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 don't. However you might try asking one of these 14 Dems, since they were all in the US Senate at the time and must have approved the choice as well...
Heflin, Shelby -AL, Bumpers, Pryor -AR, Graham -FL, Nunn -GA, Johnston, Breaux -LA, Ford -KY, Sasser, Mathews -TN Hollings -SC, Robb -VA, Byrd -WV
The Supreme Court said the rebellion had the same status under law a a foreign war. The president is commander in chief of the Armed Forces in time of war. The -law- of war allowed for the seizure of enemy property.
What the secessionists did was to liable themselves to presidential power in a way that would have been impossible in the normal course of administering the government. Slavery was clearly protected by the Constitution. Once they became de facto enemies of the United States, then the president's war powers overrode the protection for slavery.
THIS is why (and I think -you- know this) the EP only had effect in the areas outside of federal control. Slave holders in loyal areas and states were beyond the president's war power.
The slave power maladroitly lost in 4 years what they could have retained for generations.
Walt
Reading your arguments and a response, I remembered that neither of us was able to convince the other the last time, and that will most likely be true this time as well. National sentiment grew and grew at an increasing rate among people over time in the years after the revolution, so that people came to think of themselves less and less as citizens of states and more and more as Americans and citizens of the United States, but I don't think one can establish state's rights theories based on the text of the Constitution alone. Such state's rights theories are presented as coldly rational, but are themselves the product of sentiment and interpretation.
I for one am convinced of the founders' efforts to build a real and lasting nation. Power was to be dispersed between the federal government, rather than centralized. The possibility existed that the union or the republic could fail, fall into tyranny or break apart. But there was no clear, agreed upon procedure in the Constitution by which part of the union could unilaterally break its ties with the whole. Under such circumstances a degree of prudence and caution was required in dealing with difficult situations, and such prudence was lacking in 1860.
Some will tell you that all nations and peoples are fictions, albeit carefully cultivated and evolved fictions. American nationality or peoplehood was hardly more of a fiction than Virginian or South Carolina nationality or peoplehood, and certainly not a Lincolnian fiction. It grew out of the wars we fought, the Revolution and the now much neglected War of 1812 and out of the Western movement.
State's rights theory glosses over such experiences, which were very important to Americans of such widely different character and outlook as Washington, Hamilton, Madison, the Adamses and Jackson. National defense and national development were important to them. They were building a nation, not a loose confederation of states. States had powers, but they weren't sovereign. State's rights is presented as a legalistic orthodoxy, a "strict construction," but it's an emotional reading into the constitution, which leaves out so much of what the framers, as opposed to their opponents, actually said.
Colonies existed before the federal government, but they weren't sovereigns, but rather parts of the British Empire. Things might have been different if states had issued their own currencies and stamps, formed their own armies and postal services, created embassies and passports, levied tariffs, and denied direct taxation to the federal government, but the federal government performed such functions under the Constitution and the states accepted the constitutional division of powers.
Southerners as Southerners were not debarred from the West. North Carolinians and Kentuckians had largely settled Illinois and Indiana, as well as the Gulf States. It was the Southerner as slaveholder who was restricted from the Old Northwest and the lands north of 36'' 20'. If, as we're told, most Southerners weren't slaveholders, and if as we're so repeatedly told, "It wasn't about slavery" it shouldn't have been such a big deal. If it was about an ethnos, the ethnos would have endured without support for slavery. Similarly if agrarianism was the question at issue. The fact that the expansion of slavery remained such a critical issue suggest that neither ethnicity nor agararianism was the essential point.
The Middle West was a great melting pot in which Southerners, New Englanders, Pennsylvanians, Germans, English, Scots-Irish, Indians, and even Blacks came together to form an American nationality (see the controversy over Warren Harding's ancestry for an indication of this). Lincoln's ancestors were New Englanders, Pennsylvanians, and Virginians, though he was largely unaware of who they were.
Slavery was legal under the Constitution, though it had been debarred from the Old Northwest as early as 1787, a sign that the founders weren't simply a "slaveowners' protection society." And the idea that the Constitution mandated protection for slavery runs in the face of state's rights. Surely the oft repeated argument that the conventions in the states would not have ratified the constitution if they couldn't retain the power of secession applies even more so to the question of abolition. Would Massachusetts or New Hampshire have ratified the Constitution if they understood it to mean that their laws against slavery were invalid?
One focus of the Lincoln-Douglas debates was the question of local legislation. Slaveowners could bring their slaves with them if they passed through free territories. To retain them for longer periods required supporting local legislation and police regulations. This was a reflection of the federal system, and, if Northerners accepted the existence of slavery, this is what Southerners had accepted. It's been said that Lincoln got Douglas to admit this in their 1858 debates, thus losing the Senatorial election for himself, but denying Douglas the presidency, since no answer to the questions would satisfy the Upper North and the Lower South. Some have disputed this, though.
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 Morrill Tariff, thus corroborating the argument that secession was certainly about tariffs and economic issues, as well as "slavery".
True, abolition wouldn't have come any time soon. Neither would tariffs have increased as much as they did, had Southerners kept their cool. Some increase in tariffs was inevitable around 1860, but the same rules of debate would have kept such an increase modest had the deep South not thrown away their advantages, antagonized their traditional alllies and walked out.
And the slavery versus economic questions approach skews one's perception of the era. Slavery was the most important of economic issues in the era, and the most important of moral issues. In the South of the time, there was little of the modern view that slavery was beyond the pale. It was a question of interest, also a moral question, and regarded as essential to Southern interests and society.
But why put "slavery" in quotes? Surely chattel slavery of the 1860 or American Negro slavery was a very much a form of slavery. Not the only one known to history, but surely more truly slavery than any of the restrictions we've had to live with since. Call them "slavery" in quotes, if you wish, but recognize that it's a metaphor and we once had the real thing here.
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!
Of course you can't prove it. When we look back on history we presume that those who lived at the time, or at least some of them, saw what was coming. But very few people saw "the Civil War" or "the First World War" coming. Such things weren't realities or even concepts in their world. There were possibilities and contigencies, opportunities for compromise and necessities that required one to stand firm. With such difficulties the first thing one sees is the necessity to hold the line and maintain one's own position, the second is the opportunity for compromise and conflict resolution.
It wouldn't be hard to forecast a "constitutional crisis" if a Republican won in 1860, but it's doubtful that Lincoln would have run if he thought such a crisis would be serious or beyond his power to resolve. That's not to say that wars are never the product of planning and intention, but what drives most democratic politicians, especially provincial ones, is the confidence that they will be able to deal with what arises because what arises will never be very different from what is already happening. A sane Springfield lawyer just might be able to dream of being President and work towards that goal, but for him to plan years in advance, mastermind, and bring about a war and constitutional transformation goes beyond the realm of possiblity. It would require an impossible arrogance. There's been talk about GWB's brains trust pushing for war since well before his election, but there's no indication that Lincoln and his small circle of advisors had such plans.
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!
I'm not sure that one really needs to go to a moral argument to defend the power of states to forbid citizens from owning other people. But in any case, I don't think one is necessarily talking about a "higher moral law" that overrides written laws. Constitutions do arise out of a moral atmosphere that can be used to understand them. Understanding the moral views and preconceptions of the founders will help us to understand how to read their document. The founders did believe in freedom and virtue, and while they tolerated slavery they also strove to limit it. Reading the Constitution as providing security for slaveholders in all conditions and putting the rights of slaveholders above all other rights would be a serious misreading.
Constitutions are intended to accomodate persons of widely differing views, but our Constitution wasn't intended as a morally neutral pact between opposing and absolute sovereignties but as a charter for the nation. It did allow different states to govern their own internal practices, but if we want to exclude the moral context of the Constitution we end up making moral relativism that context.
There have been criticisms made of Harry Jaffa's books, but his essential point that following Calhoun and Davis means embracing a relativistic point of view should be considered. Perhaps under the federalism of the times one couldn't do anything -- short of amend the Constitution -- to change the internal practices of another state, but acquiescing in or celebrating morally reprehensible practices in other states certainly isn't required.
One might grant the power of a state to do or allow such things, but that doesn't mean that such things are morally right. The procedural may trump the substantive in the political sphere, but not in the moral one. And there were also plenty of procedural problems with unilateral secession in the political sphere.
Ideas of absolute state power and sovereignty (like ideas of absolute federal power and sovereignty) are wrong on the legal and constitutional level. They misread a complicated document. And making such ideas the highest standard, outweighing moral concerns, compounds the problem.
No, he didn't. Lee didn't "adhere" to any enemies of the U.S. in Virginia between April 17 and April 25, 1861, because Virginia was at peace with the United States. He entered service in the Virginia Militia, period.
Furthermore, Lee was no longer a citizen of the United States. The treason clause does not stipulate, but we can infer from its wording, that it does not apply to noncitizens, so that after April 17th, Robert E. Lee no longer fell under the treason clause. Constitutional action by the State of Virginia thus delivered Lee from the imputation of treason, even if Virginia and the Unites States had immediately come to blows, which they did 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.
Your demonstration of Nolan's malice and persecutive zeal is helpful, but it doesn't wash your argument. A request for an interview about a state militia commission does not constitute the blackguarding and treachery that you and Nolan so very clearly desire, out of the fond hopes of your own malevolence, to show that Lee engaged in.
It just isn't there. He resigned, Walt. And he told everyone who needed to know what he was doing, and when. He didn't play Winfield Scott or Abraham Lincoln false, and he received the President's representative and dealt with him candidly.
You just repeat your backbiting and weaselwording exercises about Lee's resignation date, versus its acceptance date, versus again the last date that Lee received monies owed for his service in a prior period, etc. etc., over and over, after you have been shown you are wrong; and then you quote a notorious polemical pickaxe, Alan Nolan, as your "authority" for your vilification. That's slothful induction and worse, it's just bad faith in argument.
Uh-huh. Yeah. Must have been one of them. Not somebody like Teddy Kennedy, Bob Kerrey, or Paul Sarbanes.
The Klan also exhibits U.S. flags quite prominently.
And James McPherson is a Marxist because of the theses that flow from his pen, and the common cause that he makes with Marxists. His use of the "war of liberation" theme is particularly defining.
I've read the assertion by GOPCap.
And discounted it. GOPcap shows beyond all reasonable doubt, that McPherson is in fact a Marxist.
Novel constitutional theory there, Walt. Someone declares war, and poof, the Constitution is altered, magically and instantaneously.
You didn't answer rustbucket's charge, that Lincoln exceeded the powers of his office. You just changed the subject and talked about something else, as if that were responsive to his charge.
[You, changing the subject] As usual, you are pushing what "everybody knows" instead of a fact based interpretation.
1. You don't make the rules in this forum, Walt, and I won't let you make a rule here, that we all have to post like you do, or it doesn't count. Self-serving tripe.
2. My posts are based in fact as thoroughly as yours. I can't simply propound what pleases me; I must observe and take account of the facts when offering my opinions, no less than Madison or Washington or John Jay did in their day. Your reliance on appeals to "authority" retrieved from quote-files compiled by tendentious professors' grad-school cave trolls attempts to create a chimera of command of subject (aka "wonkery"), an argument from expertise that neglects candor while it serves your tendency -- the Wizard of Oz ploy. But see 1. above: I reject your call to duelling quote-boxes. Only Clinton voters are impressed by wonkery.
3. You changed the subject again.
I can't imagine what you are thinking -- here's what Rustbucket posted:
Interesting argument Lincoln makes about property. I'll have to think about it. Thanks.
I posted what President Lincoln said at the time. The Constitution gives the president the power to use the law of war in time of war.
The secesh said the slaves were property. The law of war allows for the seizure of property.
Walt
Sure they have. Before the ratification of the Articles of Confederation, and from 1861 to 1865.
The Supreme Court ruled, further, that all acts and ordinances of secession were null and void.
And 4ConservativeJustices and I demonstrated, over your objections, that the Supreme Court was attempting to rule above its competence, and that its opinion of the secession of the Southern States was and is null and void by reason of ultra vires.
You are at it again -- trying to deny that you took a whipping on this subject, by simply posting up your position again de novo, as if it had never been dealt with.
No, he didn't. Lee didn't "adhere" to any enemies of the U.S. in Virginia between April 17 and April 25, 1861....
As the text indicated, Aleck Stephens was conferring with VA officials as early as April 19 with a view to Virginia joining the rebellion.
But that is moot, as the Supreme Court ruled that no act or ordinance of secession had the force of law. Lee never stopped being a citizen of the United States -- he was always subject to the laws.
Had the north been more vindictive, it is not a stretch -at all- to imagine Lee, Davis and the other secesh leaders in the stifling hoods that the Booth conspracy defendants wore at their trials. And it's not a stretch to imagine them on the same gallows where the four Booth conspirators were hanged.
Walt
Sure they have. Before the ratification of the Articles of Confederation, and from 1861 to 1865.
I guess I need to be more literal for you. No state has ever been out of the Union since it was formed.
How long as Eric Rudolph been on the run? He's the guy that bombed (allegedly) the abortion clinic in Birmingham. The so-called seceded states were just as much out of the Union as he is, and just as immune from its laws.
Walt
There is a monument for recipient Sam Davis built in 1909 at the state capital in TN.....funded by all the states of the Union.
The inscription reads:
O Southland! Bring your laurels
And add your wreath, O North!
Let glory claim the Hero's name
And tell the world his worth.
Really.
Article III, Section. 2.
Clause 1:
"The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;--to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;--to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;--to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;--to Controversies between two or more States;--between a State and Citizens of another State; --between Citizens of different States,--between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects."
The Constitution gave it competence and the Union Army gave it force.
Walt
Novel constitutional theory there, Walt. Someone declares war, and poof, the Constitution is altered, magically and instantaneously.
No one declared war. There was no one to declare war -on-, as the Supreme Court said.
"....By the Constitution, Congress alone has the power to declare a national or foreign war. It cannot declare war against a State, or any number of States, by virtue of any clause in the Constitution. The Constitution confers on the President the whole Executive power. He is bound to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. He is Commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several States when called into the actual service of the United States. He has no power to initiate or declare a war either against a foreign nation or a domestic State. But, by the Acts of Congress of February 28th, 1795, and 3d of March, 1807, he is authorized to called out the militia and use the military and naval forces of the United States in case of invasion by foreign nations and to suppress insurrection against the government of a State or of the United States."
Where are you getting this declaration of war thing?
Walt
Operative word, "under".
Get this through your thick skull, Wlat. When the People assemble in convention, they may set aside the Constitution and everything made under it. When the People assemble, they can resume every last one of the powers they granted the United States of America and rescind every last provision of the Constitution, individually or in bulk. When the People assemble and resume their Sovereign aspect, only the invisible God of Israel has authority over them.
Get it?
...the Union Army gave it force.
Violence, you mean.
Hmmmm....
How about this:
"Whereas the safety of the United States demands that all enemies who have entered upon the territory of the United States as part of an invasion or predatory incursion ... should be promptly tried in accordance with the Law of War; now, therefore, I ... do hereby proclaim that all persons who are subjects, citizens or residents of any nation at war with the United States or who give obedience to or act under the direction of any such nation, and who during time of war enter or attempt to enter the United States or any territory or possession thereof, through coastal or boundary defenses, and are charged with committing or attempting or preparing to commit sabotage, espionage, hostile or warlike acts, or violations of the law of war, shall be subject to the law of war and to the jurisdiction of military tribunals; and that such persons shall not be privileged to seek any remedy or maintain any proceeding, directly or indirectly, or to have any such remedy or proceeding sought on their behalf, in the courts of the United States."
How does that sound?
Oh, wait. That was Franklin Roosevelt in 1942, not Abraham Lincoln in 1862.
The Supreme Court denied habeas corpus petetions on 8 Nazi sabateurs, and six were executed.
Further:
"But Royall [the Nazi's military defense attorney]wasn't finished. Determined to challenge the President's proclamation that the men should face a military tribunal, he sought to win his clients' freedom by demanding a writ of habeas corpus. Though the Supreme Court had been adjourned for the summer, it convened in a special session on July 29 to consider the matter. Royall argued that Long Island and Florida beaches could not be characterized as "zones of military operation." There had been no combat there, and no plausible threat of invasion. Royall argued that the civil courts were functioning, and under the circumstances they were the appropriate venue for the case to be heard. [Yes, he even cited Milligan]
Biddle [the government attorney] argued that the United States and Germany were at war, and cited a law passed by Congress in 1798 that stated, "Whenever there is a declared war, and the President makes public proclamation of the event, all native citizens, denizens or subjects of the hostile nation shall be liable to be apprehended ... as alien enemies." On July 31 the Supreme Court unanimously denied Royall's appeal, writing, "The military commission was lawfully constituted ... petitioners are held in lawful custody for trial before the military commission and have not shown cause for being discharged by writ of habeas corpus."
The members of the tribunal then deliberated for two days before reaching a verdict. Finally, on August 3, in accordance with instructions, the tribunal's verdict was delivered by Army plane directly to Roosevelt, at Hyde Park, in four thick manila envelopes. It found all eight men guilty and recommended death by electrocution, but added, "In view of the apparent assistance given to the prosecution by defendants Ernest Peter Burger and George John Dasch, the commission unanimously recommends that the sentence of each of these two defendants ... be commuted from death to life imprisonment." On August 7 General Cox, the tribunal's provost marshal, received instructions from President Roosevelt: all but Dasch and Burger were to be electrocuted at noon the following day."
The six condemned were all dead by 1:30 PM the next day.
Walt
The -people- obviously, in the case of the ACW gave to the government, resources, that as President Lincoln said were, "unexhausted, and are as we think, inexhaustible."
Did you somehow miss the outcome of that?
Walt
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