U.S. Corrects 'Southern Bias' at Civil War Sites

Reuters via Lycos.com ^ | 12/22/2002 | Alan Elsner

[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.

[lentulusgracchus]

After the Kansas question became embittered, Douglas probably couldn't have held the party and the country together. He couldn't satisfy both Northerners and Southerners.

Well, that's not quite correct, because the Democrats managed it in 1856, nominating a Pennsylvania Democrat and ex-Federalist in Buchanan.

Everyone agrees that Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska Act and his formulation of "popular sovereignty" obviously complicated matters because his initiative failed. (At least he tried, demonstrating that he wasn't a trimmer or a floater.) But so to say is somewhat teleological, so pardon me while I resist the thought a little, even as I concede that Douglas, in the outcome, failed.

And as a post-it reminder, it was also the Kansas-Nebraska Act that brought Abraham Lincoln to national prominence, because he challenged Douglas and debated him the first time in 1854 on the Act. Lincoln's challenge was the overture to his first senatorial campaign, which he lost in the Illinois legislature, standing aside for compromise candidate Lyman Trumbull.

I think Kansas-Nebraska failed because Douglas couldn't solve the competing, though not diametrically opposed, fears of freehold Western farmers and Southern agrarian interests, whether freeholders or planters. So to say does not mean that the fears and interests were totally irreconcilable.

The Southerners wanted not to be shut out of the West. Confining them below the Kansas Territory meant that all they had to look forward to was the filling up of Texas and the arable portions of New Mexico; all else was Indian Territory or desert. Doing that would make them second-class citizens, and yet their duties under the 1824 and 1828 (later modified) tariff schedules supplied most of the revenue of the United States Government.

Likewise, freehold farmers feared being shut out, not so much from the West, but from the best farming lands in the Midwest and West, which slave-supported latifundism tended to preoccupy using the sort of land-grant gaming strategies the planters had employed in Texas. Planters had all their slaves apply for labores of land in their own names -- and then basically took them for themselves. That was how they were able to assemble large holdings on land-grant surveys in Texas, occupying the "peach bottoms" in the Trinity, Brazos, and Colorado River valleys. (The Rio Grande valley was already largely occupied.)

Since the competing interests were agrarian, and they were of the same religion, language, and ethnos (Lincoln was as Scots-Irish as most of the Confederate Army), the struggle was addressed along slave/freehold and sectional lines.

The question is whether Kansas-Nebraska was Washington blundering from above, or whether it reflected Southern efforts to make more of the Louisiana territory slave. If it was the former, chances of preventing war would have been greater. If the latter, Southern demands would eventually have come out in the open and created irreconcilable differences.

The idea of geographical division was still available until Dred Scott was promulgated, with its obiter dictum condemning the Missouri Compromise. Even in the 1858 debates, Lincoln referred to the idea of drawing a line, though he remarked that he wanted it drawn as far south as possible.

The basic problem was that slavery was legal, and you couldn't except parts of the country or any of the Territories from the operation of the Constitution. To get the Southern States into the Union, the Federalists had accepted slavery, and later their Whig/Republican successors went back on the deal, just as still later they would go back on the compromise of 1876 and the Rooseveltian coalition, expelling the South and repudiating their commitments freely offered when the benefit was plainly in view.

What is ironic is that, under popular sovereignty, Douglas put more territories in play than were disputed in 1854. If the line had been extended from 1820, and 1850, the "slave" states that would have resulted would have been Kansas and Colorado -- and perhaps not Colorado, which was already receiving a lot of immigration by Irish miners. Arable Utah was being preoccupied by Mormons from Illinois and New York. So all they were really talking about was Kansas, until Douglas hazarded the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which led directly to the Lecompton controversy and violence.

But the country would one day have more free states than slave states, thus opening the door to eventual abolition and the predominance of the free states over the slave.

As you pointed out to me once in another thread, this would have been unlikely given any prospective senatorial arithmetic and the senatorial rules of debate of the day. What is more likely is that the Southerners were dismayed by the prospect of majorities for tariff legislation such as the Morill Tariff, thus corroborating the argument that secession was certainly about tariffs and economic issues, as well as "slavery".

Canada has what Lincoln offered to the South in 1860, a guarantee that they werea "distinct society" with great autonomy in determining their internal affairs. But the moral debate over slavery couldn't be avoided.

If Lincoln offered any such arrangement to the South, I'm unaware of it. I am aware, OTOH, of several statements he made communicating his desire to take over the government without any compromises. That was almost his entire public message in the period between his election and inauguration, even as he was (tentatively) pursuing the Breckinridge amendment option and other private initiatives aimed at avoiding war -- none of which, by the way, he initiated. I think Lincoln had already opted for war. I further think he decided for a constitutional crisis and armed violence as far back as the 1856 Republican convention, but I can't prove it; it's just a suspicion based mostly on the fact that Herndon put down his pen!

As to the moral dimension, I've been of the opinion that the moral argument was introduced mainly to trump the constitutional argument. If the "supreme law of the land" is against you -- bring in God as a character witness!

Lincoln did that a lot, as our friend Walt has posted up.

[lentulusgracchus]

I don't agree with Adams about the punishment, but he does seem to be clearer-eyed about the consequences of Lee's choice than the general's celebrants and sycophants.

Lee has had a lot of celebrants, but the sycophants would seem to be restricted to a tight circle of less-competent ex-Confederate generals who used Lee's reputation, after Lee's death, to exculpate themselves. After all if the mighty Robert E. Lee had failed......

Confederate sympathizers act as though Virginia was a nation and the United States were not,...

No, 4ConservativeJustices and I have argued that Virginia was a People in the constitutional sense. All the States had Peoples, but by ineluctable logic my friend has demonstrated that while the States may be Peoples, the United States is not "a People", and that the idea of "a People" of All the United States is a Lincolnian fiction built on the Federalist desire for a unified central government no matter what (because it'd be better for business), and not on the Constitution and history.

[lentulusgracchus]

To continue my reply, which I've decided to split up a big, I cite further:

>...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.

The State is the fundamental polity of the United States. Counties are not. The People of a State have a stature in the Constitution and in sovereignty that subgroups don't. King George III cited the Peoples of the victorious States in the treaty that recognized our sovereignty, and he enumerated them one by one. That is the fundamental fact of political life in the history of the United States.

You are correct that there were substantial pockets of resistance within Confederate States strong enough to maintain themselves as "no-go" areas for Confederate sympathizers for the duration of the war. Elevating one of them to the status of a State was a constitutional joke perpetrated by Lincoln for reasons of future political expedience. It was a joke inasmuch as West Virginia's statehood never received the consent of the People of Virginia, but was established instead by naked force and political fiction.

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.

I'm afraid this is an exercise in nullifying a better argument by the operation of moral equivocation. Just saying that "state sovereignty" is "no improvement" over the Lincolnian fiction is teleological in that your statement relies on the failure of the Confederate cause and the destruction of the South for its cogency.

Furthermore, your formulation of the argument as "that the rights of states are more important than those of individuals, that states can command authority and compel obedience that the nation cannot" is one in which I do not recognize the principles I articulated at all.

I don't oppose the "rights of states" (which are asserted vis-a-vis the federal government and the other states) to the "rights of individuals". States have powers which they use to discharge their obligations, but the state's having a power does not nullify a right held by an individual.

Your second statement, that the States have power that the United States does not, is more correct; the Supreme Court agrees that there is indeed something called state sovereignty which the federal government cannot invade. But your phrasing of it makes it seem that I intended to say that the State is supreme over the federal government in all disputes, whereas I've always acknowledged the existence and competence of the Supremacy Clause, and so far as I know, every other poster on my side of the argument has done the same. Where we part company, and what I think attracts your animadversion, is over the fact that the People remain supreme, and that they were within their rights and powers to dissolve the Union after due deliberation, while sitting in convention as the People assembled.

That the federal government has powers the States don't is also true, the States having delegated certain of their powers to the United States Government; but the delegation isn't complete, and it is revocable. This is an arrangement which I think could disappoint only a totalist who desires clear and indisputable lines of subordination and unchecked power from the President's office down to some poor stiff pushing a broom on the night shift. Societies like that are for bees and ants and other invertebrates.

I'll return to your philippic against Jacksonian America and populism later, when time permits. It's an interesting thesis, and if you have the inclination, you might want to post it up as a civil-liberties, American history vanity thread. It's worth a discussion of its own.

Meanwhile, I trust you'll be watching for the PBS special on Huey Long, which is coming up very shortly.

[lentulusgracchus]

Pinging.....since I called your name especially, 4CJ.

[lentulusgracchus]

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.

The Senate was dominated by the DemonRats back then...which senators put up McPherson's name to the panel? I'd be interested, if you happen to know.

Latschar, of course, was appointed by DIRTXPOTUS.

[Polybius]

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.

You see, Walt, lentulusgracchus actually said something nice about you. ;-)

[Polybius]

There is no Southern bias at Gettysburg--none at all. What this panderer to Leftwing theory is attacking is the balanced view of an historic period, which arose after the passions of the War died down, and Americans North & South looked more objectively at their history. Now the leftwing academic theorists are taking over, and we are going to have historic revisionist propaganda of the worst order.

I have walked through the battlefields of the Seven Days, Manassas, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Spotsylvania, the Wilderness, Cold Harbor and Petersburg.

The only prominent Confederate memorials that I recall seeing were the Stonwall Jackson memorial at Manassas, the memorial to the Angel of Marie's Heights at Fredericksburg and the few modest Confederate memorials at Gettysburg. Everything else was either left uncommemorated or was a Union memorial.

[lentulusgracchus]

The only prominent Confederate memorials that I recall seeing were the Stonwall Jackson memorial at Manassas,...

There is a dramatic Confederate monument at Shiloh, and the Virginia and North Carolina monuments at Gettysburg are very good examples, but rather more modern than the Union monuments, which were put up during the Gilded Age and reflect French and Roman values. An excellent example of ornateness in a monument is the Illinois state monument at Vicksburg, which is a scaled-down reproduction of the Pantheon. I've been inside it, and it's impressive. It also occupies a choice location in the Union lines and can be seen from a number of vantage points along the lines.

I was very disppointed by the Texas monument at Gettysburg, which was a simple granite slab put up during the heyday of the WPA. I had an idea to suggest slabbing the existing monument down the middle, separating the front from the back, recarving the inscription in a more classical style (it's done in a muted Art Deco style, IIRC), and setting it into a big dado supporting a tall, classical column done in the same salmon-pink Llano Uplift granite as the present monument, with a capital of a certain blindingly-white sucrosic dolomite I know about from Oklahoma, topped by a statue of a Texas Brigade soldier.

But Dubya couldn't take down traces of the Confederacy in Texas fast enough. One letter -- one letter -- from the head of the Texas NAACP, and the plaques he was complaining about disappeared overnight. Literally in the middle of the night. In the middle of the night. God, that is ignominious. Crawling on his belly like a reptile, for a local chapterhouse of some race-baiting NGO.

[WhiskeyPapa]

That's really treason. And Lee knew it.

Read the Constitution, Wlat.

The Constitution says, "Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort."

Lee clearly did that before his resignation was accepted. You don't think that a big deal, fine. Others may differ on it.

"According to paragraph 24 of the Regulations of the Unted States Army, "No officer will be considered out of service on the tender of his resignation, until after it shall have been duly accepted by the proper authority." Paragraph 28 states that "in time of war, or with an army in the field, resignations shall take effect within thirty days from the date of the order of acceptance." But Lee disregarded these restrictions. Between the posting of his resignation on April 20 and its acceptance on April 25, Lee drew his sword with remarkable alacrity."

-- "Lee Considered" p. 39 by Alan Nolan

"April 20, the day that Lee wrote and dispatched his resignation, was a Saturday. On the evening of the same day, he received the initial communication from Judge Robertson, Governor Letcher's representative, requesting an interview to take place on Sunday, April 21. Lee responded at once, setting the meeting for Sunday in Alexandria. Robertson did not appear on Sunday but that night Lee received an explanation from Robertson and an invitation, in the name of the governor, to go to Richmond for a conference with the governor. Lee again responded at once, saying that he would meet Robertson the next day, April 22, in Alexandria, in time to travel vrith him to Richmond. The two men traveled together on April 23 to Richmond, where Lee was offered and accepted the Virginia commission and, on the same date, was confirmed by the convention. Having been posted on the twentieth, Lee's resignation was not on the twenty-second a public document. Indeed, as Lee conferred with the governor of Virginia, accepted Virginia's commission, and won confirmation from the convention, the War Department of the United States was receiving the resignation and processing it so that it could be accepted on April. 25...Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, whose well-knovm "corner- stone speech" of March 1861 had proclaimed that the Confederacy's foundation rested on the great truth of black slavery, had been appointed by President Davis as special commissioner to Virginia on April 19, 1861, the day before Lee sent in his resignation from the United States Army. Governor Letcher had previously advised Davis of the desire of Virginia to enter into a defensive and offensive alliance vrith the Confederacy. Dispatched to Richmond, Stephens was instructed by Davis to be receptive to the alliance and to negotiate with Virginia on the premise of that state's becoming a part of the Confederacy. Stephens arrived in Richmond on April 32 and was present during part of the activity looking toward Lee's appointment on that day. Also on April 22 Virginia's secretary of state sent a communication to Jefferson Davis staling, "I am directed by the Governor to inform you that Colonel Lee is here. The Governor has sent in his nomination as commander of the land and naval forces of Virginia, with rank of major- general. Nomination will be confirmed. "Promptly after his confirmation by the convention, Lee met with Stephens and agreed that Virginia should join the Confederacy. "

Ibid pp. 41-42

Lee clearly violated the regulations of the United States Army in meeting with secessionist leaders, who were in the process of levying war on the United States.

The surrender terms that General Grant allowed meant that Lee would not be tried for treason, but there is no doubt that he did commit treason against the United States, whether convicted or not.

As the txt above shows, Lee received a communication from the secessionists on April 20, thuis begging the question of whether or not he had been in communication with them even before he posted his resignation.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

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.

No state has ever been out of the Union. The Supreme Court ruled, further, that all acts and ordinances of secession were null and void.

Had there been enough support for such in the country after Appomattox, there is no doubt that Lee and many others would have met the same fate as the four plotters in the assassination of President Lincoln. His firm refusal to even consider treason trials helped to save the rebel leaders.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

I don't retract any of that.

Refusal to alter one's views in the face of evidence and argument is called "bigotry".

I haven't seen any evidence or argument that President Bush -didn't- stumble into a major war in the Gulf, and I've seen nothing to refute the idea that it was his humiliation at our hands that has caused Saddam Hussein to sponsor the WTC bombing in 1993, an attempt to assassinate former Pres. Bush in 1993, probably some connenction with the bombing of the Murrah building in 1995 and more than likely some connection with 9/11. And I've seen nothing to suggest he would have undertaken such sponsorship -except- for his being humiliated at our hands.

As usual, you are pushing what "everybody knows" instead of a fact based interpretation.

Walt

[mac_truck]

James McPherson really is a Marxist, and it shows in his interests, in his associations, and in his historiographical POV.

I've read the assertion by GOPCap. To me what it boils down to is McPherson took a position (against impeachment) in the Clinton matter, after that he was interviewed (as a historian) several times by two left-wing orgainzations, and he made some critical statements about confederate symbols in state flags. This hardly makes him a marxist, in fact it probably puts him about in the main-stream of the contemporary American political spectrum.

As far as guilt by association goes, how do you feel about this symbol prominently being used for fund raising by the KKK?

[rustbucket]

No state has ever been out of the Union.

If, according to your argument, no state has ever been out of the Union, then the Constitution must have still applied to the states that seceded. Was the power to free slaves in seceded states delegated to the Executive somewhere in the Constitution or was Lincoln simply running roughshod over the Constitution again with the Emancipation Proclamation?

[WhiskeyPapa]

No state has ever been out of the Union.

If, according to your argument, no state has ever been out of the Union, then the Constitution must have still applied to the states that seceded. Was the power to free slaves in seceded states delegated to the Executive somewhere in the Constitution or was Lincoln simply running roughshod over the Constitution again with the Emancipation Proclamation?

"You dislike the emancipation proclamation; and perhaps, would have it retracted. You say it is unconstitutional--I think differently. I think the Constitution invests the commander in chief with the law of war, in time of war. The most that can be said, if so much, is, that slaves are property. Is there--has there ever been--any question that by the law of war, property, both of enemies and friends, may be taken when needed? And is it not needed whenever taking it helps us, or hurts the enemy?

....but the proclamation, as law, either is valid, or it is not valid. If it is not valid, it needs no retraction. If it is valid, it can not be retracted, any more than the dead can be brought to life....The war has certainly progressed as favorably for us, since the issue of the proclamation as before. I know as fully as one can know the opinions of others that some of the commanders of our armies in the field who have given us some of our most important successes, believe the emancipation policy and the use of colored troops, constitute the heaviest blow yet dealt the rebellion, and that at least one of those important successes could not have been achieved when it was but for the aid of black soldiers....I submit these opinions as being entitled to some weight against the objections, often urged, that emancipation, and arming the blacks, are unwise as military measures, and were not adopted, as such, in good faith. You say you will not fight to free negroes. Some of them seem willing to fight for you; but no matter. Fight you then, exclusively to save the Union."

A. Lincoln, 8/23/63

President Lincoln invoked the war power of the president in issuing the EP. This is backed up by the Supreme Court:

"5. A state of actual war may exist without any formal declaration of it by either party; and this is true of both a civil and a foreign war.

6. A civil war exists, and may be prosecuted on the same footing as if those opposing the Government were foreign invaders, whenever the regular course of justice is interrupted by revolt, rebellion, or insurrection, so that the Courts cannot be kept open.

7. The present civil war between the United States and the so-called Confederate States, has such character and magnitude as to give the United States the same rights and powers which they might exercise in the case of a national or foreign war; and they have, therefore, the right jure bello to institute a blockade of any ports in possession of the rebellious States.

8. The proclamation of blockade by the President is of itself conclusive evidence that a state of war existed, which demanded and authorized [***6] recourse to such a measure.

9. All persons residing within the territory occupied by the hostile party in this contest, are liable to be treated as enemies, though not foreigners."

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

67 U.S. 635; 17 L. Ed. 459; 1862 U.S. LEXIS 282; 2 Black 635

DECEMBER, 1862, Term

The secessionists didn't read the Constitution very carefully.

Walt

[rustbucket]

President Lincoln invoked the war power of the president in issuing the EP. This is backed up by the Supreme Court

I'm sorry, Walt, but I don't see from the Supreme Court items you listed a justification for Lincoln's exceeding the Constitutionally delegated powers of the Executive. Are you arguing that in times of war a president can do anything he wants?

The Constitution says the president is commander of the army, navy, and militia. It does not delegate to him the power to free slaves. In fact, I though Lincoln argued earlier that he did not have the authority to free slaves.

[rustbucket]

Interesting argument Lincoln makes about property. I'll have to think about it. Thanks.

[Non-Sequitur]

according to the official NPS information at Camp Sumpter, numerous GUARDS starved to death,too.

Oh please, you want us to believe that the rest of the troops bravely stood their posts while their comrades dropped dead of starvation? If that had actually happened you wouldn't have had a single guard on the wall.

[Non-Sequitur]

Even Abe Lincoln, "the great emancipator" said if he could preserve the union without freeing one slave he would do so. ....... Does that tell you anything?

Among other things it tells me that you haven't bothered to read the entire quote.

Slavery was brought to the fore during this war by lincoln by using the E.P. as a political tool only!

It wad brought to the fore by Davis and the other southern leaders and the single most important reason for their rebellion.

[Non-Sequitur]

at least no yankee POWs were MURDERED in cold blood by the CSA.

You don't call deliberately starving men to death murder? It may not be as imaginative as shooting in the back of the head or drowning but it is more cost effective.

you & i have been over this numerous times. when are you going to get the message that the lincolnites were MASS KILLERS, & WAR CRIMINALS? nothing more, nothing less.

As soon as you provide evidence to support your wild-ass claims.