Transcripts For CSPAN3 The Civil War Gettysburg Antietam 20

Six years. Peter scott, one of the things that john and i have discussed with many of our guests is interpretation on Civil War Battlefield parks. We have also talked about the partnerships with academics and we have seen with many of our guests, including our guest on thursday, nina Silver Silver was one of the first historians that came to the park and had conversations with the park staff about ways to broaden the interpretation of gettysburg and time and time again john and i have noticed that these connections between academics and public historians, you cannot conclude there is this a great gulf between these two sides as i think there once was. I thought we could open by having you reflect upon how battlefield interpretation, how it changed over time during your career and if you wouldnt mind, i would be interested in what you see as opportunities as we look ahead. Or iimportant observation my girlsy fun fact cameron and isabel carmichael, i have to give them a shout out today because they love the Civil War Institute because they say they get to spend more time with daddy, but we know why it is the ice cream. [laughter] peter they would walk over my dead carcass. Civil warrite historian in the town of gettysburg is not mr. Herwig. It is scott, who is it . Scott it is my wife. Peter i said this on the last show and i want to make another point, especially during the time in which we are going through as a nation where it is easy i think not to recognize the significant changes that occur at battlefield parks and barb sanders, who does such incredible and important work in engaging teachers as well as students, she oversees i believe the great task program. Every summer it is a program that reaches out to communities that are underserved in baltimore or philadelphia and we need to remind ourselves that people have not turned a blind eye to the fact that Civil War Battlefields have not been as inclusive as we would prefer. There are people out there who are doing that work. Barb sanders is doing just that. Orry about that a little advertisement of sorts. [laughter] pete. Well said, as far as interpretation goes, what i would say is when i 1979,d at gettysburg in the theme, if you want to say the overall theme that a visitor would experience when they came to the park was the high watermark. That was the theme. The focus was on picketts charge and the heroism of the attack on july 3. They had a film that we show that the psychodrama center. It went over a lot of peoples heads, but he got out what the war was about. It was kind of ancillary. The primary interpretation got when you came to the park was you went through the electric map. The electric map explained the movements of the troops. It was beloved by everyone. It was clear that was one of the things people liked about the electric map. It was not exciting, but it explained everything. A ent to the cycle ram that was a focus on the high watermark into the heroism of andsoldiers watermark the heroism of the soldiers. Then you would walk out from the painting then the idea was to take you down the high watermark trail, show you where picketts charge occurred and that was your interpretation. We had a large museum where the electric map was and it was an amazing collection of artifacts with virtually no theme and no interpretation. I would call it in a way , it was open storage. They had the chairs of the tavern that reynolds laid on on june 30, the night before he was killed at gettysburg. Is a little inscription there that says these are the chairs that John Reynolds laid on on june 30 in the tavern on june 30. 499 of the people who went through there, they do not know 99 of the people who went through there, they do not know who John Reynolds was. They dont care. There were efforts in the 1970s before i got there to try to broaden interpretation. They had a program called women and the war. They had programs where they tried to talk about civilians. We did not talk about slavery. We were not encouraged to talk about slavery. We were focused on telling the people story of the battle. The story of the battle that occurred within the boundaries of the battle park. We do not do an interpretation to talk about the town of gettysburg for example. Our focus was limited. The beginning at the relationship between the National Park Service Public historians and academic historians today. We did not have much of a thetionship at all, until 1990s is when it really began. There were a few things that started to change interpretation in the National Park service and specifically at gettysburg. What i always like to say about the National Park service is, when you say National Park service, you imagine the entire service is always on board with everything that a park is doing. The National Park service is like a navy where every park is its own ship and today do things kind of their own way and they do things their own way. They wear the same uniforms, but they are not all on board with doing the same type of interpretation. To brings are easier along then other parks. It has to do with who is in charge of the park, the superintendent, the chief of interpretation. There was always a feeling i encountered with park service among some people that the only thing we should talk about on the Civil War Battlefields is about the soldiers, the battle, the fighting that occurred there. Lets leave it to academics in classrooms to talk about why they were fighting, what the fighting meant. Gradually that begin to change. We siding gettysburg. We saw it in the gettysburg. It was ridiculous to do the programs we did and visitors would walk away not understanding what any of it meant. I was at the angle where picketts charge reaches its climax, and there was a couple Standing Bear at the angle. They were standing there at the angle. They were from england. They had seen the electronic map. They had done everything. Said, he at me and he goes, what was this all about . [laughter] scott i never forgot that because that really brought home for me the failure of what we were doing. We were not helping people understand why this was relevant. One of the key things i learned as an interpreter was you can have all the facts and figures, all the troop numbers, all the ranks, all the dates of commission, you can know all of make the if you cannot story youre telling relevant to the person listening, it doesnt matter. You have to make it relevant. What does this mean today to me in my life . You have to be able to do that. In the 90s began to broaden interpretive programming we were offering. We were experimenting with a lot of Different Things to see what might work. Park wide, then it became more service wide, what really was a big catalyst of change was the arrival of John Lasseter as the superintendent. Laster had a phd in history. He was also a colonel so we had a military background. He fought in vietnam, but he also had an academic background. He saw the importance of connecting park interpreters with academics and he put together with dwight decay fully, chief historian at the National Park service, a program where we brought in david dwight silver, and, nina some other historians whose broughtforget, but we them in and we had these workshops with park interpreters and i will also add that we brought in a young and very bright academic peter no gray hair back then. Carmichaeld pete doing workshops with park staff in the morning and then doing Public Programs and commenting on what we were doing as far as interpretive programs. The whole experience proved to be very eyeopening. It revealed one of the challenges of broadening your interpretation and the National Park service and do that is the people doing the interpretation. I learned that many of the people out there doing beliefs about had the war that were not grounded in the scholarship. They learned that years ago. Maybe it was their cultural background that they wanted to believe it, but they had a very difficult time coming to grips with some of the realities of what the civil war was about, some of the things that occurred during the war were challenges to help people understand those things and interpreting it to the public. Factor. A big limiting a lot of people would say you should do this, you should do that. Those are wonderful ideas but until i have the people who can actually go out and to do them, you have to move incrementally. You cannot just suddenly invent the wheel. You have to build all the spokes before you can get the wheel assembled. It was an ongoing process all the way up until when i retired in 2013. We were constantly trying to improve ourselves, better ourselves. One of the big advancements that we made was when latter lasseter was able to put together this private Public Partnership and we will do new Visitor Center and museum and tore down the old center. That gave us the opportunity to reshape how visitors were prepared for their visit. We changed to the theme, if you want to call it that a visitor would encounter from the high watermark to a new birth of freedom. In the museum we tried to challenge people to see the war in its totality. Why did it come . What were the causes of its coming . What did it resolve . What did it not resolve daca what did it not resolve . It left visitors disquieted. That is to prepare visitors before they went out onto the battlefield with a license to guide or did a selfguided tour. That has worked imperfectly because one of the problems with Publicprivate Partnership is the private partner has got to stay financially viable and that means you have to charge for people to go into the museum. As the fee for the museum has gone up, i think the people going through the experience has not been what they like it to be. It has not been what i like it to be. I would like to see the majority of people go through that experience the first time they come so they have a grounded understanding of what the war is about before they go out on the battlefield. That is kind of a broad brush of where we are now. Wynn is now, chris the chief of interpretation. Chris started with me as a college workstudy. Died dog to john and impressions all the time john and i do impressions all the time. He has now the chief and i think he has built upon the things we did when i was there. The chief and i think he has built upon the things we did when i was there. He has made excellent progress in developing programming that has a broad reach in and tells a broad story. Reach and tells a broad story. Peter i think it is i think it is also a good point that you are part of the park service that has a wide range of individuals who come with all kinds of baggage, cultural baggage and historical understandings that are uniquely their own. I sometimes get frustrated when people in a very anecdotal way will find that park service interpreter whose programs are not in keeping with the changes have described that have occurred since the 1990s. I firmly believe that every interpreter has her or his right to interpret those events as they see fit, but what i am frustrated by is pointing to those, what i would almost call exceptions now, pointing to those individuals to make the claim that nothing has changed. What you have described, it is a sea change. That foundational experience, there is nothing even remotely close to that found anywhere in a park service and i think you and john and brian fitzgerald, im telling you, for those of you who are cynical about the government, and i understand why any are, i hope you all have opportunity at some point to connect to somebody in federal service like scott, brian, barb sanders, the list goes on. I am leaving a lot of people out here, but these are people who are really dedicated and devoted and have done such Incredible Service to broaden the reach of the park. Notcott pointed out, he is satisfied. I am not satisfied. No one is satisfied, but it does not do anyone good to say that we tell the same story the same way. That is factually not true. It is a great destruction to what we are trying to accomplish. Cost, this issue about and i dont want to pin you down on this, it worries me a great deal. Notexperience is just accessible to people regardless of color. Payr middle class families for their kids and adults to go through that. Is there an alternative here that we can make it more affordable . Is that a question that is above our pay grade . [laughter] scott i cannot say i know the answer to that. I guess what i would say is that if i was still working at the park right now, was in a position where i could make my voice heard, my voice would say one of the goals we need to have weto try to find a way, and have to consider all options on this, to maximize the number of people who get that experience. That is our goal. When your goal is we need to make sure that the private partner, in this case the gettysburg foundation, is financially doing well, that is your goal, i think your goal is misplaced. Im not saying that is their goal, but if so that goal is misplaced. That cannot be your goal at a park like gettysburg. Your goal has to be we want to educate the public about what happened here and what happened in this war so they understand it and they have a rich experience. It willncial part of adjust to whatever we are able to afford here as far as the number of people who are going through. We need to find that price point at which we can survive within but maximize the number of people going through the experience. There are some organizational things that when we were ended up getting cut for financial reasons that i think would have helped a lot, of thewhich was some Visitors Center we designed based on our experience that we had at the williamsburg Visitor Center, which was very effective. I still think it is, but it was different when we went. The first thing you saw when you went in where the restrooms. 90 of theated about questions the visitors desk got. The orientation film was short but it told you all your options. Only reason you wanted went to the visitors desk was you needed to book a hotel room. After the film you knew what you wanted to do. The film directed visitors to do what williamsburg wanted them to do. We have an orientation film. It is is still there, i believe. No one watches it. They think they are at walmart and they are watching looking at a tv during a commercial. The purpose of that film was to prepare visitors on what their options were so they knew what they wanted to do, whether they wanted to walk over and buy a ticket to the museum. It was guiding people to the best way to experience the place. That is your best way to experience gettysburg. What happened was when that was lost and the visitor wandered around more, it was harder for the visitor to figure out what it was they wanted to do there and i think that is still an issue at the Visitor Center. Visitors like to be guided. As to what you are recommending they should do. Peter absolutely. When i worked in the park service, i enjoyed working the information desk. We were so critical. It would make or break that experience and i would see people who would give a long list of things you can do his, this or this. You need to first ask how much time they have. , after about two or three minutes, people shut down taking things in. Nothingout this beats a persontoperson interaction. That is true. Peter before we get to antietam, the immense pride you must feel though when you drop barb off to work and give her a peck on the cheek and go into that Visitors Center [laughter] peter that Visitors Center, of all the things you have done in your career, that Visitors Center must be an immense source of pride. Scott that was a really unique experience. I have often talked about why everything worked out well and i think it started out with laster. With leadlk about mclellan or he created a culture in which wereoices were valued and heard. I could disagree with him in a meeting and to voice my opinion and i felt perfectly fine doing that. There were no egos in the room, no one trying to control where this thing was going to go and imprint their vision on it. I think everyone in the room wanted to make this the best experience they possibly could. One of the things i am always delighted with in that Visitor Center is the visitor flow in that Building Works beautifully. It works exactly like they hoped it would work. If you were ever in the old , it was a mess. It was horrible. One last thing i will say on interpretation is jim horton one day and i were out back of the cyclorama center. Was a professor at George Washington university. Ago. Ssed away a few years just a brilliant guy. And you edited his book. Scott yeah. I have got a bunch of students who need to be there and they have to listen to me whether they want to or not. Interpreters, its tough. They dont have to listen to you. What he was saying is when you are out there, you can tell interpreters you need to say this, you need to bring that in. If they do not have the skills on how to do it, the visitor will walk away if there is something they do not onto here. You have to present complicated, controversial topics in the turn way so you dont people off. I presented a lotto of controversial topics in the course of battle programs that i did that no one ever walked away. No one ever got upset and it is the way you say it because you are not trying to label somebody as the enemy and the good guys. I always remembered that from jim horton and i always valued that advice. History is not a movie reality a morality play and i think we are losing some of that, which disturbs me. When i was young and maybe too aggressive with my interpretation, i heard too many stories about the jackson trying , what is now called the jackson death site the jackson shrine, what is now called the jackson death site. Philanderer. Stuart car, drove in her straight to fredericksburg and complained. I got