National Archives at Atlanta sets symposium, treasures in your attic display

The National Archives at Atlanta is sponsoring a day-long program where people can display and learn more about their Civil War heirlooms.

“The Civil War: America’s Long Struggle” begins at 9 a.m. April 16 at the archives, 5780 Jonesboro Road, Morrow, Ga.. The cost is $20 per person, with registration and payment due by March 31. Lunch is provided.

A morning symposium includes David Ferriero, archivist of the United States; Kenneth Noe, Auburn University professor and author of “Reluctant Rebels”; and Daniel Stowell, director of the Papers of Abraham Lincoln at the Abraham Lincoln President Library and Museum.

The programs’s “Civil War Treasures in Your Nation’s Attic,” starts at 2 p.m. Display space is limited to the first 100 individuals who register and pay.

Participants are encouraged to bring Civil War-era photographs, books, diaries, letters, family keepsakes, games, uniforms and more. The display is limited to three items per person and a display space of 2 feet by 3 feet.

Up to three firearms can be brought, but no replicas. Security personnel will inspect all firearms, which must be disabled and cleaned. No bullets, ammunition, swords, knives or sabers are allowed. All items must be pre-approved.

“It’s one thing to hear about the Civil War in a lecture or read about it in books. It’s another to dig through your attic and find your family’s place in the greater narrative,” said Jim McSweeney, regional administrator, National Archives at Atlanta.

Subject area experts can provide information, but no monetary value, on the items. Georgia Public Broadcasting will film the exhibits for future broadcast.

Those displaying artifacts must attend the morning symposium.

The event includes an exhibition of 19th-century newspapers chronicling the African-American experience.

• More info on symposium, artifacts display

Photo: The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration

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Civil War treasures at National Archives

I wrote last week about the new major exhibition, "Discovering the Civil War," at the National Archives in Washington D.C. Here are some photos from the exhibition, which is heavy on interactivity.
This interactive looks at military and civilian leaders in the North and South.
You can click on any of these photos to see a larger version. • Click here for article on the show
The two-part exhibit is organized thematically. Part A topics are Breaking Apart, Raising Armies, Finding Leaders, We Were There, A Local Fight, and A Global War. Part B will cover six additional topics: Prisoners and Casualties, Innovation and Enterprise, Spies and Conspiracies, Emancipations, Endings and Beginnings, and Remembering.

From the National Archives' vaults, an interactive way to experience the Civil War

The aged Georgia document proves the Civil War adage, “rich man’s war, but poor man’s fight.”

In the North, a draftee could gain an exemption by paying a fee of $300 or by hiring a substitute.

The scenario played out a little differently in the Confederacy. Many Southern whites believed the draft favored the rich.

The "twenty Negro law," for example, exempted planters with 20 or more slaves. In February 1864 that requirement was reduced to 15 slaves, and Lycurgus Rees of Columbia County, “who had "fifteen able-bodied slaves,” applied for an exemption as "a Farmer or Agriculturalist." In return he agreed to furnish the Confederate War Department with 1,500 pounds of beef, bacon, or pork. (Click image to enlarge)

Documents like Rees’ exemption will come to life starting Friday in a two-part exhibition at the National Archives building in Washington, timed to mark the Civil War’s 150th anniversary. Entitled “Discovering the Civil War,” the show in the Lawrence F. O’Brien Gallery draws from millions of records, letters and photographs at the archives.

“Our extensive use of primary source documentation will let visitors examine historical evidence and decide for themselves some of the controversial questions that swirl around the Civil War even today,” says National Archives public affairs specialist Miriam Kleiman.

Recent debate over slavery’s role as a cause of the Civil War proves that Americans are still divided on the war's cause or causes.

Curator Bruce Bustard said the Archives wants the documents on the sensitive issue of slavery to speak for themselves. The Confederate Constitution, similar to the U.S. Constitution in many ways, provides an explicit right to hold slaves as property.

"We want people to look at the documents, read the documents, ask questions about them and then ultimately make up their own minds," Bustard told the Associated Press.

This won’t be your father’s Civil War exhibit. Little-known incidents or stories will be told in new ways.

Visitors will access touch-screen machines. The archives is very active on social media, promoting the exhibit on Twitter and a scavenger hunt on Facebook. Visitors will be able to create a graphic novel, using comic-style cartoon panels, from Archives documents about the commerce raider CSS Alabama.

“Discovering the Civil War” also looks at the unusual places where the Civil War reached, including Japan, China, and France. There's an interactive globe that people can virtually "spin" and land on many of these different spots, with explanations and documents about what occurred there, Kleiman told me.

The original Emancipation Proclamation is rarely shown, but it will be displayed for three days in November. Another significant item at the exhibition is Virginia’s ordinance of secession.

The two-part exhibit is organized thematically. Part A topics are Breaking Apart, Raising Armies, Finding Leaders, We Were There, A Local Fight, and A Global War. Part B will cover six additional topics: Prisoners and Casualties, Innovation and Enterprise, Spies and Conspiracies, Emancipations, Endings and Beginnings, and Remembering.

“All theme areas contain original documents, facsimile documents, and photos. Most theme areas have either a computer or mechanical interactive,” says Kleiman. “For example, we have created a ‘Facebook’ type interactive that demonstrates the close relationships among Civil War military leaders.”

An educational Web page will launch on Friday to coincide with the exhibition opening.

Kleiman says she hopes visitors will “encounter unexpected people, viewpoints and events” through the exhibits.

The second half of the exhibit will open in November, exploring the war's consequences. Next year, the 6,000 square-foot exhibit will begin touring nationally, with stops in Michigan, Texas and Nebraska.

Admission is free. The exhibit will be presented in two parts. The first runs April 30-Sept. 6, the second Nov. 10-April 17. National Archives hours: 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., March 15-Labor Day, and 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., day after Labor Day-March 14.

• Click here for more information on the exhibition.
• Click here for YouTube preview.
• Click here for National Archives' quarterly Prologue magazine.

Filmmaker Ken Burns: We must not lose our historical compass

Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns knew one thing when he completed the 1990 epic “The Civil War.”

He had seen enough of war.

Through photographs, diaries and stories, Burns had poignantly documented the bloody conflict that claimed more than 600,000 American lives. Like Civil War soldiers, he and his crew felt they had “seen the elephant.”

People then asked Burns to do a film on World War II.

He resisted doing “The War,” which was released in 2007, for several years.

But two startling truths changed his mind about again taking up the topic.

Some 1,000 U.S. WWII vets were dying a day. And high school graduating seniors thought Americans fought with the Germans against Russia.

“We were losing our soldiers and our historical compass,” Burns said in a talk Thursday afternoon at Georgia State University in Atlanta.

The prolific filmmaker has a large body of television work that helps tell the story of America. Among them are “Baseball,” “Jazz,” “Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson,” and, more recently, “The National Parks: America’s Best idea.”

The New Hampshire resident said his films always ask the same question, "Who are we?" Sharing memories helps us heal from turmoil and war, he said.

Thursday’s speech centered on humanity’s fascination with war. Mankind, Burns says, has the lust for war in its DNA.

Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee may have said it best. “It is well that war is so terrible – lest we should grow too fond of it.”

Burn’s talk was laced with quotations from Abraham Lincoln, his favorite president. As a young lawyer, Lincoln spoke at the Lyceum in Springfield, Ill., delivering a speech that foreshadowed the Civil War.

“As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide,” Lincoln said.

“The Civil War was the closest we ever came to national suicide,” said Burns, 56. “Paradoxically, in order to become one we divided ourselves in two.”

Burns, who is unafraid of controversy, said he was glad that the ghastly human toll documented in “The Civil War” tempered U.S. enthusiasm for bloodshed when the first Gulf War was launched against Iraq in 1990.

For “The War,” Burns told the story of 50 Americans and four communities.

Insisting “there are no ordinary lives,” Burns said the seven-part series stayed away from celebrity generals.

“If you weren’t on the front line in the war, you aren’t in our film.”

Like Lincoln, Burns worries about divisions within America. Citizens today should be aware of how much they are alike, rather than concentrating on their differences, said the documentary maker, who added that education is the key to preventing bloodshed.

Burns said Americans have a history of seeking unity. He quoted remarks Lincoln gave at his first inaugural address in 1861:

"The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."