Rewriting history alert!
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.
My guess is you'll find this true for most war memorials/museums or whatever. Generally speaking, it's more of an interest for men than women.
In 1998, he invited three prominent historians to examine the site. Their conclusion: that Gettysburg's interpretive programs had a "pervasive southern sympathy."
Hmmmm, any guesses as to how many of these "prominent historians" are 1) northerners or 2) liberal academic-weenies or 3) northern, liberal academic-weenies??
You're overlooking the fact that slavery was abolished in the District of Columbia on April 16, 1862, almost exactly three years before Lincoln was murdered. How could the White House be staffed with slaves when owning them was illegal?
During the 70's there was a push for the military commissaries to get more "soul food" into the commissaries to appease the blacks and make them more happy. The truth? There was a whole aisle dedicated to "Soul food" and the only ones that bought the food there were us white folks that were reared on the staple of poor people. The black military families after all of their griping went and bought the other food. After about of year of the "soul food" aisle, the commissary decided that it was a loser and much of the frozen food there had to be condemned and the idea was scrapped. I think this is what is going to happen to Gettysburg, after all of the poor visitation because of a wayward emphasis, the park will be diminished and everything significant will be either sold off or trashed.
Except in this case. Your claim is false.
Except in this case. Your claim is false.
Except in this case. Your claim is false.
Rewriting history alert!
However, the issue of states' rights predates that of slavery by several decades. As early as the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania, the Alien and Sedition Acts of the late 18th century, and Tariff of Abominations in the 1820's, the collision between Federalists and Anti-federalists pointed out an ideological schism that would finally sunder the nation. That it was made manifest in the issue of slavery doesn't mean that that issue DEFINED it. 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.
Thank you for an enlightening discussion, and for giving me cause to dust off some forlorn but beloved reference materials.
Look, you don't have to be on either side of the FR north vs. south wars to know that battlefields should be about the battles, and not about anyone's interpretation of history.
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