Atlanta History Center has big plans for 150

I caught up this week with Gordon L. Jones, senior military historian and curator at the Atlanta History Center. He gave me a brief overview of what the center has planned to mark the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.

A major symposium scheduled for January 2012 will cover the hot-button issue: Causes of the war.

"The point is to have a discussion," said Jones (left), who hopes to have scholars James McPherson and Gary Gallagher, among others, attend.

The AHC is submitting grant requests for the symposium, the only one in the Southeast. Each symposium across the country will focus on a specific topic.

"It will be the most collective brainpower in one room," Jones promises of the Atlanta event.

Speakers will take questions from the audience, said Jones. "There's not as much room for [Civil War] myth as there used to be."

2014, the actual 150th anniversary of the Atlanta Campaign, will see two exhibits at the AHC.

One is a traveling textile exhibition, with a focus on cloth and quilts. The AHC will include items from its collection, Jones said.

A show tentatively entitled "Relics and Remembrance" will draw from the AHC's own collection to look at lessons from the Civil War. The AHC's current "War in our Backyards" (right) show also includes relics, as well as maps, drawings, an interactive display and a 3-D theater.

The AHC is building 150th partnerships with other institutions, including Port Columbus, Emory University, Georgia Tech and the Georgia Historical Society, said Hillary Hardwick, vice president of marketing.

Jones expects the observation of the 150th anniversary to be different from the centennial, which was told from a Lost Cause, white perspective, he said.

The AHC, for example, has an exhibit entitled "From Civil War to Civil Rights."

Visitors these days are much more diverse, Jones said.

"We didn't see these audiences 20 years ago."

War in Our Backyards: Exhibit shows what Atlanta looked like during Civil War

The bad news: Visible remains of Civil War Atlanta are long gone.

The good news: An exhibit opening Saturday at the Atlanta History Center brings them back in 3-D.

An interactive computer also will allow visitors to click current maps, overlaying 1864 battle and siege lines and troop movements over them.

“Many area residents have no idea what happened literally right under our feet,” the AHC says about “War in Our Backyards: Discovering Atlanta, 1861-1865.”

I’m looking forward to checking out the exhibition and making a fuller report in The Picket. I plan to speak with curator Gordon Jones, who was busy this week putting the final touches on the show, which will run until October 2011.

(Then-and-now photos above): Near the current Fulton Cotton Mill Lofts on Decatur Street, George N. Barnard documented the ruins of a destroyed Confederate ammunition train and the nearby iron mill. Courtesy Kenan Research Center)

Using the latest research, visitors will see how much of the city was destroyed and by whom. “Most battlefield documentation of the 1860s was meant to be seen through stereo viewers, which gave the illusion of three-dimensions. In the exhibition’s theater, visitors once again see Civil War Atlanta in 3-D,” the AHC says in a recent newsletter.

Photos and objects from the collections of Wilbur G. Kurtz, Beverly DuBose, Thomas S. Dickey and George Wray “tell the personal stories of the men who fought in our backyards.” Also on display are five sketches made in 1886 for the Atlanta Cyclorama.

The AHC says rare drawings and sketches will be exhibited for the first time.

President Abraham Lincoln was sweating his re-election bid in the summer of 1864. Union Gen. William T. Sherman’s victory in the vital city ensured his political success.

(Photos above): George N. Barnard made this photograph of the battlefield of Peachtree Creek near the corner of current Collier Road and Dellwood Drive in Buckhead. The clue for identifying the spot was deciphering a name on one of the grave markers in the foreground. Courtesy Kenan Research Center)

• Click here for more information on the exhibit.
• Exhibit's page and details on Facebook.

Lincoln show features Bible, items he carried

Atlanta is celebrating Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday a little late. But details of the exhibition about the 16th president, coming to the Atlanta History Center, make it seem well worth the wait. "With Malice Toward None: The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition," opening here Sept. 4, should appeal to both fans of Lincoln and those interested in the difficult Civil War-era chapters. • Details

Forget modern conveniences: These women enjoy life on the 19th century trail

On an already hot day, Beverly Simpson (below, left) and Terre Lawson went about the business of building up enough coals to cook two chickens, one of them dangling from a string.

The mules, John and Sassy, were coming back to camp, ready to take a long drink, be freed of their harnesses and rest a spell. Sassy wasted no time, rolling in the dust after Beverly’s husband, Mark, and son, Travis, had removed the gear from the wagon-toting pair.

The ladies were dressed from head to toe in 19th-century clothing. No room anywhere to let in a cool breeze. And there were more chores ahead at the Civil War Battle of Resaca (Ga.) re-enactment weekend earlier this month.

So, I asked with a hint of skepticism, why do you do this?

“It’s fun,” Simpson said simply.

They are living historians, participating in events that mark the period from 1730 to about 1869.

About half of her events are Civil War-related says Lawson, 55, a tax accountant living in Tuscaloosa, Ala.

Simpson, a hairdresser from Lawrenceburg, Ky., and Lawson particularly enjoy events that last up to a week. Some of those are immersion events, where they truly go back in time. Those are geared toward the hobbyists themselves, and the public is rarely invited.

Both women claimed the period costume is more comfortable than modern clothing. They moved with ease through their small camp that sat alongside a pond. Puppies served as companions for both humans and the mules.

“It takes about the third day to hit the groove” at a weeklong event, said Lawson, 55.

By then participants feel removed from cell phones and computers. Nowadays, they say, people don’t know their neighbors. At these kind of events, you depend on those around you.

“When you are there a week you have to work with them. The self-centeredness goes away” said Lawson, who dyes cloth and works with wool at many events.

Lawson’s extended family is from northeast Georgia. One relative has done blacksmithing. She has been involved in these kinds of events for decades.

“It’s a fun place to raise children.” Children know their manners and are expected to keep up with chores. “It takes a whole community to make life work,” said Lawson, who cited the experience of a 12-year-old girl who butchered a hog.

Simpson and Lawson often take live chickens when they are on the trail. Few of them make the return trip.

Lawson (right) is one of the organizers of an upcoming immersion event along the Tennessee and Kentucky border.

“In the Van: Trailing Kirby Smith” will remember the movement of the Confederate general’s troops toward the Battle of Perryville (Ky.) in 1862.

Lawson expects 40-50 participants for the Aug. 1-7 trail. Most will walk behind wagons pulled by mules, horses and ox. Some road will need to be cut and the hobbyists will have to get wagons up some steep grades.

“We anticipate extreme pioneering,” she said.

Depending on the event, the living historians may portray contractors driving wagons for the armies or civilians fleeing from battle or neighbors.

Smith’s trek to Kentucky had its challenges.

“It was a very onerous trek for the troops,” said Lawson, whose grown daughter is a historian. “They got by with corn and green apples.”

On Oct. 21-24, Lawson will be at Civil War Days at Westville, Ga. The village “will be transformed into a Civil War town as hundreds of re-enactors portray life in a Georgia town,” according to its Web site. Lawson likes to show the public how to dye cloth. She will attend a Nov. 3-7 living history event at Fort Toulouse-Fort Jackson State Historic Site near Wetumpka, Ala.

She has to be careful with the fumes and other byproducts that result from the mordants (metallic compounds) used to bind fiber and dye.

“Period dye was an exercise in chemistry,” she says.