History is anything but "boring"

This post was published in the Wilson Times Oct. 19, 2019.

I recently received a letter that began, “Dear Fellow Student of History.” With a salutation like that, you know you are getting a fundraising appeal. The letter from Jim Lighthizer of the American Battlefield Trust, was, indeed, a fund-raising appeal. Like other such letters I’ve received over the past three decades, this letter was alarming and effective.

The American Battlefield Trust, formerly the Civil War Trust, is a nonprofit devoted to preserving and restoring American battlefields. Originally, the organization focused solely on Civil War battlefields but has expanded to include Revolutionary War and War of 1812 battlefields. Walking around on the “hallowed ground” of battlefields is one of my favorite things to do on vacation. Just four years ago, I made my third visit to Gettysburg and hiked all around the boulders and fields where more than 51,000 Americans were killed, wounded or missing in a three-day battle in 1863.

Lighthizer’s organization has preserved many acres of battlefield land at Gettysburg, Richmond, Chancellorsville, Harper’s Ferry, Bentonville and dozens of other places. The Battlefield Trust has been very successful in saving “hallowed ground” from commercial and residential developers and other threats.

What worries Lighthizer is the lack of interest, especially among younger generations, in the history he and other supporters are preserving. He calls it “a crisis in history education” and writes, “The numbers are terrifying.” Here’s a brief listing of scary facts:

1.    Over a recent 20-year period, no more than 17 percent of U.S. eighth graders scored “proficient” or better in history in national tests. That leaves 83 percent who are less than proficient in history, and they will be able to vote!

2.    A 2015 survey found that one-third of new college graduates could not place the Civil War (the most significant American event since the founding of the Republic) in its correct 20-year time frame.

3.    A survey of America’s top 75 colleges found that a third of them did not require an American history course to earn a degree in history!

4.    A survey by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation found that only 40 percent of Americans could pass the U.S. Citizenship Test given to immigrants seeking to become citizens.

These statistics reinforce other findings that Americans are ignorant of their nation’s history. Many young students say they find history “boring.” These are probably students taught that history consists of a bunch of dates and obscure people who are all dead anyway. That’s not the way to teach history.

To teach the Civil War, take students to Gettysburg. Have them stand at the stepping off point of Pickett’s Charge, and point out the ridge three-quarters of a mile away, and tell them they must walk briskly uphill toward that ridge while 10,000 well dug-in soldiers supported by cannon delivered a hailstorm of bullets and cannonballs at them. There’s nothing boring about being shot at. Use that incident to open the door to the whole history of the Civil War.

Meanwhile, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, which has been “selling” history for 80 years as a 301-acre living history museum (and the colonial capital of Virginia), is alarmed that freedom, liberty and democracy seem to be declining worldwide. Williamsburg CEO Mitchell Reiss used his column in the Foundation’s quarterly magazine to warn that liberty is in decline and authoritarianism is on the rise around the world.

In Williamsburg, visitors can walk the streets and visit the homes and government buildings the founders of American democracy inhabitated. This “living history” also is not boring. It is the closest thing we have to a time machine that transports us to the age of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry and others.

Nevertheless, Colonial Williamsburg has struggled with changing tastes of American vacationers. Many parents want their children to have fun on vacation, not learn how their nation began. CWF has changed its programming to include more child-friendly activities and more African-Americans of the 18^th century, both enslaved and free.

Both the Battlefield Trust and Colonial Williamsburg offer on-site seminars for teachers, showing them how to turn “boring” into excitement and equipping young Americans to understand their rich history and to appreciate the courageous acts that give them their liberty.

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Gettysburg still echoes after 150 years

One hundred fifty years ago tonight, the largest battle ever fought on American soil was marching toward its bloody, tragic and, ultimately, fortunate end. The crossroads of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, was the unwilling host of this three-day battle and remains the most-visited Civil War site in the nation.

I have visited Gettysburg twice, but I'm ready to go again if the opportunity arises. My first visit was on a rainy Saturday about 40 years ago. My parents and sister had come up to our Alexandria, Virginia, home for a visit, and we drove to Gettysburg from there on a misty, intermittently rainy Saturday. My wife and I went to Gettysburg about 10 years ago, spending the entire day driving and walking over the battlefield and having to leave before we had quenched our thirst for this critical battle of the war that tore America apart. If you can't visit, I suggest a look at the Civil War Trust's Gettysburg website or the many volumes of histories and myriad documentaries of the battle that killed or wounded around 40,000 Americans. The Diane Rhem Show featured a panel discussion of the battle today.

The battle was the so-called "high-water mark" of the Confederacy, but the out-manned Confederate army lost each of the day's fights. Nevertheless, the battle could easily have gone the other way. If Ewell had acted promptly and pushed the Union troops off the high ground on July 1, if Union soldiers had not held the line on Little Round Top on July 2, or if Longstreet had moved more quickly and decisively on July 3, the outcome could have been different. Or if Robert E. Lee had been more specific and less trusting of his lieutenants throughout the battle, the South might have pushed Meade and his troops off the gently rolling Pennsylvania hills and might have frightened the Northern electorate into an armistice, status quo antebellum. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has written with William R. Forstchen a convincing and readable alternative history ("Gettysburg") based on the idea that Lee might have taken Longstreet's advice and dug in the weary Confederates on defensible ground between Gettysburg and Washington, forcing Meade's hand. The United States came close to being divided; the victory at Gettysburg (my great-great grandfather fought there for the losing side) turned the tide of the war, along with the conquest that same week of Vicksburg, Miss., and put an end to the scourge of slavery.

As the Diane Rhem Show segment pointed out, slavery really was at the heart of the Civil War. But it was not the only cause of the war, and it was not the primary motivation for many soldiers North and South. My ancestor, a Mexican War veteran, was a poor farm laborer who owned no slaves and no real estate. He had no coin in the game being played by wealthy planters wanting to preserve their wealth and their way of life. But he, and many others like him, fought bravely and gave their lives (he gave his at Third Winchester in 1864) for a cause that was beyond slavery. State sovereignty might have been too big a term for their uneducated minds, but they could understand that their homes were being threatened and their friends were being killed.

As Civil War history is being constantly rewritten, Tony Horwitz points out that new scholarship suggests that war might have been avoided altogether. With greater wisdom, less bravado and more diplomacy and caution on both sides, the war might have been avoided. The Union's expenditures on the war would have been enough to buy and free all of the South's slaves and provide those freed slaves with land and capital to start new lives — all without the loss of more than half a million lives and the destruction of homes, public buildings and farms.

Casino would desecrate sacred ground

It should be self-evident, as Thomas Jefferson might have said, that a casino should not be built next to the most hallowed battleground on the American continent. But unless concerned preservationists and Civil War buffs can turn back the power of the almighty dollar, a casino might become Gettysburg's newest neighbor. The Civil War Preservation Trust (to which I have given small donations for several years) and other groups thought they had defeated the casino forces when a proposed casino at another site near the Gettysburg battlefield failed to obtain a Pennsylvania license. But gambling profiteers are still eager to tie their gambling tables and slot machines to a Gettysburg address, and another proposal is before the people of Pennsylvania.

A gambling casino would desecrate the site of the largest and bloodiest battle of the Civil War, which marked a key turning point in the war. On July 1-3, 1863, Confederate forces under Robert E. Lee tried mightily but failed to dislodge Union forces under George Meade, who had captured the high ground and never relinquished it, despite concerted attacks that culminated in the legendary "Pickett's Charge," a suicidal advance across nearly a mile of open ground. More than 30,000 Americans died in those three days, and thousands more were wounded. The outpouring of grief resulted in scores of monuments to various regiments and companies who fought bravely there on both sides. The rolling Pennsylvania landscape, a comfortable drive from Washington, D.C., is embellished with those marble, bronze and granite markers, hailing heroes nearly 150 years gone. Hundreds of thousands of tourists visit the battlefield, which is maintained by the National Park Service, every year to soak up some of the solemn history of this hallowed ground. They stand at the marching off point for Pickett's charge and stare at the line of cannon in the distance and that copse of trees that Lee made their goal and wonder what could have inspired men to such suicidal courage. They stand at the spot where the 20th Maine, out of ammunition after repeated attacks by Confederates, held their position on Big Round Top in hand-to-hand combat. They look at the spot where Abraham Lincoln delivered the greatest two-minute speech in American history. No one can go to Gettysburg without being moved.

Anyone who would place a casino on the main road into the heart of the Gettysburg battlefield has no sense of history or of honor. As Lincoln said, "It is for us the living ... to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to the cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion ... ." The dead of Gettysburg did not give their lives for gambling, and no casino should taint their sacrifice.