Touch the Elbow - Blogging the Civil War

I’ll begin by admitting a personal bias. I have a tough time wrapping my head around anything Confederate, including their battle flag, their re-enactors, or their Lost Cause theories. Much as the song “Dixie” can be hauntingly beautiful when performed slowly, I don’t wax nostalgic for the “sacred soil” or the pre-war “sunny South” as depicted in Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With the Wind.” I do have sympathy for Southern civilians, both white and black, who were caught in the middle, but I do not mourn the loss of its antebellum institutions or its social mores. I don't equate the South’s attempt at secession with the idea of striking a blow for liberty or freedom. That secession was somehow a glorious cause does not compute in my brain when compared to, say, the Irish rebellion, America’s own break from Britain, Haiti’s bloody expulsion of the French, the 1956 Hungarian revolt against the Russians, the 1943 Jewish uprising against the Nazis in Warsaw, or Native American resistance to encroachment on their tribal lands.

The Museum of the Confederacy and the Confederate White House had not been on my radarscope during previous trips to Richmond. Maybe my attitude toward these shrines to the Confederacy was not misplaced. Attendance has been on the decline for years and the M.O.C. has given serious thought to closing its doors or removing to Lexington, Virginia. The State of Virginia recently appropriated $400,000 to the museum, but it remains to be seen if this will save the chronically ailing institution. Here’s an irony, though, which dates to the opening of the M.O.C. A 1936 Richmond Times-Dispatch article, commemorating the 40th anniversary of museum’s opening, noted “that of the average 13,000 visitors annually to the Clay and 12th Street building, a large majority come from north of the Mason and Dixon line… Up from the South--scarcely a twig has been broken or a blade bent in the trek to this greatest of all Southern shines as compared with the flow from Yankee-land.”

Yankees were not the only visitors though. Originally housed in the White House of the Confederacy, cobwebs, dust, mice, and insects were a constant source of irritation and concern during the first 80 years of its existence. The Regents and volunteer staff were famous for their annual spring cleanings, during which time the entire house would undergo a good scrubbing. The museum finally retreated to a new facility, built adjacent to the Confederate White House, in 1976, while the White House itself underwent twelve years of restoration. Today, both buildings appear lost, as they’re surrounded and dwarfed by the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center complex.

Allowing myself to drop biases and pre-conceived notions I made a visit to the M.O.C. and White House of the Confederacy on March 24th. In all the museum has the world’s largest collection of Confederate artifacts, ranging from decorative art objects, memorial artifacts, regulation and non-regulation flags, swords, firearms, uniforms, military accoutrements, buttons, paintings, sculptures, domestic items, and over 5,000 original images, including 2,500 cartes de viste. The entire collection is obviously not on display, but the first and upper floor had enough on display to satisfy anyone’s curiosity. A current exhibition on the Confederate Navy, including a scale model of the raider Shenandoah, is housed on the lower level. The library, which is not open to the general public, is a repository for 1500 prints, 400 maps, and 10,000 books and bound periodicals. Additional holdings include Lee’s written resignation from the U.S. Army, the Provisional Confederate Constitution, and papers authored by Jefferson Davis.

One case, that was of personal interest, featured the gray suit worn by Davis at the time of his capture at Irwinsville, GA on May 11, 1865. The accompanying text sought to debunk the myth that Davis was wearing “a hoopskirt, sun bonnet, and calico wrapper,” when his party surrendered to members of the Fourth Michigan Cavalry. According to one eyewitness, Davis was, in fact, wearing men’s clothing, and “Mrs. Davis' large waterproof dress or robe, thrown over his own fine gray suit, and a blanket shawl thrown over his head and shoulders.”

After visiting the museum, I reflected on the place it should hold in this modern day world. Based on the values I hold inside today, had I been alive in 1861 I would have been an abolitionist from the start and fought for the Union. But I also realize that had I been born in 1842 in Virginia, or North Carolina, or any of the other nine States that seceded, I might well have accepted the notion of slaves as sub-human, railed against Northern transgressions, and rallied behind the Bonnie Blue flag. And had I survived the war, I would have mourned the gallantry of dead comrades and a shattered landscape. And I would have taken solace in a shrine to our cause and defeat.

It's not for me to say whether the M.O.C. should remain open, close, relocate, or have another museum absorb its vast collection of artifacts. Time and money alone will dictate its fate. But I will say that regardless of what happens, those relics and documents deserve to be preserved. Like it or not, regardless of what the M.O.C. represents to each of us indivually, the entire collection is part of our national heritage. It should speak to us of where we once stood as a nation and, in spite of past sins, how we survived, and how far we have striven to become "one Nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."