KENTUCKY: McConnell Promotes Civil War Battlefield for National Park Status
U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced legislation Tuesday to support making Mill Springs Battlefield in Southern Kentucky part of the national park system.
McConnell’s legislation directs the U.S. Secretary of the Interior to evaluate a proposal to include the Civil War battlefield as a national park. Such a feasibility study makes a final national park designation easier to achieve.
U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Somerset, successfully introduced and backed identical legislation earlier this year in the U.S. House.
“The Mill Springs Battlefield Association has worked hard to preserve hundreds of acres of battlefield property and to educate the public about the history of the American Civil War and the Battle of Mill Springs,” McConnell said in a news release. “This bill would put the people of Kentucky one step closer to protecting and preserving this historic battlefield, which is important to the history of the commonwealth and our nation.”
Mill Springs Battlefield was the site of the Union army’s first significant victory during the western theater of the Civil War. PHOTO PROVIDED
Rogers said preservation of the Mill Springs Battlefield has been “a joint progressive effort to honor the young men in blue and gray who fought in the first significant victory of the Civil War for the Union Army in the West.”
Carolyn W. Mounce, executive director of the Somerset-Pulaski County Convention and Visitors Bureau, said having a national park would boost tourism in the area. Jack Keeney, executive director of the Mill Springs Battlefield Association, said the group asked McConnell and Rogers for help after years of preserving the site.
On Jan. 19, 1862, the Battle of Mill Springs spilled across Pulaski and Wayne counties in southeastern Kentucky. It was the second-largest battle in the state, involving more than 10,000 soldiers.
It was the first significant Union victory in what was then considered the Western Theater of the Civil War. The Union’s victory meant that the main Confederate defense line that had been anchored in eastern Kentucky was broken, freeing Union soldiers to move through Kentucky and into Tennessee.
VIRGINIA: History Brought to Life as Hobby
PETERSBURG, Va. — During the week, Patrick Lacey is a history teacher. But on the weekends, he trades in his briefcase for a bayonet.
As a “living historian,” he falls somewhere between a teacher and an actor.
“With living histories, you can give a lot more, teach a lot more, than you can just standing in a classroom showing pictures,” Mr. Lacey says. “People can actually come up to you and look and touch and feel and see, and be, like, ‘Oh my god, they actually wore that?’ And you can be, like, ‘Yeah, they actually did.’ It adds a whole new dynamic to being able to teach something that’s actually very interesting.”
Photo by: Patrick Kane
Historical re-eneactors fire a Napoleon cannon during the 150th anniversary of the Battle of the Crater recently at Petersburg, Virginia, National Battlefield. “Living historians.” resembling Civil War scholars. dramatically re-enact and educate. (Associated Press Photographs)
He and other participants at a recent “Living History” event at the Petersburg National Battlefield resembled Civil War scholars with a penchant for the dramatic, there to enact and educate.
“Not only do I learn more and have a greater appreciation for those who fought in and experienced the Civil War, which really made the nation what it is,” said Matt Semple, a Civil War enthusiast, “but by doing the reenacting, doing living histories like this, you get a chance to interact with the public, to pass on what we know and have researched and experienced. One of the biggest travesties that could ever happen with history is forgetting it. So that’s really why I re-enact — and because it’s fun, really really fun.”
Most of the living historians at the event conducted individual research and compiled their findings to create a meticulous portrait of daily life at City Point, a portion of the Petersburg National Battlefield in Hopewell, Virginia, that served as Ulysses S. Grant’s headquarters, a Union supply depot, and a holding area for Confederate prisoners.
Unlike traditional Civil War re-enactments, the living historians don’t simulate fighting. Instead, they take a slice-of-life approach, mimicking everyday life on the battlefield.
Union soldiers clustered around one tree were preparing to punish one of their own who had paid another to do his duty for him. A few feet away, two soldiers leaned against a tree for an afternoon nap.
Across the field, a suspenders-clad man tended to an open fire outside a large canvas supply tent, while a nearby group of hoop-skirted women talked among themselves, nibbling cornbread and sipping water from tin cups.
In the words of Anita Henderson, a medical doctor who says being a living historian is her avocation: “This is a living history, so it’s more like show-and-tell for adults. This is more of a general living history interpreting what life at City Point would have been like.”
The renderings spare no detail. For example, the hoop-skirted women, who were representing the U.S. Christian Commission, an organization of middle- and upper-class women who provided aid to soldiers, stood around a table overflowing with dishes of cornbread, watermelon, cherries, and cucumbers.
“We are trying to bring food that not only do we know the Christian Commission did distribute, but that they distributed at City Point and what was in season at that month,” said Julie Herzig, a living history participant who also teaches history at James Madison University and serves as the costumer at the Frontier History Museum in Stanton, Virginia.
“So everything you see is something that is in season right now. You would not see strawberries — strawberries are not in season at this point in the summer, so that’s why we don’t have them,” she said. “Blackberries just went out of season a couple weeks ago, so you wouldn’t have those here either. We do a lot of research to make sure we have as close to what they would have been experiencing as possible.”
The event’s laid back atmosphere, coupled with the historians’ choice to speak in third-person rather than first, makes the living history an effective educational tool rather than simply a spectacle.
“One thing that’s different at this type of event is that were are not saying ‘I, such and such,’ and we are not surprised that you are holding a piece of technology,” said Adrian Robertson, one of the hoop-skirted Christian Commissioners and who is also the public programs coordinator at the Library of Virginia. “For this particular event, the idea is that it is for the public, and that it is easier to ask questions of a person who is able to make connections to the modern world.
“So we are talking in third-person, saying ‘This person did this and this person did this,’ instead of adopting a character, trying to be a certain person,” Ms. Robertson said.
While all living history participants share a deep enthusiasm for Civil War history, the passions of some are more personal.
John Griffiths, 76, is one such participant. “I have three ancestors who were in the Union Army, two from Illinois and one from Wisconsin, and you may have heard of the one from Illinois,” he said. “His name was Ulysses Grant. He is my great-great-grandfather on my mother’s side.”
If you have a question about the Civil War, these historians probably have an answer. However, the query they find themselves responding to most frequently is “Aren’t you hot in all those clothes?”
For the women, the heat isn’t an issue.
“These are natural fibers,” said Ms. Herzig. “I am wearing 100 percent cotton, and even if it is 100 percent silk or 100 percent wool, it’s still natural, so it breathes.
“Modern clothes have things in them like polyester and nylon, which is essentially plastic — imagine being outside wearing a garbage bag or a shopping bag. It traps the heat. And so because it is those natural fibers it breathes. I can’t speak for everyone right now — but I’m cool,” she said to a chorus of agreement from her hoop-skirted companions.
Soldiers, too, claim that their thick wool jackets, long pants and high boots actually serve as defenses against the summer swelter.
“We drink a lot of water, but these uniforms are actually not as hot as people think,” said Michael White, a living historian clad in full Union soldier regalia. “A lot of times, especially on sunny days, the people in short sleeves and shorts are hotter than we are because the sun is coming down on their skin. We sweat of course, but it’s not too terrible.”
Living History events are presented in conjunction with the National Park Service at historic Civil War sites across the United States. During the warmer months of the year, multiple events are held each week.
-Washington Times
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MARYLAND: Howard County Schools Discipline Student over Confederate Flag Display
GLENELG, Md. — A Howard County university student who unfurled a Confederate flag at a large faculty soccer recreation was disciplined, according to a spokeswoman for the faculty technique.
Rebecca Amani-Dove, the spokeswoman, would not say what sort of motion was taken versus the Glenelg student who exhibited the flag when standing at the best of the bleachers during the year opener in between Glenelg and River Hill significant educational institutions on Friday night time. The scholar was immediately told to choose the flag down.
“Carrying a Accomplice flag is not unlawful, but everything that results in disruption is actionable from an administrative standpoint,” Amani-Dove claimed. “Administrative action was taken in alignment with our pupil code of carry out.”
Amani-Dove said the principals at Glenelg and River Hill sent letters to mother and father and addressed students about the incident on Monday.
Word that the flag, which is seen by several as a loathe symbol representing slavery and racism, was displayed in Howard County, speedily distribute over the weekend in the county.
“Public displays of the Confederate Flag evoke division, hate and subjugation — exactly the opposite of the values we maintain in Howard County, and in Maryland,” Howard County Government Ken Ulman posted on his Fb site Monday. “We will have to train our young ones why this is these kinds of a hurtful symbol to so numerous people. We ought to fight against injustice and intolerance in any sort, in particular at our faculties.”
Howard County Educational facilities Superintendent Renee A. Foose previously in the day introduced a assertion contacting on pupils to “value the variety within just each individual of our communities.”
The Howard County Community University System is a vast majority-minority district. 20-two percent of its pupil inhabitants is African American, eighteen per cent is Asian and nine % is Hispanic. Forty-4 per cent of the student system is white.
“The Confederate Flag has unique meanings for distinct teams of people today inside of our society,” Foose wrote in a assertion posted to the county school Web web-site. “For many in this article in Howard County, this flag symbolizes division and evokes emotion.”
Foose reported she hopes the local community utilizes the students’ action as a lesson.
“We have a shared responsibility to use this incident to replicate upon the electric power of phrases, symbols and steps,” she claimed. “I urge all our learners to make alternatives that carry us together somewhat than to tear us apart.”
-Washington Post
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