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.
BZZZZZZZT !
Hasty generalization. Insufficient sample.
Happy New Year, y'all!
"LG"
My tone hasn't changed a bit because your analysis of Bollman is flawed. Who may suspend habeas corpus was not part of the case before the court because habeas corpus had not been suspended. Any law student can tell you that the court cannot rule on something that has not happened or a matter that is not before the court. You, on the other hand, insist on tossing hundreds of years of legal history out the window and twisting the Bollman decision to suit your agenda.
There you go again, Walt, quoting the court as "proof" of your position. It's truly amazing how quickly that tone changes when Ex Parte Bollman and Swartwout comes up.
I like the Court's rulings just fine. What Marshall said in those cases about Habeas Corpus, as Non-Sequitur pointed out, is dicta.
All this could have been solved by one simple expedient. The so-called seceded states could have gone to court. They could have sued their way out. The Supreme Court was very sympathetic to the slave power.
"...we have repealed the Missouri line & the Supreme Court in a decision of great power, has declared it, & all kindred measures on the part of the Federal Govt. unconstitutional null & void. So, that before our enemies can reach us, they must first break down the Supreme Court - change the Senate & seize the Executive & by an open appeal to Revolution, restore the Missouri line, repeal the Fugitive slave law & change the whole governt. As long as the Govt. is on our side I am for sustaining it, & using its power for our benefit, & placing the screws upon the throats of our opponents". -
Francis W. Pickens, June,1857
You neo-rebs can spout your crap until the cows come home. The fact is that the slave power knew it had no case to make for secession under U.S. law.
But it hardly mattered, as 1 southerner could whip 10 yankees.
Walt
And a happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year to you and your family.
Additionally the Lincolnites assert that it was the entire population of America that created the union, but forget that the STATES ratified in convention, and forget that only 9 STATES were necessary - abandoning millions of Americans from this union.
The union predated the STATES? Forgive my sarcasm.
Obiter dictum? Your ignorance is absolutely amazing at times. Obiter dictum is Latin for "something said in passing," normally comments extraneous to the line of reasoning leading to the decision of the court.
The case ex parte Bollman and ex parte Swartwout, 4 Cranch 75 (1807) was a habeas corpus action for Samuel Swartwout and Erick Bollman. Only 4 justices decided the case - Chief Justice Marshall, with Justices Johnson, Washington and Livingston - as Justices Cushing and Chase were sick. Johnson dissented. The writ in question was issued by Justice Willian Cranch on 27 Jan 1807.
Chase wrote: "If at any time the public safety should require the suspension of the powers vested by this act in the courts of the United States, it is for the legislature to say so. That question depends on political considerations, on which the legislature is to decide."
A decision by the full court of the US. Game. Set. Match.
Nonsense. It is the point on which the case turns as indicated by the line IMMEDIATELY following it: "The motion, therefore, must be granted." As for Non-Seq, he can call Marshall's ruling whatever he likes all day long, but that will never make it so any more than flapping his arms up and down will make him fly.
All this could have been solved by one simple expedient. The so-called seceded states could have gone to court. They could have sued their way out.
Perhaps they could have, but its equally possible if not highly likely that The Lincoln would have simply ignored the ruling because he didn't like it. He has a history of doing that, you know.
But it hardly mattered, as 1 southerner could whip 10 yankees.
A bit exagerated, but pretty close. Last I checked your side lost over 100,000 more than we did.
In order to make that claim you must be able to substantiate it. You have not done so beyond arbitrarily declaring the parts of it you don't like "dictum."
Who may suspend habeas corpus was not part of the case before the court because habeas corpus had not been suspended.
Yes, but who the suspension clause pertained to was part of the case because it was upon that clause that the court determined the legislature's role in extending the jurisdiction over issuing the writ. I've pointed this out to you repeatedly, yet you refuse to consider it and instead throw out the same scarecrow about the writ not having been suspended. This indicates very clearly that you are not being honest in this discussion.
Ego te aspergo.....er, absolvo. Sorry about that.
That is an interesting point, that the People must include all the people -- 'scuse me, "persons" -- of all thirteen, or thirty, or however many of the States in order to act in Sovereignty above the Constitution, in Lincoln's and Walt's construction of things, but somehow only nine of the thirteen States' "persons" were needed to constitute a new People, in express violation of the sovereign will of the Peoples of the 13 original States.
Our friends will leap to explain this gapingly monstrous discrepancy that invites us to drive a very large Dodge Ram through the middle of their argument very shortly. Maybe they'll even whistle up Quack and rdf to give them a hand.
As Artie Johnson used to say on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, "verrrrrrry interestink!"
I do believe you just stripped the boy naked and flogged him off the court. Do give him his raquet back, though, if you please, suh -- as a Southern gennleman would! LOL!
Habes!
Damn, Walt, you're easy, for someone so full of vinegar......
One Southerner just whipped one scalawag.
<He said, turning to finish his champagne.>
A bit exagerated, but pretty close. Last I checked your side lost over 100,000 more than we did.
And yet it was the rebel armies that melted away.
General Johnston told Davis in April, 1865 that the North Caolinians in his army would refuse to leave the state. Sherman's veterans from Indiana and Ohio and Illinois and other loyal states -- and even Alabama didn't have that problem. They started at Forts Henry and Donelson, took Vicksburg, Chattanooga and Atlanta, Savannah and Charleston, built roads worthy of the Romans through terrain that the secesh called impassible, and ended the rebellion.
Walt
ROTF - that's a mental image I could have done without!
From left ot right they are Governor F. W. Pickens of South Carolina sitting on a slave's back, Florida, Georgia, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, Alabama, and a figure labeled Texas sitting on a barrel labeled Louisiana.
Pickens: "South Carolina claims to be file leader and general whipper in of the new Confederacy, a special edict! Obey and tremble!"
Florida: "We want it distinctly understood that all the lights on the Coast shall be put out, in order to facilitate the wrecking business."
Georgia: "Georgia must have half the honors, and all the profits, or back she goes to old 'E. Pluribus Unum.'"
Davis: "We come in with the understanding that we shall issue bonds to an unlimited extent, with our ancient right of repudiation when they become due."
Alabama: "Alabama proclaims that 'Cotton is King,' and the rest of the Confederacy must obey that Sovereign."
Texas/Louisiana: "A heavy duty must be levied on foreign sweetening in order to make up for what we have sacrificed in leaving the Union, otherwise we shall be like a 'Pelican in the wilderness'!"
----------------------------------------------------
Whats interesting to me are these claims of sovereignty made by the confederate states, when their wealth, honor and property was at stake. Yet these same slave powers rejected the concept of 'popular sovereignty' as it applied to the new territories like Kansas in the west.
Haven't really asked around, but I do know that Bollman is usually cited as the first major case dealing with the suspension clause. I've got some old case law textbooks somewhere and, pending time to find them and its in there, i'll happily look up the case for you.
Have you come across any papers written on Bollman and the suspension of habeas corpus
Actually, yes, though most address it through Merryman's references to it.
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