Twenty-five years ago the most controversial question surrounding the interpretation of Civil War battlefields was whether to broaden the focus to include civilians, a clear understanding that slavery caused the war and that emancipation and the end of slavery was the war’s most important result.
This is a fascinating discussion. Speaking specifically to the military aspects of interpretation at places like Gettysburg, or Vicksburg or Shilo or any of the other Civil War, or for that matter Revolutionary War, national battlefields; I don't think the tactical (who moved troops where and why) is particularly important other than to people like me who are interested in the operational art, the study of how armies fight wars. What I think is important is why the battle occurred in a particular location, what was the point and what was the outcome and what was the impact on the country. I also think it is important to understand who was there. None of this is usually easy to explain. But I think it is what people come to these places and others, not just battlefields. They sense something important to the country happened there and they want to know more. I think these places are the soul of the republic. They are places where we confronted each other over what the country was going to be. I think, if viewed from that perspective all the stories discussed in this thread and Kevin's interviews with Dr Carmichael and Dr Sidule (not sure I pulled that right) fit.
How you train guides to discuss this stuff in ways that do not offend but inform I don't know. Maybe you can't
Excellent post. I wonder about these things quite a bit. As for guides responding to visitors who are having a "learning crisis," we used to train our staff in Julia Rose's techniques for responding. (I'm not a front line person so I've never had to do this myself.) For reasons, I suspect we're not doing that anymore.
I can affirm that visitors bring their own lenses. I'm still struck by a visitor from the midwest a few years ago who started weeping after visiting our main exhibit because she regarded our then-political (ca. 2019) situation to be terrifyingly close to that in 1861.
The larger issue (for me) is this: I have trouble talking about the large transformations the war caused in the United States and connecting that to campaigns and battles, which seems to be the lenses that most traditional visitors (and CW museum practitioners) see the war through. Changes in the economy, labor relations, continental aspirations and capacities, relations with Native groups, gender revolutions and reactions, etc... are all important to understanding how the Civil War remade America (emancipation included, ofc), but when I try to talk about them, I hear that "we're losing sight of the *war*" and that we should go back and double down on the military stuff.
It's a two-fold concern. First, the focus on the "military stuff" is comfort food for a small but well established audience of traditional visitors who bring revenue (not unimportant). Second, there is absolutely a concern that getting into essential questions about then and now will be "controversial." ("Controversial" is a loaded term here meaning "the traditional audience finds it annoying.")
I believe that there is a large audience hungry to engage with the essential questions stemming from the Civil War, but who couldn't care less about "who shot who" on a battlefield or John Bell Hood's three frock coats (sorry, working with them right now)... and for who those things are a threshold barrier.
Anyhow, I'm rambling and might have pulled focus from the point of this post. Looking forward to your interview with Carmichael. Hopefully, it'll reveal something for me.
You make an important point about audiences. I know about the traditional audience (I had family members who belonged to it) but wish the commentary to serve wider ones. Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote a great article some years ago about the lack of African American vistors to Civil War sites; guides should aim to offer something to as many of the audiences as possible.
It seems natural that, as audiences with multiple viewpoints visit, current conflicts over interpretation will spill over into interactions with guides. Not sure what guides should do about that, other than protect all parties' physical safety, and stay factual - doubtless they do that already!
As for visitors with divergent viewpoints (as opposed to the traditional visitor)... there is no audience research data on this that I'm aware of, but I firmly believe that if your institutional body language promises cannon demonstrations and the nitty gritty of military things, then that aspirational audience will simply not even come to offer those divergent viewpoints.
Imagine this: your historic site social media has reenactors, or photos of scruffy Confederates on the cover... who is coming to that? What if it features instead Jamelle Bouie on the cover for an upcoming event that directly roots, say, current troubles with the Supreme Court in a Civil War context. That's a whole different class of potential visitor that will pay attention (who would otherwise say no thank you to rebel flags).
That's was I was trying to say - obviously not clearly enough. I do recommend Coates' article; I think it's in his essay collection, or on The Atlantic website (somewhere).
It's incredibly challenging. The challenge is in convincing visitors that focusing solely on the military tactics is to lose sight of the war. I try to remember with the groups that I lead that less is more. Help them make meaning of a specific site and give them plenty of time to process through the questions we pose and the conversations that ensue. Thanks for the comment, Chris. Do you have a reference/link for the Julia Rose technique that you mentioned?
I’m not sure there is an answer to this question. I know that sounds like the ultimate attempt to come down on all sides of an issue. Events of the past can, and often do, have different meaning for the people of the past than they do for us today. So when trying to explain those events what do you present, how people in the past viewed events or how we today view the events? I suppose ideally you present both, where there is a convergence, and try to explain the change. But then how do you do that with out overwhelming the lay audiences places like National Monuments and Battlefields are trying to reach? That’s why I say there may not be an answer-not satisfying
It's certainly not easy. At one point in my interview with Peter Carmichael he suggested that it might be possible to address the pervasiveness of conspiracy theories and misinformation today with the period immediately preceding the Civil War, when both sides were bombarded with rumor and embraced conspiracy theories about the other.
“How should a guide at Gettysburg, for example, respond when an individual inquires about the current controversy surrounding Confederate monuments while walking along Seminary Ridge in sight of the state monuments honoring the Confederacy? Can or should a guide engage her audience about their appropriateness on a battlefield?”
Is this question framed as “this monument shouldn’t be here?”
Sorry for my confusion.
I dislike the Lee monument at Gettysburg- which if I remember correctly- overlooks Picketts Charge, right?
It’s massive statue. I’m not sure how I would handle a question about why Lee is honored that way.
Yes, the Virginia Monument is at the foot of the hill that Pickett’s Charge. I’m glad you asked this question, because it sent me to find out more.
I was fifteen when my family first visited Gettysburg from Virginia, thorough lost causers all (I’m now seventy and still awakening from that nightmare of misplaced loyalty). My dearly loved grandmother was with us, and viewing the monument, she felt as though it represented her family members.
I knew, for example, that “The equestrian statue is atop a granite pedestal and the group of six standing figures is on a sculpted bronze base with the figures facing the Field of Pickett's Charge and the equestrian statue of Union General George G. Meade on Cemetery Ridge.” It seems appropriate that the two commanding generals are facing each other. But I only learned today that, “The granite pedestal without either sculpture was dedicated on June 30, 1913 for the 1913 Gettysburg reunion. On June 8, 1917, Virginia governor Henry C. Stuart presented the completed memorial to the public.” I also find this very interesting, “In an extensive correspondence between Thomas Smith and John P. Nicolson, the Chairman of GNPC, the memorial's form and inscription were debated. Smith proposed that the inscription should state ‘VIRGINIA TO HER SOLDIERS AT GETTYSBURG. THEY FOUGHT FOR THE FAITH OF THEIR FATHERS.’ After multiple meetings with the entirety of the GNPC, Smith and Nicolson agreed to change the inscription to ‘VIRGINIA TO HER SONS AT GETTYSBURG’ and to substitute the Virginia State flag in place of the Confederate flag.” The first is very lost cause. I’m glad it was changed.
I well recall the utter fear and shock when it became known that the NPS was contemplating broadening interpretations at the Civil War parks. I've visited more than a few of the parks in the last 20 years (not as much as I would have liked to, of course) and I have seen none of the predicted absurdities that were tossed around in the 90s.
I remember the utter racist ire directed at Jesse Jackson, Jr., from some of my friends. It was awful. I wish I knew then what I know now... about history and about responding to this nonsense.
My apologies for the confusion. No, I am not making any claim about whether the monument should remain or be removed. I am interested in whether or how a guide should respond. How should these conversations be framed? I don't have any firm answers.
I was still writing about it regularly in the early years of my blog. Remember the outrage expressed surrounding the new Gettysburg museum when the plans were first made public?
Indeed. So much faux outrage about fears that were not realized---I made that point several times, that folks were expressing fear about the possibility of things happening that no one was talking about doing.
Excellent article. Back in January 2016 before Trump was elected I was finishing up teaching and leading the Gettysburg Staff Ride while at the Joint Forces Staff College. I always made the Soldier’s Cemetery my last stop.
While we were gathering near the spot where Lincoln gave his address, an elderly white couple, who appeared to be in their early eighties, were sitting on a bench where my students gathered. I invited them to stay if they wanted and let them know why we were there.
I discussed the human cost, the Rural Cemetery movement, and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. I read the speech to my students and emphasized Lincoln’s reference to the Declaration that “all men are created equal.”
They were very attentive as were my students and when we concluded and my students began to head back to our vans or to their own vehicles for the trip back to Norfolk, the man approached me and asked directions on how to get to the Chambersburg Road which I gladly gave him; and then he said: “You know that when they say that “all men are created equal” that some are more equal than others.”
I was stunned and attempted to deflect the man’s obvious racist comment with humor, referring to the rivalry of UCLA where I did my Army ROTC training about thirty-three years ago with that of the University of Southern California. The man looked at me and said that he was from Georgia and that he “wished that California would just drop off into the ocean,” and then walked away.
That experience was quite stunning, but then when one sees t-shirts sold in gift shops all over Gettysburg emblazoned with the Confederate battle flag and sayings like “I am not reconstructed,” it shouldn’t be surprising.
I think that all of the initiatives taken by the Park Service to include neglected history at the battlefields is badly needed. I hope that the “unreconstructed” won’t try to eliminate these displays and programs.
This is a fascinating discussion. Speaking specifically to the military aspects of interpretation at places like Gettysburg, or Vicksburg or Shilo or any of the other Civil War, or for that matter Revolutionary War, national battlefields; I don't think the tactical (who moved troops where and why) is particularly important other than to people like me who are interested in the operational art, the study of how armies fight wars. What I think is important is why the battle occurred in a particular location, what was the point and what was the outcome and what was the impact on the country. I also think it is important to understand who was there. None of this is usually easy to explain. But I think it is what people come to these places and others, not just battlefields. They sense something important to the country happened there and they want to know more. I think these places are the soul of the republic. They are places where we confronted each other over what the country was going to be. I think, if viewed from that perspective all the stories discussed in this thread and Kevin's interviews with Dr Carmichael and Dr Sidule (not sure I pulled that right) fit.
How you train guides to discuss this stuff in ways that do not offend but inform I don't know. Maybe you can't
Excellent post. I wonder about these things quite a bit. As for guides responding to visitors who are having a "learning crisis," we used to train our staff in Julia Rose's techniques for responding. (I'm not a front line person so I've never had to do this myself.) For reasons, I suspect we're not doing that anymore.
I can affirm that visitors bring their own lenses. I'm still struck by a visitor from the midwest a few years ago who started weeping after visiting our main exhibit because she regarded our then-political (ca. 2019) situation to be terrifyingly close to that in 1861.
The larger issue (for me) is this: I have trouble talking about the large transformations the war caused in the United States and connecting that to campaigns and battles, which seems to be the lenses that most traditional visitors (and CW museum practitioners) see the war through. Changes in the economy, labor relations, continental aspirations and capacities, relations with Native groups, gender revolutions and reactions, etc... are all important to understanding how the Civil War remade America (emancipation included, ofc), but when I try to talk about them, I hear that "we're losing sight of the *war*" and that we should go back and double down on the military stuff.
It's a two-fold concern. First, the focus on the "military stuff" is comfort food for a small but well established audience of traditional visitors who bring revenue (not unimportant). Second, there is absolutely a concern that getting into essential questions about then and now will be "controversial." ("Controversial" is a loaded term here meaning "the traditional audience finds it annoying.")
I believe that there is a large audience hungry to engage with the essential questions stemming from the Civil War, but who couldn't care less about "who shot who" on a battlefield or John Bell Hood's three frock coats (sorry, working with them right now)... and for who those things are a threshold barrier.
Anyhow, I'm rambling and might have pulled focus from the point of this post. Looking forward to your interview with Carmichael. Hopefully, it'll reveal something for me.
You make an important point about audiences. I know about the traditional audience (I had family members who belonged to it) but wish the commentary to serve wider ones. Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote a great article some years ago about the lack of African American vistors to Civil War sites; guides should aim to offer something to as many of the audiences as possible.
It seems natural that, as audiences with multiple viewpoints visit, current conflicts over interpretation will spill over into interactions with guides. Not sure what guides should do about that, other than protect all parties' physical safety, and stay factual - doubtless they do that already!
As for visitors with divergent viewpoints (as opposed to the traditional visitor)... there is no audience research data on this that I'm aware of, but I firmly believe that if your institutional body language promises cannon demonstrations and the nitty gritty of military things, then that aspirational audience will simply not even come to offer those divergent viewpoints.
Imagine this: your historic site social media has reenactors, or photos of scruffy Confederates on the cover... who is coming to that? What if it features instead Jamelle Bouie on the cover for an upcoming event that directly roots, say, current troubles with the Supreme Court in a Civil War context. That's a whole different class of potential visitor that will pay attention (who would otherwise say no thank you to rebel flags).
That's was I was trying to say - obviously not clearly enough. I do recommend Coates' article; I think it's in his essay collection, or on The Atlantic website (somewhere).
Here you go.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/02/why-do-so-few-blacks-study-the-civil-war/308831/
Just re-read it. What wouldn't I give to have a tenth of his precision of thought and expression!
Thanks!
It's incredibly challenging. The challenge is in convincing visitors that focusing solely on the military tactics is to lose sight of the war. I try to remember with the groups that I lead that less is more. Help them make meaning of a specific site and give them plenty of time to process through the questions we pose and the conversations that ensue. Thanks for the comment, Chris. Do you have a reference/link for the Julia Rose technique that you mentioned?
https://www.thc.texas.gov/public/upload/preserve/museums/files/AASLH%20Tech%20Leaf%20255.pdf
Thank you.
I’m not sure there is an answer to this question. I know that sounds like the ultimate attempt to come down on all sides of an issue. Events of the past can, and often do, have different meaning for the people of the past than they do for us today. So when trying to explain those events what do you present, how people in the past viewed events or how we today view the events? I suppose ideally you present both, where there is a convergence, and try to explain the change. But then how do you do that with out overwhelming the lay audiences places like National Monuments and Battlefields are trying to reach? That’s why I say there may not be an answer-not satisfying
It's certainly not easy. At one point in my interview with Peter Carmichael he suggested that it might be possible to address the pervasiveness of conspiracy theories and misinformation today with the period immediately preceding the Civil War, when both sides were bombarded with rumor and embraced conspiracy theories about the other.
“How should a guide at Gettysburg, for example, respond when an individual inquires about the current controversy surrounding Confederate monuments while walking along Seminary Ridge in sight of the state monuments honoring the Confederacy? Can or should a guide engage her audience about their appropriateness on a battlefield?”
Is this question framed as “this monument shouldn’t be here?”
Sorry for my confusion.
I dislike the Lee monument at Gettysburg- which if I remember correctly- overlooks Picketts Charge, right?
It’s massive statue. I’m not sure how I would handle a question about why Lee is honored that way.
Hi, Christopher,
Yes, the Virginia Monument is at the foot of the hill that Pickett’s Charge. I’m glad you asked this question, because it sent me to find out more.
I was fifteen when my family first visited Gettysburg from Virginia, thorough lost causers all (I’m now seventy and still awakening from that nightmare of misplaced loyalty). My dearly loved grandmother was with us, and viewing the monument, she felt as though it represented her family members.
I knew, for example, that “The equestrian statue is atop a granite pedestal and the group of six standing figures is on a sculpted bronze base with the figures facing the Field of Pickett's Charge and the equestrian statue of Union General George G. Meade on Cemetery Ridge.” It seems appropriate that the two commanding generals are facing each other. But I only learned today that, “The granite pedestal without either sculpture was dedicated on June 30, 1913 for the 1913 Gettysburg reunion. On June 8, 1917, Virginia governor Henry C. Stuart presented the completed memorial to the public.” I also find this very interesting, “In an extensive correspondence between Thomas Smith and John P. Nicolson, the Chairman of GNPC, the memorial's form and inscription were debated. Smith proposed that the inscription should state ‘VIRGINIA TO HER SOLDIERS AT GETTYSBURG. THEY FOUGHT FOR THE FAITH OF THEIR FATHERS.’ After multiple meetings with the entirety of the GNPC, Smith and Nicolson agreed to change the inscription to ‘VIRGINIA TO HER SONS AT GETTYSBURG’ and to substitute the Virginia State flag in place of the Confederate flag.” The first is very lost cause. I’m glad it was changed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Monument
Thank you, Suzanne for taking the time to provide such an informative response. I really appreciate it and gives me more places to dive into!
I well recall the utter fear and shock when it became known that the NPS was contemplating broadening interpretations at the Civil War parks. I've visited more than a few of the parks in the last 20 years (not as much as I would have liked to, of course) and I have seen none of the predicted absurdities that were tossed around in the 90s.
I remember the utter racist ire directed at Jesse Jackson, Jr., from some of my friends. It was awful. I wish I knew then what I know now... about history and about responding to this nonsense.
My apologies for the confusion. No, I am not making any claim about whether the monument should remain or be removed. I am interested in whether or how a guide should respond. How should these conversations be framed? I don't have any firm answers.
I was still writing about it regularly in the early years of my blog. Remember the outrage expressed surrounding the new Gettysburg museum when the plans were first made public?
Indeed. So much faux outrage about fears that were not realized---I made that point several times, that folks were expressing fear about the possibility of things happening that no one was talking about doing.
Kevin,
Excellent article. Back in January 2016 before Trump was elected I was finishing up teaching and leading the Gettysburg Staff Ride while at the Joint Forces Staff College. I always made the Soldier’s Cemetery my last stop.
While we were gathering near the spot where Lincoln gave his address, an elderly white couple, who appeared to be in their early eighties, were sitting on a bench where my students gathered. I invited them to stay if they wanted and let them know why we were there.
I discussed the human cost, the Rural Cemetery movement, and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. I read the speech to my students and emphasized Lincoln’s reference to the Declaration that “all men are created equal.”
They were very attentive as were my students and when we concluded and my students began to head back to our vans or to their own vehicles for the trip back to Norfolk, the man approached me and asked directions on how to get to the Chambersburg Road which I gladly gave him; and then he said: “You know that when they say that “all men are created equal” that some are more equal than others.”
I was stunned and attempted to deflect the man’s obvious racist comment with humor, referring to the rivalry of UCLA where I did my Army ROTC training about thirty-three years ago with that of the University of Southern California. The man looked at me and said that he was from Georgia and that he “wished that California would just drop off into the ocean,” and then walked away.
That experience was quite stunning, but then when one sees t-shirts sold in gift shops all over Gettysburg emblazoned with the Confederate battle flag and sayings like “I am not reconstructed,” it shouldn’t be surprising.
I think that all of the initiatives taken by the Park Service to include neglected history at the battlefields is badly needed. I hope that the “unreconstructed” won’t try to eliminate these displays and programs.
Peace,
Steve
Thanks so much for sharing this little story. I've got a few stories I could share as well.
Amazing huh? Sadly, I am no longer shocked.