CNN Travel lists twelve top destinations for Civil War buffs. Lists of this sort make for great debate fodder. I’m actually pretty satisfied with these choices, except I’d be tempted to replace Mobile Bay with Ft. Sumter. If you consider Springfield a Civil War destination with all of its Lincoln attractions, then you could probably throw that one in, too.
What we really need is a list of the top Rev War spots. The tricky part would be deciding what constitutes a “location.” Does the Philly area get one slot on the list, or do you separate Independence National Historical Park and Valley Forge? How about Williamsburg and Yorktown? And what in the world are we going to do about Boston?
A few items for your edification as you kiss your summer goodbye.
Joel McDurmon argues that David Barton failed to make his case in The Jefferson Lies. The reason this is noteworthy is because McDurmon’s piece is posted at the American Vision website. This organization calls for a nation “that recognizes the sovereignty of God over all of life, where Christians apply a Biblical worldview to every facet of society. This future America will be again a ‘city on a hill’ drawing all nations to the Lord Jesus Christ and teaching them to subdue the earth for the advancement of His Kingdom.” It’s pretty interesting to see Christian Reconstructionists taking Barton apart. (Hat tip to John Fea)
A few months ago Connecticut rolled out a $27 million tourism marketing campaign organized around the slogan “Still Revolutionary,” which “speaks to Connecticut’s deep roots in the founding of this country and reminds us that we still have that independent, revolutionary spirit,” according to Gov. Daniel Malloy. It’s a little odd, therefore, that Fort Griswold (site of the 1781 Battle of Groton Heights and one of the state’s most important Rev War attractions) is conspicuously absent in the ads that have been released so far. It’s the thought that counts, anyway.
Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg is getting a new museum, slated to open next July.
An Illinois Lincoln fan is heading out on a cross-country trip to read the Gettysburg Address from the steps of every state capitol. If my reckoning is correct, that adds up to about an hour and forty minutes of actual speaking time.
Speaking of Lincoln, the folks at Simon & Schuster know an opportunity when they see one.
Like most people, when I visited Appomattox Court House I was mainly interested in seeing the McLean House. The tiny parlor looked much as it did on that day in April 1865, or at least the way it looked in the painting I recall from my fourth-grade textbook.
But the appearance is a little deceptive. That photo doesn’t show the actual table where Lee sat, and its oval counterpart on the other side of the room isn’t the table used by Grant. In fact, the entire room is something of a replica. The McLean House had quite an eventful career after the two generals left. Purchased by speculators intent on turning it into a museum, it was dismantled in 1893 and then rebuilt after World War II. What you see is basically a reconstruction using original materials.
I knew this when I walked inside, and presumably most other visitors do too, since NPS signage explains the structure’s complicated history. But I still wanted to go inside and be in that room, and once I was in there I forgot all about the fact that it’s sort of like an illusion. All historic house museums collaborate with their visitors in this game of make-believe. The museums use furnishings and paint to mask the building’s post-historical afterlife, and visitors suspend their disbelief and take the restoration for the way it actually was.
Or at least we hope they’re suspending their disbelief. Some visitors, no doubt, assume when they visit historic buildings that the people who lived or worked there just walked off and left it intact, right down to the candlesticks, and there it sat like a hermetically sealed time capsule down through the decades until the tour guides came in and laid down carpet runners and velvet ropes. Interpreters must walk a fine line between two opposing responsibilities, maintaining the illusion while explaining its boundaries at the same time.
For as long as I can remember, whenever I’ve gone on a road trip (either with my family as a kid or taking the wheel myself as an adult) I’ve collected brochures and rack cards at rest stops and hotel lobbies. Actually, “collecting” is the wrong term, because I don’t have a collection in the formal sense of the word, just disorganized stashes and piles all over the house. There’s really no reason to keep them, but for some reason I have a hard time throwing them out. I suppose I could’ve created some system for organizing and labeling them, but it’s really more of an obsessive-compulsive habit than anything else.
Image from the NPS Harpers Ferry Center
The other day I made a passing, tongue-in-cheek reference to NPS brochures. These standardized leaflets are familiar to every heritage tourist—an advertising device, tour guide, and teaching tool all rolled into one. Most of the ones I’ve got are wrinkled and crushed from being clutched in a sweaty fist while tramping around on some battlefield. To me, the sight of that white Helvetica font on a black strip has always been a sign that there’s an adventure in the making.
Modern NPS brochures use the Unigrid system designed by Massimo Vignelli in the late 1970′s. It’s versatile enough to allow each site to customize it a little, but of course it also helps maintain consistency across the park system. Consistency and standardization are important, because when you get right down to it, the NPS is a brand.
That applies to interpretation, too. Every public history institution has to develop an interpretive “voice” that works for its multiple audiences, but the NPS has the added task of maintaining a voice across dozens of different sites. This puts some constraints on the people doing the interpreting, something I’d never really thought of until I read this recent post at Interpreting the Civil War.
When you’re a visitor, it’s easy to forget that the NPS is made up of individual people, each of whom have their own ideas about how to interpret a site and must work within the constraints of the brand. Personally, I’ve always found NPS interpretation to be consistently superb. Would any of you folks out there who wear the gray and green care to share your experiences and opinions about doing public history within an agency framework?
At least one writer in Boston is a little miffed because Philadelphia will be home to the new Museum of the American Revolution. Personally, I think Philly is the better option, just because it’s more centrally located and because it was the capital.
Besides, Boston already has so many great early American sites that maybe it’s time to share the love a little. New England is the only American region I haven’t visited yet, but when I finally go there, it’ll be a multi-week orgy of historical sightseeing the like of which mankind has yet to witness.
This might surprise you, but I think a good third-runner-up home for the museum would be Charleston. Think about it: Almost one-fifth of all American combat deaths in the war were in South Carolina during the war’s last years, and there were probably more armed clashes there than in any other state with the possible exception of New Jersey. (My source for these claims is John Gordon’s book on Rev War battles in the Palmetto State.) Of course, two things you don’t want near your artifacts are humidity and hurricanes, but I’m in favor of anything that will shave a few hours off my drive when this thing opens.
Here and here. Personally, I’m more interested in the collections and the interpretation than the exterior. I’m hoping they don’t slight the campaigns in the South.
I’ve been on a real Tennessee frontier kick lately, visiting places in my home state that I’ve been meaning to see for a long time. A few days ago my cousin and I took another day trip to the Tri-Cities region, which means it’s time for yet another historic site review.
Tipton-Haynes State Historic Site in Johnson City has a story that goes back quite a long way. A spring and cave on the property attracted animals for thousands of years, and the animals attracted humans who hunted them with stone weapons. In the late 1600′s, the first Englishmen to set foot in Tennessee passed through the area; a century later, Daniel Boone stopped there.
In 1784, when Tennessee was still part of North Carolina, Col. John Tipton purchased 100 acres around the spring and cave, building a one-and-a-half-story log home. That same year, some of his fellow settlers proclaimed the creation of a new State of Franklin, consisting of the three westernmost counties of North Carolina, with military hero John Sevier its first governor. The problem was that, as far as North Carolina was concerned, this statehood movement was illegitimate, and the Franklinites were still subject to North Carolina law. As you might imagine, the coexistence of two rival states in the same place presented a rather interesting political dilemma.
Tipton refused to recognize the legitimacy of Franklin, and by late 1786 had become the region’s foremost supporter of North Carolina sovereignty. In February 1788, when North Carolina authorities seized some of Sevier’s slaves and took them to Tipton’s farm for safekeeping, the would-be governor and about 135 fellow Franklinites showed up to demand their return. Tipton and the other North Carolina loyalists holed up in the log house, trading occasional shots with Sevier’s force outside. When reinforcements arrived for Tipton, the standoff turned into an outright skirmish—the only armed confrontation between Franklinites and North Carolina—which ended in a retreat by Sevier and his supporters. The fledgling statehood movement petered out not long after the firefight at Tipton’s farm.
The house and the land around it passed to Tipton’s son in 1813. In 1837 a newlywed lawyer named Landon Carter Haynes received the farm as a wedding gift from his father. Haynes built a number of additions to the house and constructed a small law office adjacent to it, where he attracted clients from across Tennessee and North Carolina. An ardent Southern advocate, he served as a Confederate senator during the Civil War. He obtained a pardon when the war ended, but left his home and moved to Memphis. The state purchased the property in the 1940′s.
This complicated history of prehistoric hunters, stillborn states, and Civil War politicians is told in a fine new exhibit at the Tipton-Haynes visitor center, which includes artifacts excavated from the grounds, Tipton and Haynes family heirlooms, and short video presentations on the State of Franklin and slavery in the Haynes household.
It’s a very attractive site; in fact, it’s difficult to believe that this pastoral little chunk of real estate exists in the middle of modern-day Johnson City. Unfortunately for frontier aficionados such as yours truly, Tipton’s log house was altered dramatically over the course of the nineteenth century. Its present appearance thus reflects the Haynes era more than the period of the Franklin battle, but it’s still a nicely restored structure.
There are a number of outbuildings on the grounds, some of which are original to the Haynes farm, others reconstructed or relocated from other sites. A short path along an old buffalo trail takes you to the spring and cave.
This is a great little site with an effective interpretation of an impressive cross-section of Tennessee history, and of course it’s located right in the cradle of the Volunteer State, so there are a lot of other historic places just a short drive away if you decide to make a day of it. Give yourself about thirty or forty minutes to take in the visitor center’s exhibit and an hour or so to tour the grounds.
The most popular historic home here in the Appalachian region is probably Biltmore House, the palatial Gilded Age mansion of George Washington Vanderbilt II in Asheville, NC. Some readers will be surprised that I qualified that statement with the word “probably.” In terms of visitation, no historic house museum in Appalachia comes close. In fact, few historic homes in the entire country could compete with Biltmore’s annual numbers, although offhand I’d guess that Mount Vernon and Monticello welcome more visitors. The reason I hedged is not because its popularity as a destination is in doubt, but because I’m not sure whether I’d consider it Biltmore a “historic house museum.” It’s difficult for me to associate Biltmore Estate with other historic sites.
Strictly speaking, I realize this seems a little ludicrous. It’s a house, it’s historic (or old, at least), and it’s a museum. What’s my problem here?
Biltmore House, as seen from the front
Consider the reasons why people visit Biltmore and what they get out of it. If we were to speak with guests as they stood in line to buy their tickets, how many of them would tell us that they’re about to shell out money to learn about the past? I’d say it would be very few indeed.
Or perhaps we might ask them if they came to Biltmore to learn about its first resident, the man responsible for its construction. Here, too, I think affirmative answers would be few and far between. People go to Mount Vernon, Monticello, the Hermitage, and the Lincoln Home because of their former occupants, but I don’t think this is the case with Biltmore. Quite a few Americans will probably recognize the name “Vanderbilt,” but not George Washington Vanderbilt II in particular.
In fact, I think most Biltmore visitors would be hard pressed to identify any salient facts about Biltmore’s first owner, or to name any notable accomplishments of his other than the fact that he built himself an awesome pad. An introverted younger sibling, George wasn’t responsible for running the family’s business affairs. Instead, he spent most of his free time (presumably he had a great deal of it) cultivating his own personal intellectual interests. A brief bio on Wikipedia notes that he was fluent in a number of foreign languages and managed some family property for a while; other than that, he “inherited $1 million from his grandfather and received another million on his 21st birthday from his father. Upon his father’s death, he inherited $5 million more, as well as the income from a $5 million trust fund.” Not a bad gig if you can get it, but it won’t lead generations of children to recite your speeches at their second grade recitals.
My point here is not to belittle G.W. Vanderbilt II, but to point out that neither a regard for history nor a familiarity with Biltmore’s original occupant will explain the estate’s astronomical attendance numbers. Instead, I submit that the overwhelming majority of visitors to Biltmore are exercising the same impulse that makes people watch TV shows where opulent houses are exposed to the cameras and to buy magazines with photographs of lavish interiors. They go there because want to see how the fabulously rich once lived, to vicariously experience what it must have been like to enjoy untold wealth in an age of elegance and opulence, and to appreciate majesty and beauty. Having talked to people who enjoy visiting Biltmore, and having visited myself on a number of occasions, I think most people go there just because they want to ooh and aah.
In and of itself, this is no big deal. Historic sites aren’t necessarily any less historic just because visitors patronize them for reasons that have nothing to do with history. Lots of folks visit national historical parks for the fresh air, the hiking, and so on. The difference is this: What I’ve seen of interpretation during my visits to Biltmore, and what I’ve seen of the estate’s promotional material, leads me to believe that oohing and aahing is pretty much all you’re supposed to get out of the experience.
Now, before we rush to denounce this “lifestyles of the rich and famous” approach to historic interpretation, and to ask ourselves whether it constitutes historic interpretation at all, let me pose a consideration about historic house museums in general.
Perhaps historic house sites are inherently deceptive, in that they inadvertently perpetuate a very common and romanticized view of the past that I call the “frilly notion of history.” When people think about how great it must have been to live in an earlier age, it’s usually because they have a myopic view of what living in that earlier age was actually like. Many people have spoken to me about the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with a sort of wistful attitude, longing for the days when well-mannered ladies and gentlemen lived in gorgeous houses, wore frilly dresses, and danced the quadrille.
And yet the world of mansions, frilly gowns, and quadrilles wasn’t necessarily how “people lived back then.” That was how the affluent lived “back then.” It reflects only a slice of human experience from the period in question. In the pre-modern world, most people’s lives were anything but mannered and frilly.
Historic house museums, I think, can unwittingly perpetuate this notion of a comfy, genteel past, although it happens through no fault at all of the people who manage and interpret these sites. It’s simply a by-product of the differential vagaries of time. The houses that last 150 or 200 years and transform into museums are generally the homes of the wealthy or notable. Places where ordinary schmoes lived are harder to come by; they get torn down, renovated beyond recognition, or cannibalized for building materials to make the homes of later ordinary schmoes. Thus when you visit some historic house, it was probably the home of someone who was comparatively well off.
Lest you think I’m knocking historic house museums, let me note that I spent a year of my life running one. It was pretty small as far as historic house museums go—just three rooms, a garret, and a kitchen joined to the main residence by a dogtrot—but it was pretty nice for the time and place of its construction. The occupant had been an officer in the militia, a statesman, and one of the largest slaveholders in his county. When visitors remarked that the house seemed awfully small, I reminded them that contemporaries of its original owner would have found it quite comfortable.
At the really big house museums, the discrepancy between what visitors see and how most people of the period lived is even greater. Most Revolutionary Virginians didn’t live at places like Monticello, just as most Tennesseans of the Jacksonian era couldn’t dream of living at a mansion like the Hermitage. We cherish these places because we’re lucky that they’ve lasted to the present day and because of the remarkable men who inhabited them. They’re worthy of our appreciation not because they’re typical residences of typical people, but precisely because they and their owners were very special indeed.
So this brings us back to the question of whether visitors to historic house museums are getting a skewed view of the past. I suppose they are, but that’s also true of visitors to any public history institution. No site can ever hope to encompass an entire era or place. People who restrict their heritage tourism to one type of site or field of interest—battlefields, for instance—will invariably miss out on many other aspects of historical interpretation. Perhaps people who visit Biltmore in order to vicariously experience the life of a Gilded Age millionaire are not so different from those who visit battlegrounds to vicariously live the experiences of common men and boys who left their mark on history with bombs and bullets rather than bricks.
.PNG)
