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Thanks to @AlbertMackey1 for providing a nice overview of legislation that could lead to the removal Confederate monuments from NPS battlefields. https://studycivilwar.wordpress.com/2020/08/08/confederate-monuments-in-national-parks/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
A few thoughts of my own in a short thread.
A few thoughts of my own in a short thread.
One major difference between battlefield monuments & most other public monuments is that with the former there are professional interpreters who are employed, in part, to educate & provide context to these monuments. In this sense the interpretive possibilities are really broad.
Thus the debate is as much about HOW these monuments should be interpreted as much as whether or not they should be there. And the reality is that for most of Gettysburg’s history as a national battlefield, the place has been interpreted from a Lost Cause perspective.
The Licensed Battlefield Guides that Al quotes talk about “sectional healing,” but oftentimes that sort of interpretation has played down stories about emancipation, Reconstruction, & the continued fight for civil rights in favor of a narrative that privileges national progress.
I agree that for the most part these monuments do little to help visitors envision a battle or the Civil War itself. For me, any potential value comes in educating visitors about memory & the idea that the ways people choose to remember the past shape culture & politics today.
I remain conflicted in my own thoughts, but one challenge for defenders is answering why a place dedicated to sectional reconciliation continues to be such a powerful symbol for the exact opposite in the minds of a good number of Confederates, Lost Causers, & others since 1863.
In my view, the answer lies partly in the presence of Confederate monuments, which symbolize resistance, sectional pride, & oftentimes racism, & partly through the ways the Civil War has been interpreted historically. Can Confederate monuments be used to change this dynamic? END
