In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

310 OF HEALTH AND HISTORY The Museum of the Confederacy Emory M. Thomas S urely I visited the Confederate Museum on some school field trip while I was growing up in Richmond. Two scrapbooks from my days at Ginter Park Elementary School contain photographs of the Confederate White House, but I cannot recall going to the place until I was conducting research for my doctoral dissertation at age twenty-five. Whenever I did begin my visits to the Museum of the Confederacy, I was impressed. The Museum of the Confederacy contains what one staff member describes matter-of-factly as “the largest and most comprehensive Confederate collection in America.” Visitors may see Jefferson Davis’s White House almost exactly as Davis himself saw it. A very high percentage of the furnishings now in the house were there in the 1860s. Other museums have swords and saddles and uniforms; this one has the sword, saddle, uniform, and more that belonged to Robert E. Lee. Other museums have flags. This museum has the flag that draped the casket of Stonewall Jackson, as well as more regimental flags than I want to count. This museum has artifacts of Jefferson Davis with labels handwritten by his wife, Varina Howell Davis. This museum is to the Confederate States of America what Wimbledon is to tennis, what Wall Street is to money, or what Hollywood is to film. To get there, visitors usually exit an interstate highway and plunge into the depths of downtown Richmond, Virginia. The White House of the Confederacy and the L-shaped museum building that flanks the mansion seem to cower beneath glass and masonry towers that compose the Medical College of Virginia (of Virginia Commonwealth University) Hospital. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX 311 Of Health and History: The Museum of the Confederacy The place seems very much out of place amid the emergency rooms, ambulances , and attendant bustle of a large, urban medical center. But the museum has to be there because the Confederate White House was there when the medical college and its hospital occupied two smaller buildings two blocks away. It is appropriate for the museum to be there, too, because it is the Confederate mecca, and pilgrimages are supposed to be arduous. Step one in the journey is the parking deck that cascades eight levels down the face of the ridge overlooking the valley of Shockoe Creek. This edifice serves both the Medical College Hospital and the Museum of the Confederacy. On my visits to the museum I play a game—Ponder the Parkers or Guess the Goal— attempting to figure out whether my fellow parkers are bound for the museum or the hospital as they walk to the elevators or stairs to ascend again to the level of Clay Street. I would have bet many dollars that the very pregnant woman and her solicitous male companion were en route to a delivery room—until I saw them soon after, staring at the paintings of Conrad Wise Chapman in the museum. By definition tourists are in a new place for the first time; they often seem lost and confused. Hospital visitors seem equally lost and confused in the labyrinths which house modern medicine. Only back on the street do people sort themselves by entering a long tunnel into the hospital or by strolling past the anchor of the CSS Virginia (formerly USS Merrimack) to the museum. What follows is a series of stories, impressions, and “fun” facts gleaned from my visits to the Museum of the Confederacy. This is disparate stuff, the accumulation of over forty years filtered through my contorted mind. It may seem more like a kaleidoscope than a composition. But I do adhere to a rough chronology, and I shall try to draw dissonant elements into some coherent whole in the end. My first memory of the MOC was my journey to the bowels of the White House in search of materials for my history of Richmond as Confederate capital . In that antique time, the Confederate White House held the treasures of the museum crammed into display cases throughout the mansion. The library was in the basement, and generations of historians visited the facility to do research in its rich collections of manuscript, archival, and photographic materials . There is a story (which I believe) that the eminent scholar Bell Wiley, while working in the museum library one warm day, took off his sports jacket and hung it neatly on the back of his chair. A short time...

Share