/02
SOURCE:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/786927/posts?page=452#448
- - - "I'll say again that based on what I knew in 1992, I would vote for Bill Clinton ten times out of ten before I would vote for George Bush Sr." - WhiskeyPapa, 11/15/02 SOURCE: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/786927/posts?q=1&&page=401#420
- - - "As you doubtless know, the separation of powers in that Pact with the Devil we call our Constitution, gives only Congress the right to raise and spend money." - WhiskeyPapa, 11/15/02
SOURCE:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/786927/posts?page=432#432 - - - "Nationalism and socialism are opposites." - WhiskeyPapa, 11/15/02
SOURCE:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/786927/posts?page=570#516 - - - "First of all, the AJC [Atlanta Journal-Constitution] is -not- an "ultra-leftist" newspaper, and you know it." - WhiskeyPapa, 11/13/02
SOURCE:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/784464/posts?page=70#70 - - - "I feel that admiration for Reagan has rightly diminished over time, and rightly so." - WhiskeyPapa, 11/15/02
SOURCE:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/786927/posts?page=432#432
Walt
> Actually, they're taking a Marxist line now, led by James McPherson.
Dr. James Mcpherson of Princeton University is a Civil War scholar and Pulitzer Prize winning historian. He was appointed in 1991 by the United States Senate to the Civil War Sites Advisory Commision. He has written more than a dozen books about the Civil War. He is a serious and credible authority on the issues surrounding the Civil War.
Do you have any evidence to back up your claim (of marxist motivations) against Mcpherson?
You're referencing Lincoln's August, 1862 letter to Gorace Greeley. You are conveniently, and typically, leaving out the part of the letter where Lincoln says he makes no retraction of his oft-expressed wish, that all men everywhere could be free.
Lincoln said in 1855 that slavery was a "monstrous injustice".
He worked against slavery all his political life.
The reason Lincoln was so hated in the south was his opposition to slavery. His name didn't even appear on the ballot in many southern states. What -made- Lincoln so infamous in the south was his Cooper Union Speech in New York on February 27, 1860.
In that speech, Lincoln showed, by thorough research, that the vast majority of the framers of the goverment were on the record saying that the federal government had the clear power to control the territories.
This alarmed the slave power, which was insisting that slavery be carried into the territories whether the citizens there liked it or not.
Slavery and slavery expansion was the cause of the war.
Lincoln opposed both.
Walt
Refusal to alter one's views in the face of evidence and argument is called "bigotry". In debate, however, it is merely called "slothful induction". You exhibit a bias under both aspects.
It shouldn't. You're seeing American history being discussed at a level that you usually don't find outside the confines of a collegiate seminar course. Most of the people here, other than Gene D and, when they appear, our friends rdf and Quackenbush, are history aficionados who discuss these subjects because they want to. Everyone has something to bring to the discussion. You will find relatively few jingoistic, simple-minded slogans posted here. What you will find is argument. Try starting an argument like this in Iran.
Read the Constitution, Wlat. As I suggested above, and which you are refusing to do, because that would require you to modify your view, which you refuse to do because you're a bigot. The charge of treason requires, among other things, that Lee be a United States citizen, which he wasn't any more, and that he give concrete assistance to belligerent enemies of the United States. By "belligerent", Wlat, we understand that "there is a war going on". There was not "a war going on" between the United States and Virginia during the period in question. Therefore, the charge of "treason" against Robert E. Lee fails on two of the particulars necessary to support it.
Do you need me to use smaller words, Wlat? Are you getting your mind around this, or do you need me to simplify it some more? Maybe resort to charts and diagrams and a sand table, and perhaps introduce Fred Rogers to help explain it to you?
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