I ragged on the trip planner from the National Parks Service Civil War website, but the rest of the site is fantastic. I’ve always found the NPS site-sites lacking in information. If you want two paragraphs on why they’re important, OK, but God forbid they should have photos of what to see while you’re there. The new sites have more information, and more photos – both new and wartime. The NPS is worth a visit, whether virtual or “meatspace”.
One of the many Civil War commemorations around Washington, DC, are a series of statues to the heroes of the war: Grant, Sherman, Farragut, McPherson and… Albert Pike?
Who the heck is Albert Pike? In all my years of study, I’ve never found a reason to remember that name. A quick glance at his Wikipedia page shows us he was a pro-slavery former Know-Nothing who became a Confederate brigadier (not even a major) general, and whose wartime service was so spotty he resigned even before the war got started.
That takes care of the who, but doesn’t cover the why; Why would such a now-forgotten military figure receive such a huge honour? Masonic influence must go a long way. There’s no other reason I can cite for this otherwise forgettable Confederate occupying a pedestal in a city where pedestals are highly contested territory.
Albert Pike (December 29, 1809–April 2, 1891) was an attorney, Confederate officer, writer, and Freemason. Pike is the only Confederate military officer or figure to be honored with an outdoor statue in Washington, D.C.
For those who haven’t yet heard the tumultuous story of Lincoln’s corpse, here’s some macabre reading for you. Possibly the inspiration for Weekend at Bernie’s? I’m not sure.
I’m curious as to the provenance of the illustration that accompanies the article: It was a well known fact that all but one glass negative of Lincoln’s body, bier and coffin were destroyed by Stanton, and I’ve heard nothing of heretofore unknown negatives being uncovered. This photo looks remarkably authentic. I’ve written in, but have no response yet from the author, so if anyone can enlighten me, please leave a comment!
Abraham Lincoln was one of the most celebrated and mysterious presidents in the in U.S. (maybe this is why he made such an excellent vampire hunter.) His assassination sent a nation into mourning, and was followed by a two week funeral tour by train car. But Lincoln’s body did not find rest at the end of this procession. Everyone from thieves to politicians tried to take control of the corpse — even decades after it was finally buried.
Here is the macabre tale of the journeys taken by Lincoln’s corpse over the decades before 1901, when at last it came to rest in a ten foot block made of cement and steel.
The National Park System has created a new Civil War portal, with a map tool that allows you to create a route for sesquicentennial holidaying. It seems promising, but in my opinion needs some refinement. Independent sites are available, but major and minor sites are given equal stature, so it’s difficult to zoom in on, say, Virginia, and gauge which of the hundreds of homes and museums are worth seeing.
The most impressive feature that Litterst shared during a lightning-fast demonstration was the site’s “Plan Your Visit” tool, which includes more than 1,700 Civil War sites around the country, including more than 100 national parks with lore from the War Between the States. In seconds, this interactive mapping gizmo enables user to build itineraries linking National Park Service spots with state and privately Civil War-themed historic sites and museums. The tool provides maps, driving distances, turn-by-turn directions, site descriptions, and links to more information about each place…
Once you’ve built your itinerary, you can print it, tweet it, post it to Facebook, or share it via a variety of other web and social-media sites.
via Cool Trip Planner is Part of NPS Civil War 150 Site – Past Is Prologue.
Today is the anniversary of Lincoln’s death, the process of which started the night before at Ford’s Theater, and ended across the street at the Petersen House. This year, both events and locations have been commemorated in a newly expanded museum housed in the building adjoining the House Where Lincoln Died.
Wait a minute, you might think. Education and leadership? The Civil War is barely over. Lincoln is dead. The nation is in shock. How do we get from there to a “center for education and leadership”? I have questions about that, but before exploring the quirks of contemporary commemoration, it is worth paying tribute to what has been accomplished. Lincoln has long been at the heart of the capital city: the National Mall is an affirmation of the Union he championed, the Lincoln Memorial on one end, and the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial on the other. But there was, until recently, no extensive exhibition here about Lincoln and his times. Ford’s Theater, Mr. Tetreault explained, used to be a brief stopping point.
Now, with these exhibitions, Lincoln has found a home in a place best known for his death. With the historian Richard Norton Smith as adviser, and displays designed by Split Rock Studios and Northern Light Productions, Mr. Tetreault has given visitors a grounding in the history of Lincoln’s time, a sense of the melodrama of his murder and an affirmation of Lincoln’s influence.
The biography is omitted — for that you should visit the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Ill., which turns his life into a series of special effects and tableaus — and his ideas could be more fervently explored, but there may be no better survey of Lincoln than the one offered here. The emphasis is not on artifacts, though you can see the ring of keys found on Booth’s body and other objects. But the exhibition succeeds because of a careful narrative, well-chosen images and informative touch screens; the new completes the old.
I keep putting off my trip to Washington, and keep finding articles like this chastising me and reminding that this is a bad decision!
This company contacted our Civil War Round Table a few weeks ago. Turns out we’re not the only Canadians with an interest in the war! The CG Fort Moultrie presented here is amazing. A real glance into the surroundings of those who eventually found themselves dodging the first fire of the war at Sumter. The only thing that’s missing are maquettes of the soldiers and families walking around in their daily routines. Worth a look!
In 2008, a historian and two young computer-graphic specialists began an exploratory association, to learn how their respective talents might be combined for educational ends. They tried combining the latest CG technology with in-depth research, to direct the visualization of vanished buildings or even past historical movements. Through a reconstruction of 18th-Century Quebec City and its surrounding terrain, their methods evolved sufficiently to allow them to become incorporated in 2010 and embark upon their first independent project.
After discarding various possibilities, they chose to virtually recreate the remnants of 200-year-old Fort Moultrie, as only its weathered ramparts still remained intact on Sullivan’s Island at the entrance into Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. Satellite imagery was used to calibrate its outer perimeter and the north-western interior around its Magazine, while the footprint of its long-lost West Barracks — plus vintage photographs and historical records — allowed for a virtual resurrection of that building, followed by several more. Fully-functional cannons were then replicated from 19th-Century US Artillery manuals, and the entire model textured in period stucco, paints, bricks, and vegetation. The resultant three-dimensional model serves to produce a variety of instructive video-clips, dioramas, and photographs.
Battlefields in Motion – Fort Moultrie May 1860 – Peacetime Federal Garrison.
You’ll permit me one last public thank-you to those who go out of their way to preserve and present historical sites; this story made the Virginia news in early February, and I thought it worth a mention.
This week’s collapse of a Civil War-era tobacco warehouse on Dunbar Drive has thrust a spotlight on another Lynchburg building — which now stands as the city’s sole surviving warehouse-turned-war-hospital.
“It’s sad,” said Crystal Morris, of family-owned Morris Construction, which occupies what historians refer to as the “Knight Building.” “This is the last one.”
During the Civil War, dozens of Lynchburg buildings were converted into hospitals to care for the wounded pouring in from battlefields.
The Knight Building, named for tobacconist John P. Knight, was called into service along with its neighbor across the street, known as the Miller Building.
Together, the two structures witnessed the deaths of more than 200 soldiers.
Here’s a look at the last remaining building, and the restored structure.
In an era of cheap construction, monster homes and mindless development, this section of the news piece was really heartwarming:
The Knight Building is a circa-1845 four-story brick warehouse. When Crystal and Steve Morris bought it in 1997, it was vacant, run down and filled with long-abandoned junk.
The building needed an enormous amount of work. The night after they agreed to buy it, Steve Morris woke up in a panic, wondering what he had done.
Today, historic restoration is a specialty of Morris Construction.
“We reworked the roof, repointed the brick, put steel supports in where we thought it was weak, fixed every window,” he said. “It’s been a lot of work, but we wanted to preserve it.”
The upper levels of the warehouse have their original floors, beams and, in some cases, windowpanes. The Morris family has opened it up in the past for historic re-enactments.
“One neat thing about this building is, every five or six months, the doorbell will ring and it will be someone whose traced their ancestor back to the war and back to here,” said Crystal Morris, adding they always are happy to let people upstairs to see the old hospital rooms.
“It seems to help them make a real connection,” she said. “To be where their ancestors were.”
It would be easy (and likely cheaper) for this family to turn people away, or to gut the structure and develop the inside. Instead, they’ve chosen not only to foot the bill for the preservation, but to invite strangers in to experience the surroundings. I like to think there’s an express lane to heaven (or at least a fast-track to preservation grant approvals) for people like these.
After posting the entry about the Whitman Archive, I received a note from Archive employee Bev Rilett.
Thanks for the kind notice of the Whitman Archive. I work there for Ken Price, who has been supporting grad students in English with this monumental project for more than 10 years. Try our bibliography search feature for any Whitman-related topic you can think of! You might also be interested in our newer related project, Civil War Washington, available here: http://civilwardc.org/
All this work is supported through the University of Nebraska and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and other government funding for public education.
I’ve had a look at the Civil War Washington site, and it is absolutely worth checking out. Maps, texts, and images galore, emphasising a development that gets overshadowed by the hubbub of the war years: That those four years of struggle changed DC from a kind of rural backwater to the Nation’s-Capital-note-caps seat of power. I’m not enough of a historian to know when the “Presidential power” tradition began, but it’d be interesting mapping that trend on a chart along with this!
As I mentioned yesterday, The Atlantic Monthly is knocking the sesquicentennial celebrations out of the park. This piece on the Gettysburg Cyclorama is fantastic, and is making me greatly regret declining a ticket on both my trips to the park.
Four hundred feet long. Fifty feet high. It was art on an astonishing scale. All four versions were housed in massive, purpose-built rotundas. In Boston, for example, visitors walked through a grand crenelated archway, paid for their tickets, and proceeded along a dark winding passage toward the viewing platform. They ascended a winding staircase to another time and place. “The impression upon the beholder as he steps upon this platform,” one reviewer wrote, “is one of mingled astonishment and awe.”
July 3, 1863. The Battle of Gettysburg rages on for a third day. From just behind Cemetery Ridge, visitors watched Pickett’s Charge crash against the Union lines. There, in the distance! General Lee and his staff. Much closer, an artillery caisson explodes. All around, soldiers crouch, charge, level rifles, bare bayonets, fight, die.
A dozen different twists heightened the illusion. Drapes hung over the platform from the ceiling, limiting and directing the view and leaving the viewers shrouded in shadows. The indirect lighting shone most brightly on the top of the canvas, illuminating the sky in brilliant blue. The canvas bowed outward by a foot in the middle, receding as it approached the ground and horizon. Tinsel lent a convincing gleam to the bayonets and buckles in the painting.
What most astonished observers, though, was the diorama, which began near the edge of the platform and ended at the painting, 45 feet away. Hundreds of cartloads of earth were covered in sod and studded with vegetation, then topped with the detritus of the battlefield. Shoes, canteens, fences, walls, corpses: near the canvas, these props were cunningly arranged to blend seamlessly into the painting. Two wooden poles, painted on the canvas, met a third leaned against it to form a tripod. A dirt road ran out into the diorama. A stretcher borne by two men, one painted and the other formed of boards, had its poles inserted through holes in the painting. “So perfect is the illusion,” as the Boston Advertiser voiced the common sentiment, “that it is impossible to tell where reality ends and the painting begins.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/05/the-great-illusion-of-gettysburg/238870/
I’m just wrapping up the Shelby Foote audiobooks, and listening to the Confederate cabinet parsing out the remains of the treasury. I appear to be the last person on Earth for whom “Confederate Gold” didn’t ring any bells. Does this mean I’m too late to head South with my metal detector and spade?
Accordingly the group set out on their assigned mission, but unfortunately their scouts met Union troops before they got to Augusta. The group returned to the Chennault Plantation. Parker was unable to receive further instructions from Davis because he had already left Washington. It was on this night that the gold disappeared in a hijacking about 100 yards from the porch of the house. One theory says that the treasure was buried at the confluence of the Apalachee and Oconee rivers. Some say that the gold was divided among the locals…
As time went by, the Chennault plantation became known as the “golden farm,” and for many years after that people came there to search for the missing gold. Down through the years, many gold coins have been found along the dirt roads near the plantation following a heavy rain storm.