Civil War Battlegrounds Emphasize Reason for Conflict

A simple shift in emphasis has reignited a long-standing debate in the South.

For years, Civil War battlefield sites carefully listed and diagramed troop movements, military strategies and death tolls. What actually caused the Civil War, however, was largely omitted.

Then last year, in three paragraphs buried in a huge spending bill, Congress encouraged these federal sites to emphasize the causes of the Civil War, specifically slavery.

“It gives you more insight,” 12-year-old Mark Russell said as he read through the new text panels discussing slavery at Manassas National Battlefield Park. “You get to really know what they’re fighting about.”

Historians say the absence of information about slavery at Civil War battlefield sites over the years probably was due to debates over what actually caused the war.

“It’s been very contentious,” said Edward Ayers, a University of Virginia history professor who is writing a book about the Civil War. “It’s been, from the first gun until today, the crucial question we keep arguing about.”

Ayers said that among most historians, “there’s virtually no one who argues that the war was not based in slavery in some way.” The only disagreement is over the degree to which slavery was a cause.

Two factors other than slavery are most often cited as causes of the war--economics and states’ rights. While those are valid points on the surface, Ayers said, a closer look shows that the economic and states’ rights issues both centered on slavery.

“It’s become clear after dozens of books by impartial scholars that slavery was the driving force behind the Civil War,” he said.

But critics of the changes say the Park Service is bowing to pressure.

“What we have here is political correctness running rampant,” said Joe Avalon, owner of Civil War Interactive, an online magazine. “It’s a push by the African American community, and it’s basically changing the mandate of the museums.”

Park Service officials say that the congressional act is not a mandate, and that they had discussed broadening their interpretation, or including a wider range of information, before the appropriations bill.

At Manassas, visitors can now read panels discussing slavery and secession as causes of the war, see pictures of an open-air slave market and learn about the experiences of three civilian families affected by the war.

Visitors at Richmond National Battlefield Park can listen to readings taken from letters and diaries of residents, soldiers, free blacks and former slaves.

“Now we talk about things other than troop movements,” said Richmond park Supt. Cindy McLeod.

Officials say the changes won’t dilute the military information that traditionally has drawn visitors to parks. “There will still be, at the end of the day, at the end of the decade, a very pronounced emphasis on the events that make the sites significant,” said Park Service chief historian Dwight Pitcaithley.

At the same time, many say the changes are long overdue.

Said Gettysburg battlefield Supt. John Latschar: “Six hundred thousand people died between 1861 and 1865, and we are absolutely convinced that the greatest majority of our visitors are far more interested in why they died than in how they died.”

On the Net:

https://www.nps.gov

https://www.civilwarinteractive.com