Interpreting Race, Slavery, and United States Colored Troops at Civil War Battlefields

On July 21, 1961, an estimated hundred thousand visitors and ten thousand reenactors marked the centennial anniversary of the Battle of First Manassas: the Confederacy’s first major battlefield victory of the war. The event was fraught with controversy. The sight of thousands of white southerners waving Confederate flags and shouting the “rebel yell” following the defeat of Union troops fueled revulsion among many black Americans and other observers. Critics of centennial celebrations such as the reenactment of First Manassas could not help but view these events through the lens of contemporary civil rights activity. The veteran civil rights and labor leader A. Philip Randolph spoke for many in commenting, “There is no doubt that this whole Civil War Centennial commemoration is a stupendous brain-washing exercise to make the Civil War leaders of the South on par with the Civil War leaders of the North, and to strike a blow against men of color and human dignity.” Centennial event organizers attempted to walk a tightrope as they struggled, in the face of widespread racial upheaval, to promote a “reconciliationist narrative” of the war that steered clear of tough questions related to slavery, race, and the service of United States Colored Troops (USCT).¹

Although a strong counter-memory emphasizing slavery, emancipation and the service of USCTs was promoted by black organizations such as the Association for the Study of African American Life and History throughout the 1950s and ’60s and received coverage in black periodicals, Americans would have been hard pressed to find these themes discussed at historic sites, including battlefields managed by the National Park Service (NPS).² Yet in the decades following the centennial, public history sites—including those managed by the NPS—faced increased pressure to expand their interpretation of the Civil War beyond reconciliation and heroic stories of battles and leaders.³ By the late 1990s, the creation of new national parks marking key moments in the history of the civil rights movement, as well as legislation specifically directing the staff of Gettysburg and Vicksburg to interpret the war in a broader historical context helped to bring attention to stories that did not easily fit into a celebratory national narrative and set the stage for more direct action at Civil War sites more broadly.⁴

That moment came in 1998 in Nashville, Tennessee, when park superintendents met to discuss the future of interpretation at Civil War sites. In what came to be called the “Holding the High Ground” initiative, they concluded that “battlefield interpretation must establish the site’s particular place in the continuum of war, illustrate the breadth of human experience during the period, and establish the relevance of the war to people today.” Individual battlefields would no longer be interpreted in isolation from broader narratives such as the road to secession, the unraveling of slavery, and the legacy of the war. Moving forward under this new mandate, many Park Service historians took advantage of the scholarly consensus that located slavery as the central cause of the war and began to develop programs devoted to slave culture, emancipation, and the black men who pursued freedom by enlisting in the Union army. Drawing on the “new military history,” they also sought to demonstrate to visitors the way that battles and campaigns affected life on the home front, shaped (and were shaped by) political events, and influenced the actions of enslaved people throughout the Confederacy.⁵

These interpretive shifts have not been without challenges. A relatively small, but vocal Confederate heritage community voiced opposition from the beginning, charging that the Park Service was engaged in “indoctrinating” the general public with a “politically correct” narrative that sought to bring shame to the descendants of Confederate soldiers.⁶ Not surprisingly, divisions among Park Service personnel also surfaced early on within individual parks, between staff who remained committed to a traditional understanding of battlefield interpretation and those willing to embrace a more expansive view of the proper scope of site interpretation.⁷ It is undeniable, however, that the winds of...