Museums, Monuments, and National Parks: Toward a New Genealogy of Public History

2. Managing the Landscape: National Parks, National Monuments, and the Use of Public Land

26 Chapter 2 Managing the Landscape National Parks, National Monuments, and the Use of Public Land -ZI earnestly recommend the establishment of a bureau of national parks. Such legislation is essential to the proper management of those wondrous manifestations of nature, so startling and so beautiful that everyone recognizes the obligations of the Government to preserve them for the edification and recreation of the people. —President William Howard Taft, 1914— The Civil War accelerated changes already taking shape in the nation’s economy,politics,and social life.Nonetheless,for many Americans the dissolution of the union and the end of slavery created a sense of sudden disruption .In the remaining decades of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the new one, a cult of novelty emerged as Americans sought to move beyond sectional hostilities and the war. The era was shaped by new immigrants, the New Woman, and the “New Negro.”1 Henry W. Grady, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, described a “New South,” and boosters touted its emergence. Grady took to the lecture circuit, speaking on behalf of southern entrepreneurs, landowners, and politicians who needed to attract outside investors to rebuild and modernize the region. Grady portrayed the New South as feminine and free. Having been emancipated from the past,she stood “upright,full-statured and equal among the people of the earth, breathing the keen air and looking out upon the expanded horizon. . . . She understands that her emancipation came because, through the inscrutable wisdom of God, her honest purpose was crossed, and her brave armies were beaten.”2 The region’s forward-looking posture simultaneously and stubbornly turned away from the past. MANAGING THE LANDSCAPE 27 This preference for the new reflected a certain optimism regarding the demographic and economic changes evident in nearly every state and territory .The population shifted to the West,and the economy shifted as well. More of the former slaves and plantation owners alike reported to work in factories rather than in fields.Many Americans saw their standard of living improve, along with their access to citizenship. Reconstruction-era policies expanded opportunities for education, entrepreneurism, and enfranchisement .3 At the same time, the transition from agriculture to industry and slave to paid labor created a roiling, unruly economy, prone to extreme cycles of boom and bust.The extension of basic political rights to the freed slaves incited violence throughout the South. Technological innovation and the growth of cities changed the way most Americans lived and worked. Long-held traditions and habits seemed endangered. In many instances, the past was literally dismantled: old buildings and homes were demolished to make way for new businesses, new industries, new towns, and cities.4 For many,so much change created more anxiety than optimism. One critic captured the mood of the era when she commented on the efforts of female social reformers: “If woman has, as she asserts, the power to make human society over, she has at the same time the opportunity to wreck it. A hope always implies a menace.”5 From 1860 onward, the hopeful forces pushing America into a new century were balanced by an equal and opposite fearful pull to protect America from the menace of change. Prior to the Civil War, Congress had been slow to create any agency or bureau it perceived as dictating a national culture.The federal government had sponsored research, assembled collections, and fostered the advancement of new sciences only when such work was couched as immediately useful to defense or economic development. After the war, however, the perceived dissolution of social and cultural bulwarks lent a different kind of relevance to education and research. Over the next fifty years, Congress and the president established new federal regulations, scientific programs , and data-gathering agencies, claiming federal responsibility not simply for identifying the nation’s resources but also for managing them. Furthermore, it was not simply Taft’s “wondrous manifestations of nature” that required governmental oversight.The American people also seemed to require management. Anxiety about the pace of change led reformers and politicians alike to create more efficient and predictable means for channeling the restless spirit of the late nineteenth century.6 Federally managed landscapes, Taft recognized, were more than simply beautiful; they could SCIENCE AND GOVERNMENT 28 provide “edification and recreation” to offset the impact of rapid modernization .7 Over the course of fifty years, the expansion of federal managerial and regulatory authority...