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

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.

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.

Thanks for the posts, Non-Sequitur, but I'm afraid most of your quotes in the post above cite multiple or other reasons for the dissolution of the Union, than your favored liberal theory that the South did everything, and everything the South did, was always about Negro captivity, or slavery, or hanging Negroes, or hanging Negroes and setting them on fire.

You're just waving the bloody shirt as usual, and you've got some Clinton appointees waving it for you at the Park Service.

A situation which needs remediation, even as it is my opportunity to perform a public service by remediating your posts here.

Folks, read his post very carefully. You'll see that his quotes support his contention only sporadically -- and these are Confederate orators he is quoting.

The immediate cause of the War was secession, prompted by abolition, rooted in the notion of Federalism. Attempts to wed the competing notions of federalism and state sovereignty had failed, and the course of war was cast.

The most immediate cause of secession was the election of Abraham Lincoln on a platform that Southerners expected to be an engine for ruining the South economically, and permanently changing the relationship of the federal government to the States, in order to cement and entrench Lincoln's factional victory.

Southerners feared that Lincoln, in possession of the federal government, would use the Supremacy Clause to abrogate the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, and the rights of the States. Which is about what has happened.

If you look at Non-Sequitur's long post of quotations from Southern secession speeches to you, you will see those concerns reflected there, as much as, or even more than, any solicitude for slavery per se, or even its economic ramifications.

Remember that Marxists are determinists, and economic determinists in particular. That is one reason that pushing the line that "it was about slavery and nothing else" comes so easily to them. It is convenient to their political purpose of building a Marxist superstate, and consonant with their own indoctrination by senior Marxists.

Do you see this claim as true? I've visited a half-dozen or so battlefields including Gettysburg and thought the presentations factual with no particular bias. I'm interested in your view.

I've visted several Civil War battlefields, from Pennsylvania to Arkansas. The Park Service generally has left the politics out of their materials and monuments, and concentrated on the military history of the place.

At Gettysburg, the political element enters because Lincoln chose that place and that moment to articulate his new theory of government and his new theme for why the war should be persevered in.

The idea that we are supposed to rejoice over the dead because they were wrong and bad, as determined by today's politicians ex post facto, is Orwellian in its creepiness and its repugnance.

I agree with your assessment of Democrat strategy. They also see the South lost to them unless they can drive a wedge between multigenerational Southerners whose parents and grandparents were conservative Democrats and recently arrived Southerners whose forebearers were Republican for generations. Hence the early mention of the flag issue.

In terror of being called a racist by people who they would disdain on all other issues and since they no longer hold office, you see many on this forum who now are anxious to toss Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms over the side - in the fantasy of picking up a handful of black votes. I see it as possibly succeeding unless the Democrats overplay their hand. Plenty of hints of that too. Looks like pretty soon anyone who voted against anything even vaguely connected with civil rights and for whatever reason will be pitched over the side too, principle be damned. It's now almost totally forgotten that one of the reasons for white Southerners abandoning the Democratic Party in the'60s was the national party's strong anti-military stance.

The smart thing to do - and I doubt his handlers will allow it - is for Bush, as a regional transplant himself, to talk about the courage it took for Southerners like Trent Lott to change parties early in the realignment. This would point out that America is forward looking, that we play the game hard, then shake hands and move on. The 'R' word was a dirty word for generations of white Southerners. As rational actors, this generation acted in their own self-interest and gravitated to and influenced the Republican Party. Bush should seize the opportunity to invite rational blacks to do the same.

On the National Park Service: this article conveniently forgot to mention the names of the three "historians" on its advisory panel:

Eric Foner, known as 'Eric the Red.' His father and uncle were Communists as is he. You might have seen his name as part of the conspiracy to withhold relevant facts from the Bancroft Prize investigation.

James McPherson, another socialist. Here’s what McPherson said in an interview on the World Socialists Website (a venue he appeared on numerous times) about news coverage on the Bosnia situation: I get most of what I know out of the New York Times, and the Times is generally more balanced and recognizes more of the complexities of the situation probably more than some of the other popular media.

McPherson also stated the Clintomn impeachment was a personal vendetta.

Nina Silber received all three of her academic degrees from UC Berkeley. Virtually every one of her published works is along the lines of women's role in the Civil War.

And let's not forget that the Park Service was ordered to undertake this task - by a group with a Jessee Jackson, Jr. staffer riding herd. It was his office specifically insisting on this approach. Smells bad, huh, just by association. So, what do we have then, a committee composed of two socialists and a libber. Any surprise they would issue a report along the lines stated in the article? Not to me.

Wait until they "update" the Yorktown battlefield park. There they can demonstrate that since Britain abolished slavery early in the 19th Century, that we should have lost the Revolution since we were fighting for slavery.

On Gettysburg visitation - how many repeat visitors are interested in the military aspects rather than the social interpretation? How many blacks go to non-battle related national parks?

As it should be.

"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.

Fine. Then that interpretative center should be built in Washington, D.C. on the grounds of the U.S. Congress where those political battles were fought prior to the start of the war.

To imply that every Southern soldier was fighting to keep slavery and every Union soldier was fighting to free slaves is Politically Correct historical revisionism.

The Northern battle cry was "Save the Union".

Considering that Julia Dent Grant owned slaves throughout the entire war and brought them with her when she went to visit her husband U.S. Grant in his various camps, maybe Park Superintendent Latschar would care to explain why, exactly, Robert E. Lee and U.S. Grant faced in other in battle.

After all, Lee had freed the slaves he had inherited long before the Civil War began. U. S. Grant's wife had personal slaves all during the war, which were not freed until the 13th Amendment was enacted.

Ok, as a teacher of high school history, I have to weigh in here. Both sides have points. Let's go through them one by one.

1) Slavery was a major, though not the only, issue in the war. The series of compromises trying to keep the balance of slave states and free states was doomed to die as it was clear that most of the western states were obviously going to come in as free states and upset the balance in the Senate. It was a time bomb waiting to go off.

2) The South and the North/West had different ideas of what Federalism would be like under the Constitution. Many southern states bought into Federalism largely because of Virginian Washington's influence, and the series of Virginian presidents helped ease their fears. But even slaveholding Andrew Jackson went toe-to-toe with Calhoun over nullification, an early test of whether the South had to submit to the North's interpretation of federalism.

3) Regional issues had been an issue going back to the debate over the Declaration of Independence. Short periods of truce during the War of 1812 and the Mexican War were unable to survive the growing distrust between the regions going all the way back to the defeat of Clay's American system, which left the South without a federal infrastructure building program. Tariffs which engorged Northern textile manufacturers and raised costs in the South together with open abolitionism fed the Southern desire to withdraw from the union. The final nails in the coffin were the polarizing events of the death of the Missouri Compromise, the Dred Scott decision, and most importantly, the Brown raid's effect on the intensity of training in the Southern militias.

4) Basically, the Civil War established that with this union, there is no divorce. That seemed unreasonable to the South, and obviously still does to many Freepers, but it's a fact. I am so grateful that the Rebellion failed, as I value the contributions the South makes to this country. But to ignore the substantial importance of the issue of slavery on the war is to make the same mistake of saying that it was the whole reason for it.

In the end, it was about more than slavery...but it also probably does not happen without it. Wars require passion. 9/11 has given us the passion to eliminate Saddam. The stories around the Rape of Kuwait and the memory of gas lines and fear of $100 oil fed the Gulf war (along with memories of the ignominy of Vietnam, the need to "win one", and the shame of the Iranian hostage crisis).

The Civil War was fought by most Union soldiers to preserve the Union. Some had abolitionist sympathies, but weren't thinking of them as they fought and died. They felt they were fighting to preserve the country their ancestors had fought and died for in the War of Independence.

Most Southern soldiers felt they were fighting because the Union would not let them have their "divorce."

Later in the war, Lincoln made it more of a conflict over slavery, ostensibly timing the Emancipation Proclamation in order to deflect British and French recognition of the Confederacy.

It is easy to see why freepers fight so much over the causes and issues of the Civil War as we continue to struggle over these issues today. I would argue that we should appreciate both sides interpretation of their rights under the Constitution, but that the issues have been decided and with enough blood. The union remains. The struggle of dual federalism continues, and likely will forever. But there should be no disputing that the nation was better served by keeping the union together, it is simply up to us, the "posterity", to keep up a vigilance over the rights fought for in all American wars, because we have the kind of government we deserve, since we choose them. Good or bad.

NEXT DEBATER PLEASE...!

>>I'm sorry, but your opinion differs with the leaders of the southern rebellion. They made it pretty clear that slavery and it's fate was first and foremost in their minds when they rebelled.<<

I think what is missing in this disscusion is why the average Confederate soldier fought so hard. He had no plantation, no slaves, and was poor. People 140 years ago were quite different than we are today. I guess they just felt that their turf was being invaded and they just wanted to defend their kin folk.
I have no Southern ties but my Uncle who had seen the worst in WW2 from 1943 till the end would say when replacements were needed he'd hope for farmboys or southerners because they knew how to handle firearms and live outdoors (my uncle was a city boy from St. Louis )
This tells me southerners have foughten hard for this country and should not be belittled.
In 2002 I would think we'd be more concerned about the enemies of today.

....the leaders of the southern rebellion..... made it pretty clear that slavery and it's fate was first and foremost in their minds when they rebelled.

All the fire-eaters, on both sides of the slavery debate, had a hand in starting this tragic conflict.

Whether or not Southern politicians decided on seccession because of slavery, tarriffs or what end of a soft boiled egg should be opened, the botttom line was that young men had to go out and settle the matter on the battlefield.

Most of those young men, whether from the North or South, did not leave their homes and families to defend or abolish a social institution that had existed throughout History since way before the birth of Christ right up to their present day.

Most of the young men left their home to fight for their country. The Southern young men viewed "their country" as the South. The Northern young men viewed "their country" as the Union.

Now, for the sake of Political Correctness or to change the demographics of Gettysburg Park visitors, the motives of most of the young men that fought and died on that battlefield is going through a process of historical revision and the motives of almost half of the young men that fought and died on that battlefield is going through a process of demonization.

Politicains drove those young men to kill each other and now politicians are playing politics on their graves.

That is wrong.

Thanks for the posts, Non-Sequitur, but I'm afraid most of your quotes in the post above cite multiple or other reasons for the dissolution of the Union, than your favored liberal theory that the South did everything, and everything the South did, was always about Negro captivity, or slavery, or hanging Negroes, or hanging Negroes and setting them on fire.

"In simple words rarely heard in the United States Senate, Wigfall of Texas had said: "I am a plain, blunt-spoken man. We say that man has a right to property in man. We say that slaves are our property. We say that it is the duty of every government to protect its property everywhere. If you wish to settle this matter, declare that slaves are property, and like all other property entitled to be protected in every quarter of the globe, on land and sea, Say that to us, and then the difficulty is settled." Jefferson Davis was saying, "Slave property is the only private property in the United States specifically recognized in the Constitution and pro- tected by it."

...Edwin A. Pollard of Virginia had just published "Black Diamonds," calling for the African slave trade to be made lawful again; then negroes fresh from the jungles could be sold in southern seaports at $ioo.oo to $150.00 at-head. "The poor man might then hope to own a negro; the prices of labor would then be in his reach; he would be a small farmer revolutionizing the character of agriculture in the South; he would at once step up to a respectable station in the social system of the South; and with this he would acquire a practical and dear interest in the general institution of slavery that would constitute its best protection both at home and abroad. He would no longer be a miserable, nondescript cumberer of the soil, scratching the land here and there for a subsistence, living from band to mouth) or trespassing along the borders of the possessions of the large proprietors. He would be a proprietor himself. He would no longer be the scorn and sport of 'gentlemen of color' who parade their superiority, rub their well-stuffed black skins, and thank God they are not as he. Of all things I cannot bear to see negro slaves, affect superiority over the poor, needy, unsophisticated whites, who form a terribly large proportion of the population of the South."

Pollard could vision steps and advances "toward the rearing of that great Southern Empire, whose seat is eventually to be in Central America, and whose boundaries are to enclose the Gulf of Mexico." Ahead were "magnificent fields of romance" for the South, as he saw its future. "It is an empire founded on military ideas; representing the noble peculiarities of southern civilization; including within its limits the isthmuses of America and the regenerated West Indies; having control of the two dominant staples of the world's commerce—cotton and sugar; possessing the highways of the world's commerce; surpassing all empires of the world's ages in the strength of its geographical position."

Philadelphia newspapers quoted a speech by Senator Herschel V. Johnson of Georgia in their city. "We believe that capital should own labor; is there any doubt that there must be a laboring class everywhere? In all countries and under every form of social organization there must be a laboring class -- a class of men who get their living from the sweat of their brow; and then there must be another class that controls and directs the capital of the country. He pleaded: "Slave property stands upon the same footing as all other descriptions of property."

--"Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II, Prairie Years, by Carl Sandburg pp.217-221

The election of Lincoln showed that slavery was not safe in the Union.

The slave power through down Old Glory to protect slavery.

Walt

No it didn't.

"Lincoln said at Springfield on June 18 that the condition of the Negroes in the United States had deteriorated sharply since the era of the fathers, "and their ultimate destiny has never appeared so hopeless as in the last three or four years"

And yet harshness was no real part of the temper of Americans of the South, who differed no whit from Americans of the North. The main excitant impulse was fear, and they wanted to protect the institution, not to penalize the individual. It was because the free Negro menaced the institution, because manumission undermined it, because all self-help systems for the slave corroded It, that pro- slavery men urged new legislation. Their object was not to surround slavery with an atmosphere of terror. It was to shore up an institution built on quick- sand and battered bv all the forces of world sentiment and emergent industrialism.

Ruffin was personally the kindliest of masters. The unhappy fact was that it had become impossible to safeguard slavery without brutal violence to countless individuals; either the institution had to be given up, or the brutality committed.

The legislators of Louisiana and Arkansas, of Alabama and Georgia, with humane men like Ruffin and the Eastern Shore planters of Maryland, had faced this alternative. They had chosen the institution. The Richmond Examiner stated their choice in unflinching language:

It is all an hallucination to suppose that we are ever going to get rid of slavery, or that it will ever be desirable to do so. It is a thing that we cannot do without;that is righteous, profitable, and permanent, and that belongs to Southern society as inherently, intrinsically, and durably as the white race itself. Southern men should act as if the canopy of heaven were inscribed with a covenant, in letters of fire, that the negro is here, and here forever—is our property, and ours forever—is never to be emancipated—is to be kept hard at work and in rigid subjection all his days.

This has the ring of the Richmond publicise Fitzhugh, and would have been repudiated by many Southerners. But Jefferson Davis said, July 6, 1859, "There is not probably an intelligent mind among our own citizens who doubts either the moral or the legal right of the institution of African slavery." Senator A. G. ' Brown said September 4, 1858, that he wanted Cuban, Mexican, and Central American territory for slavery; "I would spread the blessings of slavery . . . to the uttermost ends of the earth." Such utterances treated slavery as permanent, and assumed that it must be defended at every point."

-- "The Coming Fury" by Bruce Catton

The slave power COULD have given up slavery -- that was the sense of the time. But they wanted to go backwards, not forwards.

And the war came.

Walt

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