Transcripts For CSPAN3 American Artifacts General Lees Headq

Epicenter of the confederate effort. This is the headquarters, this is where robert e lee was. This is the building in which he made crucial decisions during the course of those three days of that battle that literally determined the outcome of the battle. This property when we bought it looks nothing like it does right now. It was a Hotel Complex with a brewpub restaurant attached to it. Envision a 40 or 50 room, 1950s style motel with a restaurant saloon attached to it , all surrounding this building that i am standing in that was lees headquarters. Lees headquarters was hidden in plain sight. What we did to restore this site was, first we had to get rid of the 20th century. That was to tear down and move out all of the debris that encompassed the hotel, or motel to be more precise. The restaurant brewpub. Then we had to restore the topography. We had to tear out Something Like 15 different structures, including the swimming poor and gift shops,f those types of things. This thing was just layered with 20th century commercial establishment. Restoredhat stuff out, the topography. Now it looks the way robert e. Lee would recognize it in the 19th century. Civil war trust is an American Heritage Land Preservation organization, with the emphasis on saving the battlefields from three different words. The revolutionary war, the word of 1812, and of course the civil war. Saving the battlefields where the issues that created and defined this country were settled. We saved that land. In addition to that, we have a strong education component, because we used to have land as an educational platform, an outdoor classroom, to teach americans about their history. The National Park service is our number one partner. We work very closely with them to buy land that they either cant buy for whatever reason, they cant move fast enough, dont have the money appropriated. We come in and buy the land, restore the land, then turn the land over wherever possible to the National Park service to add to National Park Service Parks that already exist. We enhance their product, if you will. Gettysburg was not such a small town at the time of the civil war. There was gas lighting, several churches, banks, two institutes of higher learning, and houses like this one dotting the countryside. Like a lot of america at the time, you have world living with people attending you have rural living with people tending small farms. This is one of the 10 roads that lead into gettysburg, and one of the many houses where you will have occupants tending a small garden and living life. The battle of gettysburg would descend upon this town and forever change it. As robert e. Lee arrived on the field on the afternoon of july 1, 1863, it is one of the bloodiest days of the civil war already. Lee comes upon a horrendous scene with dead and wounded dotting the terrain, hospital operations beginning, the union army in full flight back toward gettysburg, which made him happier that his side was winning. He would have seen a scene of incredible devastation, not only humans but also to the terrain, the structures, the fences. Debris all over the place. This house was owned by a very famous individual, Thaddeus Stevens, a radical republican congressman. Really into the abolition movement. He purchased this house in trust for a widow named Mary Thompson. Thompson had eight children. By the time of the battle, they had all grown and she lives alone, probably with a small dog in the house. Mrs. Thompson is thought to have been here in the house as robert e. Lee and the Confederate Army descended upon it. There are not really good accounts as to how she may have interacted or not interacted with generally and his staff and anybody else, but we know she is supposedly active in the recovery hospital operations. This house became a hospital after the battle. We do not know a lot more than that. By the time robert e lee arrived on seminary ridge, his staff had already selected this general vicinity as the headquarters of his army, the army of northern virginia. What a headquarters is, is a very difficult question to answer. Is the headquarters where the general actually is . Is it where the tent is . Is it where the general is conducting most of his work . It is really tough to answer. Here is how it comes down. We know that general robert e. Lee use this house. We also know that he was a man who went about the field and would have conducted numerous tasks on horseback, in his tent, and things like that. Incredibly, we do not have a great detailed account about what he did where, other than we know he used the house and his tent was somewhere outside the house. We know he also make critical decisions in the field. The battle of gettysburg lasted three days. The first day, the confederates win overwhelmingly, no doubt about that. As the confederates buckled the union flanks, the union army pulls back to this ridge, seminary ridge. There are 25 canon along this ridge, to thousands of troops lined up as the southerners pushed on either side. The union line in this particular area, just west of the house, was particularly strong. If you canons are blazing away at north carolinians trying to push into this direction. Eventually the flanks are so crumbling that this is the last position to hold. On the first day of the battle of gettysburg, this is the last union position. The southerners finally drive the union army away from this ridge. The union retrieves down what is now route 30. And an Unfinished Railroad bed. The southerners occupied this ridge at this point. Then they lay out their cannons on this ridge as well, because it is a very commanding ridge. You have a great view towards the town of gettysburg and the heights the union would later occupied. We know this because gettysburg is the greatest battle of the civil war and people wrote a lot about it. Not only did people write about it, but people came here right afterwards. There was an early historian who collected peoples stories right away. There are maps made within a year of the battle, a map of the burials made within a year of the battle. That shows a union and a confederate soldier more than that on this property itself. That testifies to the severity of the fight. All of the maps and photos really bolster that. The postwar history of the house is interesting as well. Here you have one of numerous houses on the battlefield. Remember, civil war battles are usually fought in peoples backyards, whether it be in eight rural whether it be in orural setting in a farm outside the house of any town. This civil war is fought in peoples houses and on their lands. This was no exception. Nobody thought of preserving all of every bit of every battlefield. Even the Civil War Trust does not feel that way. You cannot do it. This became one of numerous places, right along a major route, where people could stay and receive travel services. It became a tourist area. They had cabins here and eventually a full motel complex. During that time, there might also have been some untoward things going on in the house, to the point where battlefield guides a century ago stopped taking people to these headquarters, because there might have been a bawdy house running out of the house. If they talked about lees headquarters, they would have to explain why the crew go into lees headquarters. They did not want to expose tourists to that. This is a Union Victory in a northern state. While the government preserve the maids headquarters early on, maybe this was not as much of a priority. By the time people considered it a priority, it had become an expensive, booming Hotel Complex. When the Civil War Trust acquired lees headquarters and the complex around it, the former owners were generous enough to deed to us the numerous artifacts that they still had in their holdings from when this house served as general lees Headquarters Museum for eight decades. It was a very Popular Museum at the time. Right away, we wanted to identify everything that was associated with the house and deed those interns to the National Park service, who will be the ultimate steward of this party. We wish there was more, but we are happy to have the few things we have. We have the original deed to the house. It says that Thaddeus Stevens is purchasing the house in trust for Mary Thompson. It is great stuff. I think some of the may be best artifacts would be a locked plate from a door that is known to have been removed from Mary Thompsons house and taken across the road were out to attend to serve as a across the road or out to a tent to serve as a map table. Something robert e. Lee would have used to conduct the battle of gettysburg. We not only have a locked plate from it, but a piece of the door was well documented from that. It matches up with another piece of the door that supposedly came from the door as well. This is what the park service and other Museum Curators do in trying to assure that the providence of something is correct. It is really cool. The door itself became so famous that it was sort of removed from the headquarters and then used as a map table. It became of great interest to people. In the 19th and early 20th century, people were interested in mementos. They still are, but i would say the craze was bigger back then. People would crave a piece of the door robert e. Lee and his staff used. It was at least in part cut up and sold to people. I guess i am glad Something Like that happened. I wish we had the whole door, but if we cant, i will take a small piece of it. One of the most compelling pieces to come out of the collection associated with the house is a pair of bullet riddled shutters. From the photos we can see, there are not shutters on the Mary Thompson house itself, but there are numerous outbuildings associated with this house. The provenance goes back as well, they are clearly bullet holes, very compelling when you see the visit will when you see the visual example of the battle of gettysburg that it hit peoples houses. Imagine being a civilian and gettysburg at the time. Finally, we are pleased to have a chair whose provenance holds up well, a mid19th century painted chair thought to have been at the house at the time. Happily was not in the house during a fire that gutted the place. There is more than one chair, and i believe there is a table and a tablecloth thought to have been here when robert e. Lee was here. We are fortunate to have any of this. There are another 100 artifacts we opened up to the National Park service to have and add to their collection anything they wanted. Ultimately we ended up deeding most of it to the National Park service at gettysburg, but also places like fort henry and cedar creek and monotonous seat also places like fort henry and cedar creek and other battles which could benefit from things in the collection and were traced to people who were connected with those places. The Civil War Trust purchases and preserves the Hallowed Ground where citizen soldiers made this country what it is today. Some of the major decisions of American History has been decided on battlefields. A lot happened elsewhere, but they were ultimately decided to through military victory. The Civil War Trust preserves that land, where the soldiers struggled. Not necessarily in the otherwise very important prisons, hospitals, forts, cemeteries, those places are very important. We save those places if there is also fighting at those places, Hallowed Ground where americans fought. As the Civil War Trust became interested in this property, historians had already long known that we would be lucky to have the resources we have. The famous photographer Matthew Brady arrived on the scene within two weeks of the battle of gettysburg and recorded six photos either of or from this property. He recorded four of the houses, one which shows Matthew Brady with the widow Mary Thompson. Then he went to a home next door and took the most famous panoramic photo of the town of gettysburg, just as it appeared during the battle. Then he went across the road and recorded maybe the most famous photo of the civil war. You may have seen it before. It is of three confederate prisoners standing dignified with some of the hills of gettysburg in the background. We have a very not only compelling story to tell with these photos, but a great ability to get down to the details of which stone in the house were where, and which features, such as a barrel or doghouse, were actually part of the complex at the time. This stone house is not unlike a lot of other mid19th century stone houses in that vicinity. You have an idea of what these things look like inside and out. Unfortunately, this particular house was gutted by an interior fire 120 years ago. It burned to almost a shell. All of the outdoor stones and indoor configurations are in the same place. But the house itself, we do not have a good record of what it looked like because of this fire. However, afterward, this became part of a tourist complex. There were Hotel Buildings all around it. The house itself changed, especially so they could put a guest room upstairs in the house. They added dormers. We knew that there were no dormers at the time of the civil war. Our restoration plan focused on the exterior at first. How could we remove these dormers, put the right fences in, put the arbor on the front of the house, restored the doghouse. When it came to the interior, we acquired this house it had been a museum for a decade, so we knew we had to remove the museum cases. Once we did that, we knew we had to open up the house into what it likely was at the time. A standard four room house. We think it was a duplex. Two exterior doors, two fireplaces. We have very good reason to think it is approximately in its original configuration. The reason it is important to save parcels of land mike leighs is because it is American History. These are the places where america was created and defined. This is who we are. The battlefield, whether you are talking about the declaration of independence, the United States constitution, the emancipation proclamation, documents that were huge in American History and yet useless unless they are ratified by winning wars. What these places do, what these pieces of ground do is they teach American Public about how to become better citizens. Because it teaches them about their history. These are where the great things happen. I personally believe that humans crave a sense of place. They want to be there, they want to be at authentic places where real, important things happened. Real, important things happen on real, important things happened on these places, on these grounds. Americans can come to these places and stand where great events happened, to be there. Announcer for more information about these gettysburg headquarters and the work of the Civil War Trust, visit their website civilwar. Org. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] announcer monday night on the communicators, the National Association of broadcasters ceo gordon smith on the future of television. , to my view, is very bright for broadcasting, because of this new 3. 0 receiver standard, because it will give it is investing dramatically into the efficiency of our spectrum, and it will wake up your phone, so if there is an emergency coming into your neighborhood, you can be alerted to that through a broadcast. I have already i already said the tremendous pictures it will provide the sound capabilities it will augment. On the internet, the broadcast signal is one way. Because it will be in the future internetinteroperable, if a viewer wants to talk to them, it will come back to a broadcast signal. And there will be the opportunity to have far more engagement with your television broadcaster. In the political world, i wish this existed when i was on the ballot. But it will enable the ability of a broadcaster to provide political advertising for members of Congress Just to the people in the districts they represent. Night at 8 00y eastern on cspan2. Each week, american artifacts takes you to museums and historic places. Mr. Toomey hi, i am dan toomey. A guest curator at the railroad museum. This is the largest civil war railroad