Cleansing History? Confederacy Museum (And Trip Advisor) Retouch The Past

Our colleague Eric Muller is at the center of a remarkable set of events involving the White House of the the Confederacy, in Richmond, and Trip Advisor - the travel review and marketing website.  Last weekend, Eric visited the White House.  He found several aspects of his experience noetworthy and problematic and - being an engaged citizen-tourist -  reported his thoughts on Trip Advisor.  His comments provoked an immediate reply (on the website) from the head of Public Relations for the Museum of the Confederacy (which is affiliated with the White House.)  Eric responded to the PR chief's comments.   And now, a day later, Trip Advisor - which boasts the motto "get the truth and go" - has entirely deleted the exchange.  Could the truth be bad for the travel business?  

Here is the now-deleted exchange, cribbed with Eric's permission:

Eric's TripAdvisor review:

I took the tour of the White House and found it quite fascinating, though not in the way the museum undoubtedly intends.

I am still trying to decide what the creepiest moment in the tour of the Confederate White House was.

Was it (a) when the guide boasted that Abe Lincoln visited Richmond in early April 1865 and left unscathed, only to be assassinated in his *own* capital city a few weeks later?

Or (b) when the guide kept referring to "Henry and Spencer" as the building's two genteel "butlers" without noting that they were both Davis family *slaves*?

Or (c) when I realized that the only black person I'd seen on the entire premises (including the adjacent Museum of the Confederacy) was the gentlemen whose job was to follow behind the all-white tour group to tidy and close up each room on the tour as we left it?

Or (d) when the guide, in her very last words of the tour, without even a touch of irony, chose to quote Jefferson Davis's very last official communication to the people of the Confederate States of America, in which he urged them to continue resistance: "Let us but will it; and we are free?"

Or (e) when the guide, in describing what happened to the White House after April 1865 when Jefferson Davis fled (or "left to establish the third capital of the Confederacy in Danville," as she euphemistically put it), spoke of "Reconstruction -- or Occupation, depending on which history books you like to read."

I am not sure I have visited a historical site that tries harder to paper over the uglier aspects of its history (the importance of white supremacy and human chattel slavery to the failed secessionist project) than this site does.

Don't get me wrong: the house is very historically significant, and quite beautiful. Many of the stories that the tour guide narrates are quite interesting. Some are also touching.

But the whole narrative of the visit (from the moment you step in until the moment you make your way through the rows upon rows of Confederate-battle-flag-embossed items in the gift shop) is a re-polishing of the Confederate "Lost Cause" myth.

I'd recommend this visit to a friend because the site is significant -- but visitors beware!

The Museum of the Confederacy's Publicity Relations Specialist's response:

I have to respond to your comments about your tour of the White House of the Confederacy. I would like to respond to your comments using your list:

a) Lincoln entered a newly conquered city. There was much concern among his own military leaders about his visiting the city at that time. They were worried about possible hostile reaction to him. So, this is just a statement of fact and not an opinion. b) This, again, is a statement of fact. The men would have been referred to as “butlers.” c) The African-American you saw following the tour is the Assistant White House Supervisor. That is just one of his functions here. He also travels extensively giving talks on the museum and the White House as well as its occupants. His last lecture was in the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. d) The war was not over and this, again, is a simple statement of fact and not an exhortation to people alive today. e) Once more, a statement of fact. Both of these can be found in history books and I don’t understand your astonishment at this.

Of course the museum shop sells items with the Confederate Battle Flag on them. We also sell items that do not have the battle flag on them. The shop sells what is bought, that’s how we bring in some of the funding to the museum.

May I ask you a question? Why are you telling people to “beware?” Of what are visitors supposed to be afraid?

Eric's Reply:

I will start with your final question. I think that from context (which is to say, the preceding sentences in my review), it's clear of what I'm telling people to "beware": a tour of an important historical building that is wholly steeped in the myth of the Lost Cause.

I am right now heading up the process of designing the permanent exhibit and introductory film at a new museum at a historical site in Wyoming (one of the Japanese American internment camps from World War II). So I have been reading and working extensively in the field of historical interpretation. The tour of your site simply took my breath away in its repeated appeals to the major tenets of the Lost Cause mythology and its shunting aside of any aspect of what went on at the site that would tend to complicate or undermine a narrative of Southern chivalry, decency, and commitment to principle (moral and political). Insofar as it touches on anything outside the personal stories of Jefferson and Varina Davis and their children, the tour is, in my view, not a historical presentation but Lost Cause propaganda.

As for your specific responses to my observations:

"a) Lincoln entered a newly conquered city. There was much concern among his own military leaders about his visiting the city at that time. They were worried about possible hostile reaction to him. So, this is just a statement of fact and not an opinion." When the tour guide theatrically raised her eyebrows and finished reciting these facts by saying, "Hey, I'm just saying. You can draw your own conclusions," *that* editorializing was most certainly intended to point the tour group to a particular idea, namely, that while Lincoln was received gracefully in the Confederate capital, he was unsafe up north. But even if she had not said these things and had not theatrically raised her eyebrows, there is no defending what she said on the basis that it is a "fact" that Lincoln was not shot in Richmond and a "fact" that he was shot a few weeks later in the federal capital. It is certainly a "fact" that Lincoln was not shot in Richmond. Yet it is also a "fact" that Lincoln was not invited to play the tuba in Richmond. There are many, many things that did not happen to Lincoln during his visit to Richmond. The only one mentioned on your site's tour was that he was not shot. What meaning does your site hope a visitor will attach to Lincoln's non-shooting there? Any doubt about the answer to that question vanishes when one realizes that the "fact" of Lincoln's non-shooting in Richmond is directly and immediately contrasted with the "fact" of his shooting a few weeks later in the federal capital. It vanishes further when one realizes that the tour guide *omits* a "fact" about the shooting in DC -- namely, that the assassin was an ardent confederate sympathizer outraged over the abolition of slavery and the extension of voting rights to certain freed slaves. I know from my own museum interpretive work that when a museum or historical site crafts its script, it sifts the relevant facts and presents those that most clearly relate to a handful of pre-selected themes. What is the theme that this particular concatenation of "facts" is designed to highlight?

"b) This, again, is a statement of fact. The men would have been referred to as 'butlers.'" Here you're referring to my surprise that the tour guide did not mention that Henry and Spencer, the butlers, were Davis family slaves. It is certainly a "fact" that the Davis family would have referred to Henry and Spencer as "butlers." It is also a "fact" that the Davises would have referred to an item in their house as a "water closet," and they might also have referred to a female cousin in the family as "being in an interesting condition." I would not expect the tour guide to use these "factual" terms, though: I would expect her to say "toilet" and "pregnant." And there's a bigger reason to expect the term "slave" rather than, or in addition to, "butler": this is the executive mansion of the sovereign that fought a war to defend the institution of slavery from federal encroachment. If there were a moment in the tour when a visitor might expect *some* mention of slavery (and there is no other moment when slavery is discussed), the visitor might expect it *when the tour guide is explicitly mentioning the Davis family's slaves*. But the word "slave" did not come up.

"c) The African-American you saw following the tour is the Assistant White House Supervisor. That is just one of his functions here. He also travels extensively giving talks on the museum and the White House as well as its occupants. His last lecture was in the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C." As I noted, this gentlemen was the only African-American I saw on the premises of either the White House or the adjacent Museum of the Confederacy. It is marvelous that he is so accomplished and well-traveled. But can it really be that the White House of the Confederacy really needs somebody to alert it to the symbolism of having the only African-American on the premises serve as the person who patiently and silently follows the (white) tour group and (white) tour guide around the building, turning off lights and closing doors?

"d) The war was not over and this, again, is a simple statement of fact and not an exhortation to people alive today." Here you refer to my discomfort with the tour guide's choosing to end the tour by quoting Jefferson Davis's final exhortation to southerners to continue armed conflict -- specifically, the words "Let us but will it; and we are free." (Lest there be any misunderstanding, the tour guide is careful to note that he issued this exhortation just days before Lee's surrender at Appomattox (a surrender that Davis vehemently opposed), as Davis tried to set up a government in Danville.) Set to one side the rich irony of citing the Confederate President's hope for "freedom" for whites, without noting for visitors (at any point in the tour) that the southern cause was centrally (even if not exclusively) about denying freedom to blacks. That is a layer of meaning that, by this point in the tour, I did not expect. Instead, just note that there are many thousands of words from Jefferson Davis's long career with which the tour might close. Your organization has chosen to end it with his final exhortation to continued armed resistance to federal power. Yes, it is a "fact" that he wrote those words. But surely the selection of those words must be based on something, and I would again imagine that the selection relates in some basic way to the themes the organization is trying to highlight. What is a visitor to make of the fact of your organization's choosing an exhortation to continued armed struggle as the final, tour-summarizing thought?

"e) Once more, a statement of fact. Both of these can be found in history books and I don’t understand your astonishment at this." What astonished me was the implication that whether the period in question is called "Reconstruction" or "Occupation" is a matter of evenhanded dispute, because after all there are books that use one term and books that use the other. There are books out there that continue to call civil rights marchers "rioters" and Martin Luther King a "communist." There are books that continue to call the forced removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast an "evacuation." But the fact that these terms appear in books does not make them equivalent terms.

I hope these explanations give you a better sense of why I reacted to the tour as I did.

Comments

[Jamie Colburn]

I imagine they took this exchange down because of how contentious it makes "facts" seem -- undermining the site's rather pretentious notions of "Just the Facts" reporting about travel.

[Gritsforbreakfast]

Interesting debate. I've not seen the site but from the description I agree with Eric about how they addressed Lincoln's Richmond visit and particularly that it's absurd for the tour to fail to mention slavery. But he's reading too much into the presence of the black employee. Wouldn't he have complained equally if everyone there was white? Should the fellow have been denied the job because of race?

Also, IMO it's too easy to dismiss legitimate arguments about the Civil War and its aftermath by using the "Lost Cause" label and dismissing every contention identified with such sentiments. Reconstruction WAS an occupation. In fact, it was a period of outright martial law, a brutal fact for Southerners which is glossed over by the term "Reconstruction." My own family owned no slaves (or "butlers" for that matter) but was burned out by Sherman and fled Union occupation to Texas with nothing but the clothes on their backs. They shared much of the "lost cause" ideology described here but it was rooted in bitter loss and personal experience.

Winners write history with the terms they prefer, but that doesn't completely invalidate the language and perspective of losers in great historical conflicts.