Cover Page

Table of Contents

Introduction

Executive Summary

Interpretation of
the Civil War

Accomplishments
to Date

Review of Current Conditions

Future of Civil War Interpretation

Projected Future Work

Obstacles to Success

Addenda

At the conclusion of his analysis of the Confederacy and the development of the New South, Gaines Foster, a noted historian of the south, observes that, “The rapid healing of national divisions and damaged southern self-image… came at the cost of deriving little insight or wisdom from the past. Rather than looking at the war as a tragic failure and trying to understand it, or even condemn it, Americans, North and South chose to view it as a glorious time to be celebrated. Most ignored the fact that the nation had failed to resolve the debate over the nature of the Union and to eliminate the contradictions between its equalitarian ideals and the institution of slavery without resort to a bloody civil war. Instead, they celebrated the war’s triumphant nationalism and martial glory.”

Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania NMP

Gaines Foster’s assessment also describes the approach traditionally taken by the National Park Service in its interpretation of the Civil War. Over the past sixty years during which the Service has managed Civil War battlefields, the agency has adopted a highly descriptive approach to explaining its Civil War parks. The literature of the Civil War is filled with descriptions of troop movements and flanking actions and casualty numbers, but very little analysis of the meaning of the battle, a context for understanding the battle in the larger purpose of the war, or of the causes of the conflict itself. A visitor walks away understanding much about what happened in a particular place, but very little about why it happened. Such an approach does not promote an understanding of the war, its causes, and its place in American history.

Without an understanding of the underlying causes of the war, the motivations of those who led and fought the war, and the social and political consequences of it, the events of individual battles make little sense. The new interpretive direction found in “Holding the High Ground Report” and strengthened by Congressional direction suggests that while a description of military activity at battlefields should remain the cornerstone of NPS interpretive programs, visitors to parks are not served well if that is all they hear or see. For parks to be meaningful, programs should also provide visitors with an understanding of the causes of the conflict as well as some assessment of what it all meant and still means today. Battlefield parks are the perfect venue for this discussion about the past because, as Civil War scholar Gary Gallagher recently wrote, “battlefields...serve as gateways to a fuller appreciation of how the war shaped nineteenth-century America and continues to shape us today.... that cemetery [at Gettysburg] and the fields that surround it, as well as scores of other Civil War battlegrounds, stand as wonderful reminders of what men and women, North and South, black and white, struggled for and against during our most profound crisis. They are wonderful stages for anyone who would coax out the subtle shadings of the conflict’s rich story, and we should preserve and protect them as national treasures.”

As the National Park Service explores “the subtle shadings of the conflict’s rich story,” it will, of necessity, engage the eloquence of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address during which he confronted the causes of the Civil War.

“One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war, while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.”

United States Colored Troops

http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/ICWS/icws_future.htm