Skip to comments.Political correctness at Little Round Top
Posted on 01/05/2003 10:03:12 PM PST by kattracks
Almost all who visit Gettysburg, best preserved of all the Civil War battlefields, find it a deeply moving experience. This is truly hallowed ground. Here, tens of thousands of Union and Confederate soldiers fought the decisive battle of America's bloodiest war.
From the first clash of the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia, to Lee's attempt turn the Union flank at Little Round Top on the second day, to Pickett's Charge against the Union center on Seminary Ridge on the third, to Lee's bleeding retreat back over the Potomac as a frustrated Abraham Lincoln wondered why his newest commander, George Meade, had not finished Lee's army with its back to the swollen river -- it is an incredible story, told wonderfully well by the guides at Gettysburg Battlefield.
Now the story of the heroes in Blue and Grey is to be replaced with propaganda. The 1.8 million annual visitors to Gettysburg are to be indoctrinated in the politically correct history of the war.
"Gettysburg to Tell Story of Slavery During War," was the headline The Washington Times put on its story about how the National Park Service "has embarked on an effort to change its interpretive materials at major Civil War battlefields to get rid of a Southern bias and emphasize the horrors of slavery." A $95 million visitors center and museum is going up to recast the battle in a new light.
"For the past 100 years," says Gettysburg Park Superintendent John Latschar, "we've been presenting this battlefield as the high watermark of the Confederacy and focusing on the personal valor of the soldiers who fought here. ... We want to get away from the traditional descriptions of who shot whom, where and into discussions of why they were shooting one another."
Why the change? Unhappy that so many visitors to Gettysburg are white males, and so few are African-Americans, Latschar called in three historians to study how the Park Service was presenting the battle. The three wise men decided that the interpretive programs at Gettysburg had a "pervasive Southern sympathy." (How one can hear of 15,000 men and boys walking across a mile of open field into cannon and musket fire, in the name of God, country and Gen. Lee, without being put in awe and admiration, escapes me.)
Latschar then visited the Holocaust Museum and was inspired: "Our current museum (at Gettysburg) is absolutely abysmal. It tells no story. It's a curator's museum with no rhyme or reason."
But one visits the Holocaust Museum to learn about the fate of the Jews under Hitler. One does not go there to learn about Dunkirk or D-Day. And Americans who cherish the battlefields of the Civil War -- Vicksburg, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Antietam, Manassas -- do not go there to be instructed on the evils of the Confederacy. Moreover, to convert every battlefield into an endless seminar on the evils of slavery and the South is a fine way to turn these sites of national unity into cauldrons of national division.
President Bush should stop the politicization of Gettysburg. To let it happen would be an abuse of office. It would be to permit ground made sacred by the blood of soldiers to be exploited by ideologues to reopen old wounds. The old battlefields will become new battlegrounds of the culture war. Does America really need that?
There are places to argue the great issues of 1861. Did the South have a right to secede? Was the cause of the war slavery, or secession, or Lincoln's refusal to let the South go in peace? Or was it tariffs, or a desire of the South to separate from a North with which it has less and less in common? Did Lincoln fight the Civil War to free the slaves? Or only to restore the Union?
The forums in which to debate these questions are books, editorials, classrooms, columns, seminars, TV shows. But for the Park Service to impose its orthodoxy on these questions and pervert battlefields to indoctrinate visitors in the party line is to dishonor these hallowed grounds.
That slavery is wrong no one today disbelieves. But when the South fired on Fort Sumter, there were eight slave states in the Union, only seven in the Confederacy. It was Lincoln's call to arms to invade the South that pushed North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee and Arkansas out of the Union.
In waging cultural war to abolish the West, Gramsci and his Marxist comrades dictated that all social institutions should be captured to advance the revolution -- from children's classrooms to college seminars. Now, Civil War battlefields are to become indoctrination centers of Political Correctness, unless we stop it.
©2002 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Contact Pat Buchanan | Read his biography
The same indoctrination of the socialist/liberals that they are conducting in our schools is being spread to our National Monuments and Parks.
This is not "political correctness", this is the spread of Liberal Socialism.
There is a cheaper way to get the required ratio of black visitors: keep a daily tally of how many black visitors come to each park, and the next day allow a maximum of 9 times that number of whites to visit the park in question. (Japanese and other foreign tourists would not count in the reckoning.)
Revisionist history is one of the great evils the liberals have done to this country, yet for every action there is a reaction - I am a homeschooler, and I can tell you that one of the main reasons for homeschooling is the biased history in the public school textbooks.
The day I read my son's geography textbook was the day I first started making serious plans to remove him from the public schools system. Eight years and several children later, I consider it one of the best decisions I ever made. And my boys are staunch conservatives.
Surely those who are interested in military history are a constituency that shouldn't be ignored or slighted or insulted. There is a thin line between what would be considered appropriate and what would be considered appropriate. I wouldn't want to go to Kitty Hawk or Menlo Park and find that race, sex, class and ethnicity were made the main point of the exhibits, rather than the inventive capacities of human beings.
And it certainly is a great folly to expect all visitors to all parks to reflect the same proportions of the population. Surely some of the African-American themed monuments and memorials don't attract as many European-American visitors. It's natural that Gettysburg, a battle almost entirely fought by White men, would be of greater interest to White men than to other parts of the population.
Proponents of an increased emphasis on slavery probably target Gettysburg because it has more visitors. Changing the exhibits and tours at, say, a restored plantation would be more appropriate and more instructive. Indeed, it would be necessary to bring slavery very much into the forefront there, but fewer people go to such sites, so the impact would be less.
But I can't entirely view this as some Gramscian attempt to politicize the parks. If we want to talk about political propaganda or a "Gramscian march through the institutions," one could argue that post-Reconstruction developments in America reflected such an effort to forget, conceal or rewrite what had been regarded as unpleasant or divisive. "Big Brother" existed and was in charge in at times in the past as well as in the present or future.
Even today, confederatist myths are aggressively pushed by some people in an effort to rewrite history. Buchanan himself is likely to lose subscribers for his new magazine if he makes it a forum for Rockwellite cranks and League of the South fanatics. It's not surprising that, having seen history rewritten in the late 19th century to downplay real conflicts over slavery, some in the government are taking efforts to make sure that issue stays in the forefront.
Forgetting and denying in those days did help to bring about harmony, reconciliation, and national unity, though at the price of liberty and equality for a significant part of the population. It remains to be seen whether keeping the battle alive will produce more positive or more negative effects.
Just avoid any of the guided tours. Get some history books pertaining to the specific battles and battlefields that you want to go to. Then hit the trail yourself. So far, every year, usually around mid-September after school has started again, I go to one battlefield and spend two weeks there, just prowling around. I've been to Gettysburg three times, the last time spending my two weeks going over the Devil's Den and Round Tops end of the field.
Ignore the pricks ... there are enough commercially-produced battlefield guides and history books to lead you on a merry chase for whatever time you want to spend there.
Is this guy Latschar a Clinton or Bush administration appointee?
That's the only way to see a battlefield. Two of my great great grandfathers fought at Chickamauga, and we got very organized to take our two children on an extensive tour of the battlefield. I wrote the park historian (he is a great fellow, turns out he attended the same school in Maryland that one of my gg grandfathers graduated from -- small world!) and he provided a lot of information on the historical markers on the battlefield and an excellent topo map. We started in our ancestors' position before the battle began and basically followed their progress through the scene. Fortunately one was artillery and the other a scout, and both were in the thick of things.
And you're right, the only thing we needed the visitor center for was a Coke and a smile. We did stop to see the film, though, since we were there. It was pleasant, accurate, and not politically correct, the framework was the shades of two soldiers, blue and gray, looking back over the battlefield and trading reminiscences. Kinda neat and related to what really happened - it was the first battlefield park and quite a number of former combatants assisted in the effort. After reading a couple of the historical markers on the ground it became obvious to me that they were NOT written in the usual style - one involving the action of a gg grandfather just "read" like he had written it (he had a very distinctive writing style) so I wrote the historian and asked him if the participants had helped write the markers. He responded that yes, indeed, participants in key actions had been invited to "write their own markers" subject to approval by the committee.
Imagine what a bunch of PC revisionists would do with a bronze marker written by one of the hated Rebels . . . :-(
Chickamauga allows horses, and has not allowed the fields of that time to overgrow. So the very best way of all to see the area is a "battlefield ride" - on a horse who is steady enough to allow you to unroll a map on his/her back. I have been trying to talk my trainer into leading a field trip up there, combine a little history with some riding (if I can just figure out a way to work some JUMPS into the mix, I think I can sell her on the deal.)
The park does provide a good-sized gravel lot to park your own horse trailer, with hitching rails and running water. There aren't any turnout paddocks though (the Biltmore House for example has turnout paddocks which means you can do overnights there.) With the modern slant-loading trailers with feed storage, tack rooms &c. you really can bring everything with you that you need for a day's ride.
Golf carts wouldn't do it - too steep, especially around the last action of the battle (Snodgrass Hill area). I can just see having to struggle to lift cart and occupants out of the ditch every 20 yards or so . . . ;-0
That major out there, commanding the cannon. That's James Deeran. First in his class at West Point, before Virginia seceeded.
And that boy over there with the color guard. That's Private Robert Tyler Jones. His grandfather... President of the United States.
The colonel behind me. That's Colonel William Henry. Now, his great grandfather was the Virginian Patrick Henry. It was Patrick Henry who said to your King George the Third, 'Give me Liberty, or give me Death.'
There are boys here from Norfolk, Portsmouth, small hamlets along the James River. From Charlottesville and Fredricksburg, and the Shenandoah Valley. Mostly they're all veteran soldiers now. The cowards and shirkers are long gone.
Every man here knows his duty. They would make this charge even without an officer to lead them. They know the gravity of the situation, and the mettle of their foe. They know that this day's work will be desperate, and deadly. They know, that for many of them, this will be their last charge.
But not one of them needs to be told what is expected of him. They are all willing to make the supreme sacrifice. To achieve victory here. The crowning victory, and the end of this war. We are all here. You may tell them, when you return to your country, that all Virginia was here, on this day."
General Armistead, before Pickett's Charge, from the movie "Gettysburg"
To color all Confederates as racist slavers is nothing but the worst sort of slander, from slimy worms that wouldn't have the guts to do what those men did.
Better men than the race hustlers fought on both sides of that war.
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