The American Civil War: Myths and Mysteries

The American Civil War split families and friends 150 years ago. Pieces of it--photographs, draft notices, rifles--regularly show up on Antiques Roadshow. Many of us have combed a battlefield hoping to find a dirt-covered uniform button or other relic. Some pieces of the war are still hidden, owned by private collectors.

But millions of artifacts are the property of the National Archives in Washington, and the lucky tourist gets to see some that have not been out of a vault for 100 years on Friday, April 30. That's when the first part of the free exhibit called "Discovering the Civil War" opens. It focuses on Beginnings--records of the underlying causes and circumstances--and promises to peel back 150 years of myths and mysteries.(The second part, which opens in November, will focus on Consequences of the war--prisoners, spies, conspiracies, emancipation and Reconstruction.)

It's an attempt to look at the war through the eyes of everyday participants, not just the generals who waged the campaigns, although they, too, are part of the exhibit.

For example:

* Women disguised themselves as men to fight in armies on both sides. They assumed male aliases and aimed to keep their gender secret. (Some photos show very androgynous-looking soldiers, such as Frances Clalin Clayton. You'd never have guessed she was a woman. Apologies to her descendants.) There are also photos of Sarah Edmonds in her Union soldier uniform and in a dress. After the war, because she'd assumed a man's name, she had to fight to get her pension. That literally took an Act of Congress to get.

* Some things never change (sigh): Before government contracting became the megalith it is today, or unions became organized, a group of seamstresses wrote to the Union government to protest using cheaper labor for soldiers' uniforms. The contractors charged 50 percent of their prices, they said. Did their own government want to put them out of business?

* Women were not just soldiers, but also nurses and spies (which will be researched in depth in Consequences, part 2).

* Integrated crews were common. A photo shows a U.S. gunboat, probably the Mendota, where many crew members were freed slaves. And although 18,000 black men served in the U.S. Navy, they were allowed only the lowest ranks.

* A drummer boy from the 78th U.S. Colored Troops, whose photo is prominent in the exhibit, was one of 10,000 troops under the age of 18 who enlisted in the Union Army. (I choked up; he looked to be about 12, or maybe middle-school age.)

* Talk about bad luck: James Gorman got drafted for the Army--after he was already dead.

Other exhibit tidbits:

There's a message from a Southern governor rejecting President Abraham Lincoln's call to out down the rebellion.

There's a broadside (an old newspaper) with the U.S. Navy's message on how to avoid the Army draft (join the Navy, of course).

And there's an Oct. 19, 1864 telegram from Vermont governor J. Gregory Smith stating: "Rebels from Canada have the state robbed all the banks at St. Albans Killed several citizens and are at work destroying property. Send such force as you can to help us." Those "rebels" were sneaky Confederate agents. Some of them were captured in Canada, but courts there ruled they weren't soldiers and wouldn't extradite them. No wonder border tensions were high during the war.

Filmmaker extraordinaire Ken Burns, whose miniseries documentary on the Civil War debuted almost 20 years ago, was on hand April 27 during a press preview of the exhibit. The exhibit is a public-private partnership between the National Archives Experience and the Foundation for the National Archives, an ongoing education initiative.

Foundation chairman Kenneth G. Lore told the press: "In this exhibit no one is trying to tell us what to think about the Civil War." The public can examine documents "and decide for yourself."

Burns, a vice president of the Foundation, said National Archives holdings are "part of the DNA of our civilization." He has used its resources for his many projects, including on the Civil War, baseball and (most recently) the national parks.

"We quite literally save everything," Burns said. But sifting though it and making sense of it and interpreting the history is the challenge."

The most divisive event in our history also was the most unifying. "The Civil War was the traumatic event in the childhood of our nation," Burns said.". . .(but) After the Civil War, we began to refer to ourselves in the singular....not just a collection of states."

He explains the new exhibit as "going to the atomic level" to interpret history, a "bottoms up" approach to tell history through the lives of common people.

For Burns, the war was personal. When he did his documentary on the Civil War, he found records for Abraham Burns, his great-great-grandfather. He hopes others do the same, "to discover a connection to their real history."

"When we're around our own history, we're comforted," he said

As a kid, he said in an interview, he and his brother played Civil War. "I always made him be the Confederates," he said--the bad guys.

Asked what he thought about Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell's recent declaration of April as Confederate History Month and his subsequent apology to African Americans, Burns said, "The governor did a disservice to the people." He added, "We can be reminded of the past, how we speak of code words for the Confederacy."

The new Civil War exhibit is interactive, with touch-screen technology enabling you to scroll through documents. In some places, large yellow signs resembling Post-its highlight key passages.

The first thing a visitor encounters is a life-size researcher--kind of. It's a recorded image that takes you down to the library-like vault, where artifacts are kept in rows in temperature-controlled storage. With gloved hands, she carefully holds one document.

Then you're taken on a journey through labeled sections, such as "Breaking Apart," where a larger-than-life size Abraham Lincoln and the scarred back of a black man catch the eye. Along with a few other images, the scarred back is repeated several times in a frieze--a border running atop other documents--wherever there's an interactive touch screen. The 1863 scarred back image, identified as "Peter,"  also is paired with a photo of "the interior of a slave pen in Alexandria, Va."

But at least in this part of the exhibit, gore is at a minimum--no pictures of scores of scores wounded on battlefields.

There are sections on people like "Difficult Generals," which may bring a chuckle to anyone who has ever served in the military.

The exhibit covers about 3,000 feet of space, but there are so many images and words that it may feel cramped. "It's very tight for this kind of exhibit," admitted Philip Brady of the design firm.

But the challenge of selecting items to exhibit was huge. "We opened boxes that have been on our shelves for over a hundred years," said Marvin Pinkert of the National Archives.

Some things are missing from the exhibit because they don't exist, Pinkert explained while giving a tour: "There is no treaty of peace, so that cannot be displayed." In fact, it was officially known as the War of the Rebellion, not the Civil War.

"We hope everyone goes to their state institutions" for more information, Pinkert said. The exhibit might make people whose family includes a relative who fought in the war to dig a little deeper.

Because although the Archives has millions of Civil War artifacts, it doesn't have everything.  Take burial records, for example: There is no master index of Confederate burial locations.

Genealogists will find the free pamphlet "Finding Information on Personal Participation in the Civil War" full of exactly what the Archives does have, such as service records of volunteers soldiers, officers, pension files and court-martial files.

The exhibit is in the Lawrence F. O’Brien Gallery of the National Archives Building.  “Beginnings” runs through Sept. 6, 2010. “Consequences” opens Nov. 10, 2010, and runs until April 17, 2011.

To celebrate the exhibit, on April 30 The Federal City Brass Band will present short outdoor concerts on the hour, every hour between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., in front of the Archives.

Among the special programs--all free!--paired with the exhibit are these, in the William G.McGowan Theater:

Friday, May 7, noon. Lecture by Stephen C. Neff, author of "Justice in Blue and Gray: A Legal History of the Civil War."

Thursday, May 13, 7 p.m. Historical musical performance: Songs of the Civil War.

Thursday, May 20, 7 p.m. Panel discussion on women on the Civil War battlefield.

Thursday, May 27, 7 p.m. The Jewish Experience During the Civil War.

In the National Archives gift shop are Civil War broadside posters, period-motif stationary ($12.95), and even handmade "red tape" jewelry ($16.95 for a pendant), which contains a piece of the original red tape used to bind document documents (hence the term "cut through the red tape"). Perhaps a fun gift for your favorite bureaucrat?

Dennis Braden, a Foundation employee who buys books for the National Archives gift shop, said he expects some of the most popular ones to be those on women who pretended to be men and those on women spies. "The exhibit emphasis was more on the human side," he explained, so he avoided highly academic works that wouldn't sell, although books on Civil War campaigns also are available.

The Spring 2010 issue of Prologue, the quarterly magazine of the National Archives, in the gift shop might be one of the best souvenirs of a visit. In it, many documents and photos from the exhibit are reproduced.  Among them is the March 1909 (yes--years after the war) surgeon's certificate for former soldier John W. Moore of Green Castle, Ind. who filed a claim for a disability pension based on war-related injuries.(He got $24 a month. Woo-hoo. But that was a lot more money then.)

The Archives says the complete exhibit (both parts) will travel to The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Mich. in summer 2011; The Houston Museum of Natural Science, Houston, Tex., in Fall 2011 through Winter 2012; and The Durham Museum, Omaha, Neb., in Fall 2013.

David S. Ferriero, the archivist of the United States, cites "the clever use of social media" to help bring alive the exhibit. To wit: The Archives will highlight people and stories in tweets. Follow at twitter.com/discovercivilwar .

Hours: 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., March 15-Labor Day, and 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., day after Labor Day-March 14.

Entrance: Constitution Avenue between 7th and 9th streets.

More information:  http://www.archives.gov/nae/visit/gallery.htm