In summary,
Kimball asserts that the exhibition was designed so
as to avoid controversy, and that the MOC needed to
explicitly connect slavery to the Civil War, the Confederacy,
and the history of the South. These are all things that
the MOC still does not do and, in many cases, actively
avoids.
The accompanying
Before Freedom Came book does not avoid the horrors
of slavery. Charles Joyner’s chapter “The World of the
Plantation Slaves,” amply documents the sexual abuse
of slaves, but fails to use the term “rape.” Joyner
does have a paragraph where he suggests that some slaves
“may have given their sexual favors more or less willingly,”
but is a slave really able to give consent to an owner
that can whip the slave with impunity? This is what
slavery was about: after you were worked sun up to sundown,
were whipped and subject to abuses, mothers, daughters,
sisters, and wives were raped, and the slaves were powerless
to do anything about it. Drew Gilpin Faust, now Harvard
University president, surprisingly asserts in the collection
that paternalistic ideas of slavery “ensnared white
southerners in a web of duty and imbued slaves with
a doctrine of rights.”[9] Dismaying also is that Eugene Genovese, despite
his extensive contributions to Southern Partisan
magazine and his other writings and support of neo-Confederate
ideology, was referred to as a credible scholar.[10]
Finally a continuing irritation in this book, and in
much of writing about slave owners, is the reference
to some slave owners being kind. Kind or good masters
are those who let their slaves go free such as George
Corbin who denounced the injustice of slavery and set
22 of his slaves free, otherwise some masters are just
crueler than others.[11]
Overall, however, the book largely recounts the horrors
of slavery, and details things like the selling of slaves
separating families and other atrocities of Antebellum
slavery. Yet, despite these elements, one gaping omission
is discussion of slave mortality. Such documentation
would make it clear how severe slavery was, and that
in some cases it was a charnel house of death. In addition,
neither the Museum of the Confederacy exhibit nor the
book explicitly connected slavery to the establishment
of, and rationale for, the Confederacy. Being that the
White House of the Confederacy was the residence of
Jefferson Davis it might have been useful to have something
about the short lifespan of Davis’s slaves on his Mississippi
plantation and Davis’ vigorous efforts to defend slavery
and prevent the United States from acting against the
Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Robert E. Lee only comes
up once in Before Freedom Came, in reference
to a picture of one of his slaves formally dressed in
a uniform and holding an accordion; there is nothing
in the book about Lee whipping his slaves, nor that
he rented out his slaves, was a strong supporter of
slavery, and a white supremacist (see part 2 of this
essay).[12] On the topic of the relation of other leading
Confederate figures to slavery, Before Freedom Came
is silent. The fact that Nathan Bedford Forrest was
a slave dealer might have been mentioned. Vice-President
of the Confederacy Alexander H. Stephens’ infamous ‘Cornerstone’
speech stating that the Confederacy was based on the
principal of white supremacy could have been incorporated,
as could some of the Declaration of Causes or Resolutions
of the seceding states such as this extract from the
Declaration of Texas:
In all the
non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good
faith and comity which should exist between entirely
distinct nations, the people have formed themselves
into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers
to control the affairs of each of those States, based
upon the unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern
States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of
African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of
the equality of all men, irrespective of race or color—a
doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience
of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations
of the Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro
slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition
of political equality between the white and the negro
races, and avow their determination to press on their
crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains
in these States.[13]
Before Freedom Came was, after all, displayed at the Museum of the Confederacy.
Slavery may be somewhat condemned by the exhibition,
but the Confederacy escapes unscathed. Indeed, the exhibition’s
primary focus on the survival of African customs among
African American slaves necessarily means not having
a primary focus on the horrors of slavery. These are
put in the “background” as Kimball stated. An Associated
Press story made clear that the theme of the exhibit
is that it was all good in the end: “The Human Spirit
Triumphs Over Slavery.”[14]
The strategy
employed by the MOC in “Before Freedom Came” is one
that enables the museum to use artifacts that compose
a counter-narrative to the one silently embodied in
the shackles displayed in the exhibit and the abuses
of slaves described in the book. The cover illustration
of the Before Freedom Came book is indicative.
It is a carving of a freed slave, Nora August, which
the MOC was thought to have been “likely done” by an
African American Union soldier. Ironically, therefore,
this is an artifact from after freedom
came, not before freedom came. It is an
artifact entirely of the world of freedom where Nora
August would have freedom to choose her activities
and pose for a carving by an African American soldier,
a world of freedom in which there are African American
soldiers. It was not an artifact of the world of slavery.
It does provide an engaging cover for a book about slavery
rather than, for example, a picture of a slave’s scarred
back, but again it is an artifact of freedom, not slavery
(though it was reported such a photograph of a slave’s
scarred back was in the MOC exhibition[15]).
The back cover of Before Freedom Came pictures
a quilt, and the book’s other color illustrations are
nostalgic, forming a counter-narrative to the text of
the book. A frontispiece after the table contents is
pastoral and bucolic, making slavery seem so idyllic
that one author of a modern proslavery book, “Antebellum
Slavery: The Orthodox Christian View” (recommended and
sold by the Sons of Confederate Veterans) used the same
image for the cover of his book.[16]
Both the Before
Freedom Came book and MOC exhibition, therefore,
simultaneously document slavery but exonerate, largely
through omission, the Confederacy. Thus, it must be
asked, how seriously the administration, officers, and
trustees of the MOC themselves regarded “Before Freedom
Came”? Recognizing that slavery was a great evil should,
I suggest, preclude wanting to identify with, and encouraging
others to identify with, a slavocracy fighting for slavery,
namely the Confederacy. Yet the MOC continues to encourage
people to identify with (and dress like) a slave owning
elite fighting to sustain slavery, not least at its
annual “Celebrate South” gala. Other MOC events still
see color guards and attendees in Confederate uniforms
and period costumes. Typically, numerous Confederate
flags are hung.[17]
Such MOC celebrations
equate the whole South with the Confederacy, and assume
support for the latter was homogeneous throughout the
former. The MOC galas function to have attendees adopt
Confederate identities to the extent that “Celebrate
South” is really a “Celebrate the Confederacy” event.
In 1996, five years after “Before Freedom Came,” the
New York Times, reported on the MOC’s “Celebrate
South”:
Seeking to
win a new generation of devotees, officials of the [Confederate]
White House plan to hold a Confederate ball featuring
hoop skirts, Rebel uniforms, and a color guard’s presentation
of the Stars and Bars.
Black leaders
expressed astonishment and outrage, asserting that the
event would resurrect ghosts of a shameful era.
“This peels
the scab off a sore that is trying to heal,” said L.
Douglas Wilder of Virginia, who grew up in segregated
Richmond and became the country’s first black elected
governor. “That era is gone. You want it to regrow?
It’s history, sure. But it’s a history of denying basic
human rights.”
The ball’s
supporters claimed that their intentions “were innocent
and honorable” and were needed to recruit MOC supporters,[18] but on NBC television, the New York Times
reported, Gov. Wilder “compared people in Confederate
costumes to ‘jackbooted Nazis’ ... [and] suggested that
organizers put a slave ship outside and manacle people
to it. Organizers of the ball, who had been worried
about breaking even, sold out of tickets after [Wilder’s]
television appearance.” Wilder continued, “This does
not speak for Virginia. Let this be a measure of how
far we still need to go.”
The MOC’s
supposedly progressive leadership at the time, under
Director Robin E. Reed, disregarded Wilder’s complaints.[19] Fourteen years later, in 2010, “Celebrate
South” continued little-changed at the MOC, as reported
in the Richmond Times Dispatch:
Formally opening
the program was a presentation of the Color Guard of
Virginia comprised of 15th and 21st
Infantry re-enactors lead by Ramsey, of the Fighting
First Regiment. … Eighty of the 120 guests were attired
in reproduction uniforms and shimmering ball gowns of
the era – many handmade by the wearers.
The participants
performed dances of the Civil War period with “toe-tapping”
music supplied by The Hardtack & Sowbelly String
Band. Re-enactors, “in full character” appeared as members
of [Robert E.] Lee’s Lieutenants and Confederate spy
Belle Boyd.[20]
In short,
1991’s “Before Freedom Came” exhibit did not prevent
the next twenty years of continuing MOC celebrations
of the slave-holding Confederacy nor, as detailed in
Part II of this essay, two more decades of hagiographic
portrayals of Confederate leaders, the people who fought
for slavery, as heroes.
VISITING THE MUSEUM OF THE CONFEDERACY
Eric L. Muller
is the Dan K. Moore Distinguished Professor in Jurisprudence
and Ethics and Associate Dean for Faculty Development
at the University of North Carolina School of Law. He
also has experience working in museums and interpreting
exhibits. He visited the MOC in August 1999, and posted
a review of the MOC online at , Trip Advisor:
I took the
tour of the White House [of the Confederacy] and found
it quite fascinating, though not in the way the museum
undoubtedly intends.
I am still
trying to decide what the creepiest moment in the tour
of the Confederate White House was.
Was it (a)
when the guide boasted that Abe Lincoln visited Richmond
in early April 1865 and left unscathed, only to be assassinated
in his *own* capital city a few weeks later?
Or (b) when
the guide kept referring to "Henry and Spencer"
as the building's two genteel "butlers" without
noting that they were both Davis family *slaves*?
Or (c) when
I realized that the only black person I'd seen on the
entire premises (including the adjacent Museum of the
Confederacy) was the gentlemen whose job was to follow
behind the all-white tour group to tidy and close up
each room on the tour as we left it?
Or (d) when
the guide, in her very last words of the tour, without
even a touch of irony, chose to quote Jefferson Davis's
very last official communication to the people of the
Confederate States of America, in which he urged them
to continue resistance: "Let us but will it; and
we are free?"
Or (e) when
the guide, in describing what happened to the White
House after April 1865 when Jefferson Davis fled (or
"left to establish the third capital of the Confederacy
in Danville," as she euphemistically put it), spoke
of "Reconstruction -- or Occupation, depending
on which history books you like to read."
I am not sure
I have visited a historical site that tries harder to
paper over the uglier aspects of its history (the importance
of white supremacy and human chattel slavery to the
failed secessionist project) than this site does.
Don't get
me wrong: the house is very historically significant,
and quite beautiful. Many of the stories that the tour
guide narrates are quite interesting. Some are also
touching.
But the whole
narrative of the visit (from the moment you step in
until the moment you make your way through the rows
upon rows of Confederate-battle-flag-embossed items
in the gift shop) is a re-polishing of the Confederate
"Lost Cause" myth.
I'd recommend this visit to a friend because the site is
significant -- but visitors beware!
The MOC responded
to Muller on Trip Advisor, primarily by avoiding the
issues raised and responding with claims and irrelevant
assertions. One part of the MOC’s response is revealing:
Of course
the museum shop sells items with the Confederate Battle
Flag on them. We also sell items that do not have the
battle flag on them. The shop sells what is bought,
that’s how we bring in some of the funding to the museum.[21]
It reveals
an institution that that has no interests other than
institutional self-interest and utterly indifferent
to the ethical questions raised by selling the Confederate
battle flag.
After this
MOC reply, however, the exchange disappeared from the
Trip Advisor website (the complete exchange is in the
Appendix) and the MOC, in a somewhat disturbing tactic,
sent Muller a letter critical of him but marked “confidential
and personal,” legally preventing Muller from making
its contents public. To mark a document pertaining to
a discussion about history “confidential and personal”
to preclude it from public debate, against Muller’s
wishes, is outrageous. Unless the MOC makes this letter
public, their ethics certainly can be questioned: they
are not operating in good faith. The MOC should make
public their letter to Muller.
THE MOC’s ELISION OF SLAVERY
One regular
MOC strategy, utilized in both the Trip Advisor exchange
and Before Freedom Came exhibition, is to separate
slavery from the Confederacy. This tactic is continuously
and commonly employed. In the recent Winter 2011 issue
of MOC Magazine, for example, the cover depicts
sheet music for the piece, “Grand Secession March,”
and tells readers that this music was “composed for
& dedicated to the Charleston Delegation.” The caption
and subsequent magazine contents avoid the topic of
slavery as the reason for secession. Amidst a series
of somewhat trivial articles, only John M. Coski’s “Letters
Reveal Passions that Heated Up the ‘Secession Winter’,”
seems like it might discuss slavery in relation to state
secession and the foundation of the Confederacy. Indeed,
Coski begins, “These letters collectively offer insight
into what a handful of military officers and businessmen
believed to be the reasons why secession was necessary.”
Yet, from the outset, Coski avoids quoting the declarations
issued by the seceding states which are clear in asserting
that protection of slavery and the maintenance of white
supremacy are the reasons for secession. Here the MOC
collection is used to obscure and not enlighten and
by choosing them as a subject, the historical record
of the reasons for secession are avoided. Instead,
Coski focuses on what these few individuals thought
were reasons to secede, and further obfuscates these
commentaries by explaining the disruption to business,
expectations of peaceful dissolution of the United States,
preparations to defend Fort Sumter, and other items.
When letters are quoted, the quotation obscures the
issue of slavery, such as this example of a letter by
a Mr. Lelland in Montgomery:
“You say these
are troublesome times and you favor our country, That
will depend utterly on Your section, if they will Let
us go in peace all will be right if not, to the victor
the spoils. As for us we are conserned we prefer to
be Blot[t]ed out from existence rather than give up
our rights or to be ruled by a sectional party, give
us our rights that is all we ask, and to be let along[.]”
One letter
does mention slavery. South Carolinian Bernard Bee is
quoted as saying:
… I want the
whole south to go together, having first stated firmly
but courteously to the northern states their ultimatum
on slavery – this being rejected the Southern Confederacy
would embrace every southern state and would be magnificent
…
But from another
letter, by South Carolina civilian Daniel H. Hill, Coski
quotes complaints about the issue of slavery in a way
that suggests that Hill supports secession to support
slavery, until Coski’s commentary explains otherwise:
Although he
betrayed an obsession with the Republican Party’s avowed
hostility to slavery, Hill did not regard the issue
about slavery, per se, but about defending his wife
and children and resisting the domination of government
by a party “whose avowed policy is murder.” By “taking
up arms against the Black Republicans,” Hill explained,
“I am engaged in the holiest of causes.”
Thus Coski
reiterates an old Lost Cause rationale, namely that
secession was not about slavery, but defending hearth
and home. The article, in sum, quotes and describes
only one person (Bee) as thinking slavery was a reason
to secede, others seeming support for slavery being
explained away by Coski. That slavery and secession
were fundamentally intertwined is left as a minority
view; indeed, it is the opinion of just one quoted contemporary,
Bernard Bee. The MOC Magazine, thus keeps the
Confederacy safely away from the issues of race and
slavery.
CO-OPTING THE CIVIL WAR HISTORY PROFESSION
Another program
of the MOC, which has also helped rehabilitate its image
in the eyes of professional historians, is giving books
the Founders’ or Jefferson Davis awards. When John M.
Coski emailed me in response to my certified letters
asking not to be considered for any MOC book award,
he stated, “Incidentally, you may wish to consult the
list of past winners to get a better idea of the kind
of books that tend to receive the award” and referred
me to an MOC website. [22]
It is instructive that so many prominent historians,
some whose work I respect highly, are willing to accept
an award named after Jefferson Davis, a white supremacist.
Other winners, I would suggest, are neo-Confederates
such as James I. Robertson (who praised Southern
Partisan magazine) and Frank Vandiver. Yet, such
awards are another way in which the MOC glorifies the
Confederacy and its leaders, and generates legitimacy
as a serious institution respecting current historical
scholarship.
Recipients
of the MOC’s Jefferson Davis award include distinguished
historians Joseph T. Glatthaar, Eric H. Walther, and
Bertram Wyatt-Brown. The Founder award has been given
to books by Ira Berlin and John W. Blassingame. I was
relieved that Leon Litwack has never received an award
from the MOC, but pained to see that Chandra Manning
had received honorable mention for the Jefferson Davis
Prize. Each historian whose book receives an award gives
credibility to the MOC and restrains criticism of the
MOC by others. A prominent historian, I was told, laughed
“five times” when he heard that I was opposed to receiving
an MOC award. Yet, the MOC has power: an author not
wanting to receive an MOC award or criticizing the organization
could be understood to be implicitly criticizing scholars
who did accept MOC awards, scholars who are on editorial
boards, peer review articles, or are otherwise influential.
Most MOC award winners just haven’t asked critical
questions about the museum. Too quickly, Civil War historians
simply recall “Before Freedom Came,” give the MOC a
free pass, and avoid controversy, avoiding any critical
assessment of the MOC and its operations.
DIFFERENT FACES FOR DIFFERENT AUDIENCES
As reported
in Part I in this essay, when the MOC flew a Confederate
battle flag at the Museum they had an African American
board member to speak to the media to justify this display.
This is a developing strategy of the MOC, namely to
have African American employees, board members, and
students, that they can showcase. When Eric Muller commented
on the roles he observed of the MOC’s African American
employees, the MOC responded: “The African-American
you saw following the tour is the Assistant White House
Supervisor. That is just one of his functions here.
He also travels extensively giving talks on the museum
and the White House as well as its occupants. His last
lecture was in the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.”[23]
The MOC has
recently announced a partnership with the historically
black North Carolina Central University to provide training
for student interns in exchange for their work.[24] In June 2011 the MOC offered an African American
walking tour of Richmond,[25]
and began participating in Civil War Emancipation Day
in the city.[26]
Yet, the employment
of African Americans by the MOC and these other recent
activities do not change the primary function of the
MOC. They do not mean that the MOC has stopped working
or trying to work with neo-Confederate organizations,
glorifying Confederate leaders, or sacralizing the Confederacy;
it is merely the projection of an image to obscure these
primary functions and legitimize the MOC with its members,
professional historians, and the public. In turn, these
images deter critical inquiry into what the MOC does.
In a 2003
Richmond Times Dispatch article on the Confederate
Nation exhibit, the MOC’s Vice President for Research,
John M. Coski commented on slavery being the cause of
the Civil War:
Anyone who
says the war was all about this or all about that –
that’s an oversimplication. It wasn’t about just one
thing. Our purpose is to address that and invite them
to understand the complexity of all history and this
history in particular.[27]
Yet, in 2011
Coski seemingly rejected this position. In an panel
discussion at the American Association for State and
Local History (AASLH) annual meeting, Coski agreed with
James Loewen and Dwight Pitcaithley, former Chief Historian
of the National Park Service, the latter having commented
“that of the 65 constitutional amendments proposed in
1860-61 to defuse the crisis, 95 percent dealt with
slavery.”[28] At the event, Coski “noted the MOC’s
agreement with [the AASLH panel’s] take on the cause
of secession and also spoke about other Richmond institutions
and their agreement”[29] yet also asserted that, “as they moved beyond
their K-12 schooling, some adults, including [historical]
site managers, feel a need to move beyond "slavery"
as "the cause" of secession, leading them
astray.”[30]
The question
is which Coski is to be believed: the Coski in the 2003
Richmond Dispatch article, the Coski at the 2011
AASLH meeting, or the Coski writing articles for the
MOC Magazine obscuring slavery as the cause of
the Civil War? The answer lies in the respective audiences.
The Richmond Dispatch article would be
read by MOC members and local residents, but not by
many professional historians; the AASLH comments would
be heard by professional historians who would welcome
confirmation that the MOC is not a Lost Cause institution,
by not by MOC supporters or neo-Confederates. The MOC
Magazine is primarily read by the museum’s supporters
and Civil War enthusiasts.
If Coski,
the MOC’s Vice President for Research, believes that
the cause of secession was to preserve slavery, and
that slavery was the reason for the Confederacy, then
why does the MOC promote Confederate identity, sell
Confederate flags, and promote Confederate leaders as
near-flawless heroes? The answer, is that it is expedient
to say and do different things for different audiences.
CONCLUSION
The MOC primarily
functions to reproduce Confederate identity to be consumed
by its members and the public and it does what is necessary
to support itself, which is to navigate between modern
twenty-first century sensibilities about race and yet
appeal to its financially-supporting base of Lost Cause
enthusiasts. Thus, the MOC works with neo-Confederate
organizations and individuals, giving them credibility,
and is led by S. Waite Rawls a member of a neo-Confederate
organization, the Sons of Confederate Veterans. It glorifies
Confederate leaders and is a reliquary of the Confederacy,
sacralizing this short-lived, slave-holding, white supremacist
nation. Yet, it avoids criticism of these activities
by putting on “Before Freedom Came,” an exhibit about
slavery twenty years ago, giving book awards to prominent
historians, and showcasing activities with African Americans.
However, although the MOC’s agenda is promoting itself,
it must be asked to what extent its self-legitimizing
activities have been helped along by a historical profession
which has chosen not to look too closely at the MOC.
Such a history
profession, namely one which aids and abets the MOC
and thus its wider Confederate nationalist agenda, ill
serves the nation. Promoting Confederate identity, working
with neo-Confederate groups, and glorifying Confederate
leaders, works against America being successful as a
multiracial democracy in a multipolar world. Those who
wish to have some claim to a concern for civil rights
and justice should avoid getting an award from the MOC
or, if they have gotten one previously, should publically
reject it. Professional historians should stop enabling
the MOC, stop participating in its programs, and stop
making apologies for it. A critically informed examination
of the MOC is long overdue - and, in the four parts
of this essay, it is one that I hope to have initiated.
Click here to
read any of the parts in this series.
BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator, Edward H. Sebesta, is co-editor
of Neo-Confederacy: A Critical Introduction (University
of Texas, 2008) and The Confederate and Neo-Confederate
Reader: The ‘Great Truth’ of the ‘Lost Cause’ (University
Press of Mississippi, 2010) Click here
to contact Mr. Sebesta.
APPENDIX:
COMPLETE EXCHANGE BETWEEN THE MOC AND ERIC MULLER
Eric's Trip Advisor review:
I took the
tour of the White House and found it quite fascinating,
though not in the way the museum undoubtedly intends.
I am still
trying to decide what the creepiest moment in the tour
of the Confederate White House was.
Was it (a)
when the guide boasted that Abe Lincoln visited Richmond
in early April 1865 and left unscathed, only to be assassinated
in his *own* capital city a few weeks later?
Or (b) when
the guide kept referring to "Henry and Spencer"
as the building's two genteel "butlers" without
noting that they were both Davis family *slaves*?
Or (c) when
I realized that the only black person I'd seen on the
entire premises (including the adjacent Museum of the
Confederacy) was the gentlemen whose job was to follow
behind the all-white tour group to tidy and close up
each room on the tour as we left it?
Or (d) when
the guide, in her very last words of the tour, without
even a touch of irony, chose to quote Jefferson Davis's
very last official communication to the people of the
Confederate States of America, in which he urged them
to continue resistance: "Let us but will it; and
we are free?"
Or (e) when
the guide, in describing what happened to the White
House after April 1865 when Jefferson Davis fled (or
"left to establish the third capital of the Confederacy
in Danville," as she euphemistically put it), spoke
of "Reconstruction -- or Occupation, depending
on which history books you like to read."
I am not sure
I have visited a historical site that tries harder to
paper over the uglier aspects of its history (the importance
of white supremacy and human chattel slavery to the
failed secessionist project) than this site does.
Don't get
me wrong: the house is very historically significant,
and quite beautiful. Many of the stories that the tour
guide narrates are quite interesting. Some are also
touching.
But the whole
narrative of the visit (from the moment you step in
until the moment you make your way through the rows
upon rows of Confederate-battle-flag-embossed items
in the gift shop) is a re-polishing of the Confederate
"Lost Cause" myth.
I'd recommend
this visit to a friend because the site is significant
-- but visitors beware!
The reply by the MOC by was as follows:
I have to
respond to your comments about your tour of the White
House of the Confederacy. I would like to respond to
your comments using your list:
a) Lincoln
entered a newly conquered city. There was much concern
among his own military leaders about his visiting the
city at that time. They were worried about possible
hostile reaction to him. So, this is just a statement
of fact and not an opinion. b) This, again, is a statement
of fact. The men would have been referred to as “butlers.”
c) The African-American you saw following the tour is
the Assistant White House Supervisor. That is just one
of his functions here. He also travels extensively giving
talks on the museum and the White House as well as its
occupants. His last lecture was in the Capitol Building
in Washington, D.C. d) The war was not over and this,
again, is a simple statement of fact and not an exhortation
to people alive today. e) Once more, a statement of
fact. Both of these can be found in history books and
I don’t understand your astonishment at this.
Of course
the museum shop sells items with the Confederate Battle
Flag on them. We also sell items that do not have the
battle flag on them. The shop sells what is bought,
that’s how we bring in some of the funding to the museum.
May I ask
you a question? Why are you telling people to “beware?”
Of what are visitors supposed to be afraid?
Eric Muller’s response was as follows:
I will start
with your final question. I think that from context
(which is to say, the preceding sentences in my review),
it's clear of what I'm telling people to "beware":
a tour of an important historical building that is wholly
steeped in the myth of the Lost Cause.
I am right
now heading up the process of designing the permanent
exhibit and introductory film at a new museum at a historical
site in Wyoming (one of the Japanese American internment
camps from World War II). So I have been reading and
working extensively in the field of historical interpretation.
The tour of your site simply took my breath away in
its repeated appeals to the major tenets of the Lost
Cause mythology and its shunting aside of any aspect
of what went on at the site that would tend to complicate
or undermine a narrative of Southern chivalry, decency,
and commitment to principle (moral and political). Insofar
as it touches on anything outside the personal stories
of Jefferson and Varina Davis and their children, the
tour is, in my view, not a historical presentation but
Lost Cause propaganda.
As for your
specific responses to my observations:
"a) Lincoln
entered a newly conquered city. There was much concern
among his own military leaders about his visiting the
city at that time. They were worried about possible
hostile reaction to him. So, this is just a statement
of fact and not an opinion." When the tour guide
theatrically raised her eyebrows and finished reciting
these facts by saying, "Hey, I'm just saying. You
can draw your own conclusions," *that* editorializing
was most certainly intended to point the tour group
to a particular idea, namely, that while Lincoln was
received gracefully in the Confederate capital, he was
unsafe up north. But even if she had not said these
things and had not theatrically raised her eyebrows,
there is no defending what she said on the basis that
it is a "fact" that Lincoln was not shot in
Richmond and a "fact" that he was shot a few
weeks later in the federal capital. It is certainly
a "fact" that Lincoln was not shot in Richmond.
Yet it is also a "fact" that Lincoln was not
invited to play the tuba in Richmond. There are many,
many things that did not happen to Lincoln during his
visit to Richmond. The only one mentioned on your site's
tour was that he was not shot. What meaning does your
site hope a visitor will attach to Lincoln's non-shooting
there? Any doubt about the answer to that question vanishes
when one realizes that the "fact" of Lincoln's
non-shooting in Richmond is directly and immediately
contrasted with the "fact" of his shooting
a few weeks later in the federal capital. It vanishes
further when one realizes that the tour guide *omits*
a "fact" about the shooting in DC -- namely,
that the assassin was an ardent confederate sympathizer
outraged over the abolition of slavery and the extension
of voting rights to certain freed slaves. I know from
my own museum interpretive work that when a museum or
historical site crafts its script, it sifts the relevant
facts and presents those that most clearly relate to
a handful of pre-selected themes. What is the theme
that this particular concatenation of "facts"
is designed to highlight?
"b) This,
again, is a statement of fact. The men would have been
referred to as 'butlers.'" Here you're referring
to my surprise that the tour guide did not mention that
Henry and Spencer, the butlers, were Davis family slaves.
It is certainly a "fact" that the Davis family
would have referred to Henry and Spencer as "butlers."
It is also a "fact" that the Davises would
have referred to an item in their house as a "water
closet," and they might also have referred to a
female cousin in the family as "being in an interesting
condition." I would not expect the tour guide to
use these "factual" terms, though: I would
expect her to say "toilet" and "pregnant."
And there's a bigger reason to expect the term "slave"
rather than, or in addition to, "butler":
this is the executive mansion of the sovereign that
fought a war to defend the institution of slavery from
federal encroachment. If there were a moment in the
tour when a visitor might expect *some* mention of slavery
(and there is no other moment when slavery is discussed),
the visitor might expect it *when the tour guide is
explicitly mentioning the Davis family's slaves*. But
the word "slave" did not come up.
"c) The
African-American you saw following the tour is the Assistant
White House Supervisor. That is just one of his functions
here. He also travels extensively giving talks on the
museum and the White House as well as its occupants.
His last lecture was in the Capitol Building in Washington,
D.C." As I noted, this gentlemen was the only African-American
I saw on the premises of either the White House or the
adjacent Museum of the Confederacy. It is marvelous
that he is so accomplished and well-traveled. But can
it really be that the White House of the Confederacy
really needs somebody to alert it to the symbolism of
having the only African-American on the premises serve
as the person who patiently and silently follows the
(white) tour group and (white) tour guide around the
building, turning off lights and closing doors?
"d) The
war was not over and this, again, is a simple statement
of fact and not an exhortation to people alive today."
Here you refer to my discomfort with the tour guide's
choosing to end the tour by quoting Jefferson Davis's
final exhortation to southerners to continue armed conflict
-- specifically, the words "Let us but will it;
and we are free." (Lest there be any misunderstanding,
the tour guide is careful to note that he issued this
exhortation just days before Lee's surrender at Appomattox
(a surrender that Davis vehemently opposed), as Davis
tried to set up a government in Danville.) Set to one
side the rich irony of citing the Confederate President's
hope for "freedom" for whites, without noting
for visitors (at any point in the tour) that the southern
cause was centrally (even if not exclusively) about
denying freedom to blacks. That is a layer of meaning
that, by this point in the tour, I did not expect. Instead,
just note that there are many thousands of words from
Jefferson Davis's long career with which the tour might
close. Your organization has chosen to end it with his
final exhortation to continued armed resistance to federal
power. Yes, it is a "fact" that he wrote those
words. But surely the selection of those words must
be based on something, and I would again imagine that
the selection relates in some basic way to the themes
the organization is trying to highlight. What is a visitor
to make of the fact of your organization's choosing
an exhortation to continued armed struggle as the final,
tour-summarizing thought?
"e) Once
more, a statement of fact. Both of these can be found
in history books and I don’t understand your astonishment
at this." What astonished me was the implication
that whether the period in question is called "Reconstruction"
or "Occupation" is a matter of evenhanded
dispute, because after all there are books that use
one term and books that use the other. There are books
out there that continue to call civil rights marchers
"rioters" and Martin Luther King a "communist."
There are books that continue to call the forced removal
of Japanese Americans from the West Coast an "evacuation."
But the fact that these terms appear in books does not
make them equivalent terms.
I hope these
explanations give you a better sense of why I reacted
to the tour as I did.[31]
