Touch the Elbow - Blogging the Civil War

The recent A.C.W.C.’s conference in Richmond finally allowed me the opportunity to visit their museum at the former Tredegar Iron Works. I actually visited twice over the weekend, taking a quick tour during the March 23rd evening reception held for the conference’s participants. I returned the following day for a closer look, gaining free admission thanks to the complimentary pass handed out as part of a goodies package distributed to conference attendees.

I have to admit Tredegar was not quite what I expected. I somehow thought it would be larger, more high tech, and have more artifacts on display. When you’re the new kid on the block you’ve either got to have extraordinarily deep pockets to acquire items, or rely on others to loan relics. At first glance the American Civil War Museum at Harrisburg, PA, another recent creation, eclipses Tredegar as a museum, both in terms of size, its displays, and the use of multi-media.

The use of technology doesn’t matter to me personally. Even though I own virtually every high tech gadget imaginable, I’m more inclined to low tech when it comes to museums. Multimedia does do a great job of summarizing events, but loses something in translation because of the need to appeal to the widest audience possible. If you have school groups or adults with minimal knowledge of the subject coming through your doors you want to keep them entertained while trying to get your message out, particularly when it comes to the Civil War.

Both the American Civil War Museum and American Civil War Center employ the use of printed and visual murals to trace time lines. Neither invented this concept, as it’s utilized by other museums. But where the two museums diverge goes straight to the heart of Tredegar’s mission. Slavery and the story of African-Americans is essentially relegated to a minor role at Harrisburg. At Tredegar that story gains equal footing with those of the Union and Confederacy, a very important distinction. Tredegar also compels you to slow down. If you take the time to read all the information, including the melamine booklets utilized at each station and watch the videos, your visit could last up to four hours. The planning, care, and research that went into the museum becomes much more impressive the more time you spend there. There's so much infomation, in fact, that a second, or perhaps even a third visit, is probably necessary to fully appreciate what the Center has done.

Tredegar is in a sense tackling the myth of Lost Cause and the idea the Civil War was fought over State Rights head on. And here it succeeds admirably, much more so than I expected, even after reading a number of newspaper reviews and press releases from the Museum itself. Tredegar is not attempting to sanitize antebellum America, Civil War era America, or the post-war reconstruction of America. To the contrary it is telling America not to forget it’s past, to take a deep look at the reality of where we’ve been, and potentially where we, as Americans, are going in the future.

The American Civil War Center has a very ambitious agenda. I would guess, and this is strictly my opinion, that the Center wants to become the pre-eminent Civil War institution. As mentioned in an earlier post, the Center has sponsored a number of conferences outside of Richmond and in the next year will hold others in Boston and Los Angeles. This is a far reaching agenda and vision, that goes far beyond what similar institutions offer. It’s a vision I agree with and one that will result in my taking out a membership in the Center.