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.
I think the deaths of the 600 happened in a concentrated fashion when their rations were cut to one-quarter prison rations after January 1, 1865. Also, only about half the men had a blanket, so exposure was severe (there was ice and snow that winter).
A Federal medical inspection team appeared in early February 1865, which probably saved the day for the prisoners. The medical team was reportedly shocked and horified at the condition of the prisoners. "One stated that he would not have believed a Federal officer guilty of such horrible brutality if he had not seen it themselves. One stated that in all his experience he had never seen a place so horrible or known of men being treated with such brutality."(Joslyn, pg 219)
The medical inspection only happened because General Foster, who had been dictating the treatment of the prisoners, had been replaced. Once Foster was gone, the kindly Federal colonel in direct charge of the prisoners immediately called in the medical inspection team. The rations then improved about mid-February. In March when they were moved, less than half of the prisoners could walk. The prisoners had had low and poor quality rations in 1864, but they were only on the severely restricted rations about 40 days, in the January-February 1865 time period.
Senator Henderson of Kansas criticized Foster's treatment of the prisoners: "...never would I consent to the slow system of destroying live by starvation or by cruelty in any form."
Please don't apologize for me. It's as rude as your insult is empty.
If you had followed the CW threads, you would know that this conversation has been going on for some time, and that outraged blushes to the effect that "I wasn't talking to you" are null and void in an open forum. Anyone who wants a private chat knows to go elsewhere. Anyone is free to comment on any post made to this thread. If you doubt that and want to check the guidelines for posting "private" posts "just for Person X", try the Help link on the home page and look under "Posting Replies". You won't find any.
If you have a further beef you would like to push with me about something I've posted, please feel free to invite me to "the Alley" to tell me how you really feel. I'll be all ears. Well, mostly ears -- I'll be sure to wear my culottes.
First of all, thank you for your reply.
I didn't mean to provoke a scholarly debate on the semantics of totality as the term is applied to warfare, but only to refer to the throwback to the religious wars that marked the March to the Sea and the destruction of the Shenandoah Valley, with their gratuitous burning and salting of the earth and their willful sundering of the restraints that the "rules of war" had attempted, in the spirit of the Spartan poet Tyrtaeus and the medieval rules of heraldry, to impose on the most uncivil of all human activities.
I don't think you would refer to it in such measured tones if that kind of punishment were on offer for the part of the country you happen to live in.
What makes so much of the lost cause "romantic" was the myth of pure, suffering, victimized Southern nobility set upon by evil Yankees. And it's particularly romantic and unrealistic to talk of "lost freedom" in the context of the Confederacy.
Well, I wasn't referring to the loss of freedoms that had been enjoyed under the Confederacy, which was a war regime and, as our friends have been kind enough to point out repeatedly, very often driven to resort to measures of conscription that belied the ideals held up in various secession documents. Rather, the fair point of reference is to the status quo ante in the antebellum era. This was the largely Jacksonian society (west of the Appalachians, certainly moreso than east of them) that DeTocqueville described.
...Lost freedom has to be weighed against lost subjugation.
I cannot imagine what you are talking about. Considering the lot and status in overall society of the average American citizen in the agrarian, antebellum United States with that of his subordinated, time-clocked, ass-kicked, employer-domineered, urbanized, union-busted, disarmed, racked-and-tenement-stacked fin-de-siecle successor, I am surprised that there is not an entire literature, in American historiography, given to jeremiads about the suddenness and completeness of the Fall of the Common Man and his miraculous conversion from the peer of kings to incipient Morlock.
There is often a cost to achievement in broken human relationships, but I certainly don't see it as any stronger on one side than the other.
An acquaintance of mine, an electrical engineer functioning at the margins of society, once opined that the bulk of history has been written by neurotics and psychotics. He would agree with your line quoted above. His point was to belittle "normality" by pointing to the splash that more dramatic personalities and styles make in the pages of history. And I should add that he credited such broken personalities (Lyndon Johnson would be a good example) with most of the "progress" in human history.
By way of rejoinder, I would repair to the movies. One of my favorite movie lines, from a SNL skit movie (Ghostbusters II), expresses the theatricality of this type pretty well:
"Atop a mountain of skulls, I ruled from a throne of blood!!"
To which we might reply, well, good for you, Tiger! Did they spell your name right in the papers?
William F. Buckley, on the other hand, commended the example of the Swiss, most of whose citizens, he told us, would be embarrassed by a request to name the last five presidents of their country.
Men like that wouldn't lead an army against their neighbors. But George Thomas and Admiral Farragut did, and while they may have exhibited exemplary behavior in their tents and on their quarterdecks, the fact remains that they cast their lot with a government against their People. I still prefer Bobby Lee's choice as the more rational, and the more moral.
Open forum, Walt.
I am sorry if the fact.... not established by you, so why should I buy it, when your quotes contradict themselves?...... that Lee was a supporter of slavery offends you.
The facts don't offend me. Your flamingly partisan stance and overtaxation of quotations in extenso to corroborate vicious claims of moral degeneracy against men whose boots you couldn't shine, like the comments in your #305, offend me. You do this aw-shucks jive about "I just cite the clear record", when you do nothing of the sort, and I'll just keep on pointing it out.
We've discussed all this on another thread. Or more to the point, I stripped your calumny naked, and drove it up and down the street with a horsewhip. You lost. On merit. Do you want a rematch?
The American ambassador to Great Britain, James Buchanan, was as you pointed out prosecuting a policy of late-Jacksonian Democrat Franklin Pierce. Both were Northern Democrats (Buchanan was Scots-Irish from Pennsylvania Dutch country and had been a Federalist early in his career; Pierce was a New Hampshireman) and represented the type of National Democrat with whom Stephen Douglas tried to work the South to remain in the Union.
The Ostend Manifesto was indeed Pierce's initiative, and its failure helped seal his rejection for renomination in 1856 -- although the Democrats nominated Buchanan instead as a "compromise" candidate acceptable to the South. Why Ostend Manifesto co-author Buchanan should have been acceptable when his document had not been, is one of those subjects for PhD candidates.
And yes, the main outcry against the Manifesto and annexation of Cuba came from abolitionists and, more significantly, from free-soil western Whigs, who wanted no extension of latifundism and its economies of scale that were looking down the freehold farmer's throat.
Which threat to his neighbors summoned Abraham Lincoln.
This was interesting.
"Why was the Army of Northern Virginia so frequently ill-provisioned, indeed sometimes on quarter rations, while operating in fairly close vicinity to well-stocked Confederate supply depots in the Richmond area. One would think that any competent army commander, and Lee certainly fitted that description in most respects, would see it as his primary responsibility and duty to cut through or bypass any ineffective bureaucratic supply system in such a situation. Army commanders through the ages have met such situations by a variety of emergency strategies, from coercive foraging to the setting up of soldier-run vegetable gardens, swineyards, leather tanneries, shoe repair shops, etc.
Lee did not, and his army was frequently the most poorly supplied of all Confederate armies, a factor which contributed to his constant need to move his army for subsistence rather than military purposes -- and to his army's high AWOL rate. Yet he and his staff never took an active role in procuring and transporting the necessary food and other materials needed to supply his troops when the Confederate quartermaster and subsistence bureaus didn't deliver.
WHY?
A possible answer to this question may be found in Gerald Northrop Moore's CONFEDERATE COMMISSARY GENERAL: LUCIUS BELLINGER NORTHROP AND THE SUBSISTENCE BUREAU OF THE SOUTHERN ARMY (Shippensburg, PA: White Mane Publishing Company, 1996). Moore cited Douglas Southall Freeman's analysis in R. E. LEE that one of the weaknesses in Lee's training for plantation or military management was his "lack of any detailed knowledge of the service of supply", a menial function normally shunned by plantation society and relegated to plantation overseers and military clerks. Moore then buttressed this line of reasoning by referencing a communication from Northrop to Lee (OR ser. I, vol. 51, pt. 2, 738) in which Northrop angily referred to a statement Lee had made previously during the hungry winter of 1862-3 that he (Lee) had "no responsibility for feeding his troops." Lee held stubbornly to this opinion, even to the extent of repeatedly refusing to lend ex-railroader soldiers to the effort to repair rail communications between Confederate supply depots and the food-short ANV winter quarters, or to assign army wagons to temporary supply-hauling duty in the absence of railroad repairs.
Is this a true picture? Did Lee have a legitimate reason to dodge responsibility for this major factor in assuring the health and military efficiency of his troops? Or did the problem merely illustrate Thomas Sowell's concept of "negative human capital": those cultural attitudes and practices that tend to introduce inefficiencies into the human activities (including economic and military) of a particular society?
That is the conventional wisdom on the matter. However, the example in my previous post was a situation where Northrop had managed to stock the supply depots with adequate supplies, but Lee's mistaken priorities and stubbornness were the reason the food did not reach the ANV. This was not an isolated case, but an example of a pattern. As to the "dramatic improvement" in the supply situation after Jeff Davis booted Northrup as Commissary General, much of that improvement had its origins in last-minute changes to uncoordinated and inefficient purchasing, impressment and railroad policies that had long been sought, unsuccessfully, by Northrup. An additional factor in the sudden improvement was the release in 1865 of large food stocks held in reserve by the Confederate Nitre and Mining Bureau, which St. John, ex-Chief of the Nitre Bureau and Northrup's successor as Commissary General, had accumulated in 1864 BY OFFERING HIGHER PRICES IN COMPETITION WITH NORTHRUP'S SUBSISTENCE BUREAU and subsequently withheld from Lee's army while Northrup was in the saddle. Now, these are some of the many clownish aspects of the Confederate experience, but Lee saw it all. Why didn't he respond in an effective manner with direct action?
C'mon, guys. Don't you think it odd that Lee would wash his hands of responsibility for assuring, ASSURING, that his troops got adequate food? Wasn't that his primary duty to his men and his country (Virginia)?
During the first month of 1864, Lee penned the following to Jefferson Davis (Document # 602 of Dowdy & Manhurin's THE WARTIME PAPERS OF ROBERT E. LEE): " We are now issuing to the troops a fourth of a pound of salt meat & have only three days supply ..... I can learn of no supply of meat on the road to the army, & fear I shall be unable to retain it in the field." Davis advised him that the emrergency justified impressment -- advice which was ignored. At the time Lee wrote, the standard daily Union army meat ration was one and a fourth pound of salt or fresh beef. J. E. Johnston reported that month from Dalton that his men had only 8 day's rations in reserve and Longstreet complained from East Tennessee that the lack of supplies in his area precluded the possibility of offensive action. Yet, in the midst of this critical food shortage, that same month, Mary Boykin Chesnut attended a party given by Varina Davis for the elite ladies of Richmond society in which the table fare was described as "gumbo, ducks and olives, supreme de volaille, chickens in jelly, oysters, lettuce salad, chocolate jelly cake, claret soup, champagne, &c&c&c." (31 January 1864 diary entry in Woodward's MARY CHESNUT'S CIVIL WAR). Several of those menu items were imported luxury items.
Why didn't Lee take direct action in such circumstances? What greater duty and responsibility did Lee have than to the health and combat effectiveness of his men? Is it to his credit that he didn't act (other than to complain) because it was another's "duty"?
-- from the AOL Civil War forum.
Give me Grant and Sherman any day.
THIS is VERY interesting:
J. E. Johnston reported that month from Dalton [Georgia]that his men had only 8 day's rations in reserve
That was January, 1864
But we read of Sherman's march:
"We also took a good many cows and oxen, and a large number of mules. In all these the country was quite rich, never before having been visited by a hostile army; the recent crop had been excellent, had been just gathered and laid by for the winter. As a rule, we destroyed none, but kept our wagons full, and fed our teams bountifully."
--G. W. Nichols, "Story of the Great March" published 1865, London
It just makes the rebel leaders look like incompent bums, don't ya think?
Walt
Open forum, Walt.
Then I can't imagine that you take issue with my quoting letters in the public record.
Walt
That is about as germane as what Lincoln had for dinner at the White House when the 600 Confederate prisoners were being fed a starvation diet of pickles and wormy sour corn meal by the Federals.
As one of the Federal medical inspectors reportedly put it when shown the condition of the 600, if this treatment lasted for one month longer, there would be none of the prisoners left to tell the tale (Joslyn, pg 219).
The record shows that the rebels took the lead in atrocity. Shall we start tallying up the murdered Union men at Gainesville, Tx, Lawrence, KS and Saltville, VA again?
Walt
Ms Joslyn's book may or may not include the death rate of the 600 (593). It was 7.5 per 1,000. About 25% of the Union POW's sent to Andersonville succumbed to rebel atrocity.
Like everything else in the neo-reb myth, when the facts are examined, the rebels look very bad indeed.
Walt
free dixie,sw
sorry, that's fact.
free dixie,sw
this number is in addition to the 5,335 dead that the state of MD historical society lists on the marker, who died of exposure, lack of medical care, starvation, disease,wounds,etc.
source:the Point Lookout POW Camp Desendents Organization.
sirena of FR & i both have murdered rebel POW ancestors buried there.
may i also suggest that you read, TO DIE IN CHICAGO & PORTALS TO HELL?
free dixie,sw
free dixie,sw
mistreatment of POWs was the STATED PURPOSE of the north.
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.
free dixie,sw
Nonsense, Lee is on the record as authoring his resignation from Arlington on the morning of 20 April 1861 (two days after being advised by his friend Gen. Scott to make a decision). The resignation was received on the 20th by the War Department in Washington (see chapter 25 of Robert E. Lee: A Biography by Douglas Southall Freeman for a copy). Lee wrote his wife a letter on 2 May 1861 that stated that he refused any compensation for services after 20 April (see Recollections and Letters of General Lee, by his son Capt. Robert E. Lee), writing that "he must receive no pay, if they tender it, beyond that day, but return the whole, if need be."
Nonsense, Lee is on the record as authoring his resignation from Arlington on the morning of 20 April 1861 (two days after being advised by his friend Gen. Scott to make a decision). The resignation was received on the 20th by the War Department in Washington (see chapter 25 of Robert E. Lee: A Biography by Douglas Southall Freeman for a copy). Lee wrote his wife a letter on 2 May 1861 that stated that he refused any compensation for services after 20 April (see Recollections and Letters of General Lee, by his son Capt. Robert E. Lee), writing that "he must receive no pay, if they tender it, beyond that day, but return the whole, if need be."
Lee received pay through April 25, the date his resignation was accepted. He met with secession leaders prior to that date. That is treason.
Walt
Like everything else in the neo-reb myth, when the facts are examined, the rebels look very bad indeed.
That is roughly the death rate of the Elmira NY prison, where something like 24 to 28% died, depending on whose figures you use. Did the Confederates operate this prison too?
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.
He met with secession leaders prior to that date. That is treason.
It is? Pray tell, exactly what part of meeting with a foreign government is treason according to the Constitution? In particular, since Lee no longer owed allegiance to the United States. When was Lee's 1st action as a Confederate in their military? Notice too, in Lee's oath that he swore to "bear true allegiance to the United States of America", and that he "will serve them - an oath to the several states of the union - not an oath to a single monolithic entity.
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