In Another Sesquicentennial

On Tuesday, Jake wrote asking who controls the memory of 9/11. The ownership of memory is such an interesting thing. This tenth anniversary was an interesting event, fraught with conflicted memory and different voices. It was intriguing to watch all of the slight conflicts which emerged last week leading up to the ceremonies on Sunday morning.

It has also been interesting to see the Civil War analogies to which a few folks, particularly John Hennessy and Kevin Levin, have pointed, viewing Civil War memory as an interesting case study of how 9/11 might be commemorated and memorialized in coming decades and centuries.

Coincidentally, I have been picking away for a few weeks now on a small thought experiment, inspired by the hot morning I spent at Manassas in July. What could the sesquicentennial of an event like 9/11, an event we have collectively sworn to "never forget," look like? Envision it as a simple piece of science fiction, like reaching forward through a hole in time 150 years and plucking out a news story on the anniversary commemoration of the attack on the Pentagon. And like all Science Fiction, it is more about the events of the present than the events of the future.

As Rod Serling, master of Science Fiction said in his introduction to the Twilight Zone episode "In Praise of Pip":

"Submitted for your approval..."

"The Defining Moment of Modern America"
Attack Anniversary Commemorations Draw Modest Crowds
Thomas Farquad for the Washington Post, Sunday, September 12, 2151

A crowd of about 650 people gathered at the west wall of the old Pentagon on Saturday morning to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the attack of September 11th, 2001. Dignitaries from District government, as well as the Commonwealth of Virginia were present.

"The men and women who fought the fires in these old walls on that day in September were brave, honest and hard working Americans," Virginia Governor Chauncey Williamson told the crowd. The Pentagon was in Virginia in 2001 when the attacks took place. The District of Columbia Statehood Act of 2076 transferred the land back to District control.

"The attack that happened here sent a shock wave through the world," the Governor remarked, "For two decades, wars were fought over the question of what our nation’s role in the world should be." Governor Chauncey said the unity seen in the years after the attack was a "blessing born from the heart of a tragedy."

District of Columbia Governor Samuel Williams, whose great-great grandfather was mayor of the city when the attacks took place in 2001, said that, "the lessons of so long ago are still relevant today." Quoting President Malia Obama, Williams reminded the crowd that, "America is fundamentally a good nation, with good intentions, good people and good morals. But we drift outside of our boundaries sometimes and need to stop to re investigate who we are."

Carter Smithson said he came to the Pentagon to honor his ancestor who died when the plane hit the building in 2001. Smithson, a clerk at the State Department, was dressed in the uniform of a 20th century army officer. "I represent my great-great-great grandfather today. These are the same types of clothes he wore when he died that day."

Smithson saw the small crowd as discouraging. "I wish more people had come out to commemorate both the awful tragedy and the unity that came out of it." Smithson sees America as a "stronger nation, more united" in the wake of 9/11.

On the opposite side of the park, Gerald Willson talked to the public about those who boarded the planes and fought for their freedom. "They were protecting their way of life," Willson told the crowd. "They were fighting for a cause they thought just."

Willson, an investment banker from Rockville, MD wore a headscarf and carried the chosen tool of the Islamic fighters on board the aeroplanes, a small knife called a "box cutter."

"I do this to make sure that the story gets told," Willson said. "Liberal historians want to focus so much on the causes of the war. They say these men were fighting to destroy America." But Willson feels the men were fighting, "in a revolution to ensure that their nations weren't tampered with." Willson said we need to, "remember the bravery of the people who fought on both sides on nine-eleven."

Anne Gerald, a systems analyst from Arlington saw the event differently. "Today is about the Americans who died here," she commented. "The men on the planes were not freedom fighters like some want to portray them, but simple murderers."

The park along the west wall of the Old Pentagon Commercial Park is open daily, sunrise to sunset and accessible from Pentagon Metro station.

Manassas: Why They Fought Here

Replica of the flag of Company G, 4th Alabama Infantry at Manassas' 150th Celebration

Another quick observational post on the Sesquicentennial event at Manassas last month. This time, it all revolves around the Confederate living history camp adjacent to the Henry House, and more directly to the exhibit there which the reenactors entitled, "Flags of Manassas." Curiously, the flags of Manassas were only rebel banners, with nary an American flag in sight. But that's another discussion completely.

Near the end of the row of flags was the one pictured above, a first national flag with a large image of a cotton bale emblazoned across its stripes. One of the reenactors informed me it was a replica of the banner carried by the 4th Alabama, company G. The flag later became the regiment's colors. The flag was presented to the men of the 4th Alabama by the ladies of Marion, Alabama. The original is in the Alabama Department of Archives and History.

But what did the flag mean? What was that cotton bale and the large cotton plant on the canton intended to represent?

The ladies of Marion presented the proud banner to their brave men recruited from across Perry County, Alabama. Thanks to some keen numbers crunching by rootsweb user Tom Blake, we can start to get an image of what Perry County looked like on the eve of the war as men joined the army which would fight on the fields of northern Virginia. Perry County had a total of 1,045 slave owners, who held 18,206 humans in bondage. Over half of those slaves were owned by masters with 34 or more humans beings listed as their property. Perry county was a land of plantations and production farming. Commodities flowed from the fields of Perry County, picked by black hands. The flag was simply a, "beautiful device which illustrat[ed] so aptly the product of our lovely country."

So, when the regiment decided to adopt this flag as their regimental banner, what type of statement was that choice making?

To add another plot thickening and tantalizingly juicy detail to the tale, the flag purportedly flapped in the breeze near Thomas Jackson as he received the appellation, "Stonewall." There he stood, like a stonewall, fighting under a banner touting the primacy of the quintessential slave crop. What was this war all about again?

Manassas: Consumer Time Machine

Only a quick post this week, as I'm preparing for a few busy days in Dulles at a conference.

One of the interesting bits of interpretation I found at Manassas' Sesquicentennial event was a rarity in my book.  Oftentimes, living history volunteers place the contents of a haversack or a bedroll out on a gum blanket and simply name off the items for visitors.  Beyond this laundry list, the conversations rarely reach into the realm of drawing personal connections with the visitor's daily life or personal experiences.  The intellectual connection is well lain out, but an emotional connection is often fleeting.

But one of the living historians at Manassas hit an interpretive home run.  Look at the exhibit pictured above.  Under the right side of a fly were some original period food containers.  Then, on the left side, was the spread pictured above.  They are modern brands which find their lineage in the Civil War era.Some were regular consumer goods.  Others made their first fortunes from war.  The gentleman who was interpreting the setup was making connections for visitors.  It didn't take a leap to imagine how many of these goods sat on my shelf at home, artifacts of the Civil War in my kitchen cupboard or on my refrigerator shelves.  The connection between the past and the present was palpable in those simple bags of Eight O'clock Coffee and Lea & Perrins Sauce.

Knowing the soldiers and civilians of the 19th century ate some of the same foods I appreciate, the Civil War was alive in the supermarket of my mind.

Manassas: On The Road Again

A few months ago I took a quick jaunt to Carlisle to see the Pennsylvania Civil War Sesquicentennial roadshow. I was heartily impressed with the quality of interpretation and exhibit design. For a rolling exhibit which needs to fold in upon itself, it was very rich and powerful. Jared Frederick, proprietor of History Matters had a nice roundup of what that exhibit comprises.

After the great experience with Pennsylvania's traveling offering, I was excited to see what Virginia, the heart of the Civil War in the East, had to offer. That's why Michael Lynch's preemptive criticism of the exhibit actually excited me. I believe that coming close to a recovered experience, trying to see the world through a historical actor's eyes, is not only possible but the ultimate opportunity for any historical interpreter to offer their visitors.

So how did Virginia's HistoryMobile stack up to Pennsylvania's? Not very well in my estimation. The exhibit was well intentioned. But the hokey execution of the first gallery cast a long shadow on the rest of the experience. The gallery was a small, dark room. Soldiers voices pipe from the darkness, discussing the coming fight. Then battle breaks out. "Battle" consisted of about a dozen and a half red LEDs embedded in the wall blinking at random intervals. Then the underbrush caught fire and an orange wash rose from one side of the room. Then the lights came up again.

To recover experience, you need to attempt to approximate experience. At a camporee as a Boy Scout, I remember going into a fire safety RV. We sat in the bedroom as simulated smoke poured into the room, setting off a smoke detector and allowing us to safely see how dropping to the ground and crawling to a window could save our lives. The experience was a safe approximation.

A simple smoke machine and some more complex lighting might have gotten the experience just a bit closer to the real. Let the visitor start to feel fear and confusion. Let them feel the distress of a confused soldier. Make realistic muzzle flashes, and not something akin to winking owl's eyes in a carnival haunted house. The battle experience gallery was a relative failure.

The next two galleries show white and black civilian experience in wartime. The first is a sparse parlour, the second an equally sparse slave cabin. Using just a few well chosen stories, the exhibit tries to convey the lives of these actors of the past. But where recovering personal experience is the goal of the first gallery, the next two are more akin to simple exhibitry. In addition, the space is cramped and tight, making soaking up the content along with the 9 other people exiting the battle gallery nigh impossible. Interactive computer panels lined the walls in both galleries, but the content did not differ from one screen to another. For so many different sensory inputs, there was very little information.

The final gallery featured the fates of citizens and soldiers, as the war was both an opportunity to gain and lose something. Walls of faces to flip and discover the fates of individuals was effective, if not novel. But the video in this last room was heartily disappointing. "Our search for a single meaning for all these places will always fail," the video states. In this, it is very much correct. But then it begins shoehorning:

• "For the descendent of a soldier, they are places of reverence."

• "For the scholar, places of learning."

• "For African-Americans and immigrants, they are places associated with new-found freedom."

• "To some they are testament to the best and the worst of humanity-the wasting effects of war."

Can a white man not feel the power of that new-found freedom? Can an immigrant not feel reverence? Can a scholar not see these places as abominations, symbols of the collapse of the human spirit? Can African-Americans not study these places for the keen excitement of their military tactics? How racist is the thought that just because you look one way or another, you automatically think of a place in a particular way?

What benefit does dictating the meanings that people walk away with after encountering the Civil War in the Old Dominion provide? Wouldn't it be far more effective to offer these visitors the opportunity to draw their own personal meanings from the war? Saying to someone, "You must care about this place because of..." is one of the surest ways to alienate them. If you allow them to explore, though, they will develop their own personal meanings for a place. When they invest their own meanings in something, they keep on caring.

The video makes the blanket claim that the Civil War was, "an event long ago that remains central to Virginia's identity. What happened in our back yards, in our towns, along our rivers and in our valleys-helped launch the American nation on a path to power and greatness." The last line is cutting in its vapid simplicity: "The union once asunder, now changed, inseparable."

What about Reconstruction? What about 100 years of racial segregation? What about the current debate over state or federal supremacy? What about the continued definition and redefinitions of what constitutes a citizen?

I know these sound like trite questions, like I am asking the exhibit to cover that which it never intended to. But then I stepped outside and watched a video on a monitor in an adjacent Virginia Civil War 150th Commission tent. Here was the conclusion that SHOULD have been in that last room in a windy, bright tent, barely visible. Covering 1865 to 2011, the video brought the Civil War full circle, showing the rough and winding path forward from the Civil War to today set to the jarring tune of Jimi Hendrix' 1969 performance of the Star-Spangled Banner at Woodstock. I tried to film it as best I could, but the video came out poorly, so I don't have anything to share. When the Virginia Civil War 150th Commission puts the video up on their site, I'll be sure to link you off to it.

Still, for a minute, just imagine what could have been possible had the organizers just let everyone draw their own conclusions from the exhibit, instead of dictating the acceptable importances of the Civil War? How many more visitors would find the place they fit within the Civil War?