The question of how far we’ve come in expanding and correcting certain elements of our collective memory of the Civil War has come up on a number of occasions on this blog and elsewhere. I have stressed the extent to which we have moved beyond a strictly Lost Cause narrative of the war to one [...]
National Park Service
Update: I just wanted to take a second to encourage all of you to read Pete Carmichael’s presentation in its entirety. The last thing I want is for you to read this post as some kind of hatchet job. His thoughts regarding battlefield interpretation deserve a careful read and perhaps in the next few days [...]
If I could do it all over again I would earn a degree in public history and work for the National Park Service at a historic site. Over the past ten years I’ve had a number of opportunities to help out with various NPS projects and the work is always rewarding. It has given me [...]
In the process of reviewing the final edits for my Crater book I’ve had to go through research files that have not been touched in a couple of years. Today I read through a bunch of editorials concerning the 1937 Crater re-enactment in Petersburg, which the National Park Service used to mark the inclusion of [...]
Ford’s Theatre National Historic Site in Washington, D.C. has decided not to sell the bestselling book, Killing Lincoln by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard. The decision was made following a thorough review of the book by Deputy Superintendent, Rae Emerson. I don’t have any problem with the NPS making such a decision; in fact, I [...]
I can’t think of a better example of the dramatic shift that has taken place in recent years in our understanding of slavery’s central place in our collective memory of the Civil War. Fort Monroe offers the National Park Service a unique opportunity to think carefully about how they are going to establish a relationship [...]
Over the past three days I’ve come across two references that place Robert K. Krick, squarely in the camp of Southern historians. The reference is meant not simply to denote field of interest but a “pro-South” or “pro-Confederate” bias. As many of you know Krick worked for 31 years as the chief historian at Fredericksburg [...]
