Gettysburg, PA
The American Civil War Museum is marked.
American Civil War Museum
297 Steinwehr Avenue
Gettysburg, PA 17325
Surely technological progress must continue, but seeing the American Civil War Museum in Gettysburg made me realize what a great thing a wax museum can be. If done right, scenes depicted in a wax museum can really draw the viewer back into the past, in a way that the marvels and curiosities exhibited by most museums can not rival.
The wax museum at Gettysburg opened its doors to the public in 1962, and many things have changed since then. Think of it this way: In 1962 color television had yet to be adopted by the mass market. So, I really wasn’t expecting too much as I walked in. It turns out that you walk down a dark hallway, into whose walls are carved rectangular openings. Those openings reveal wax figures inhabiting small stages, as if they are actors in a play. In chronological order you “witness” scenes depicting life in the antebellum era, that show famous generals meeting to determine strategy, and which portray unsung heroes committing acts of courage in the name of honor and patriotism. Some of the wax figures are mechanized, which does make the experience of walking down that dark, quiet, empty hallway somewhat eerie.
I wrote about the Battle of Gettysburg in the previous post, so today I’ll just show some photographs and describe what they represent.
The United States was divided into two economically distinct regions. New England, the Northeast and the Midwest had a rapidly growing economy based on family farms, industry, mining, commerce and transportation, with a large and rapidly growing urban population. The north’s mills and factories were usually family owned.
The South was dominated by a settled plantation system that was based on slavery and optimized by use of the cotton gin, invented by Eli Whitney in 1794. A large percentage of the demand for their agricultural products was from overseas, and those overseas markets were a major source of manufactured goods. As a result, Southern states tended to oppose tariffs, while Northern manufacturers supported them.
During the “Bleeding Kansas” border war of 1856, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts delivered an impassioned antislavery speech on the Senate floor, a speech which included a few personally directed remarks of a rather insulting nature. Preston Brooks was a congressman from South Carolina and a nephew of one of those singled out for personal insult. Brooks confronted Sumner in an almost empty Senate chamber and beat Sumner unconscious with a thick cane with a gold head. Both men became heroes in their respective regions.
The
Army of the Potomac was the major Union Army in the Eastern Theater. In the first years of the war, no man seemed to be capable of leading it successfully. From left to right are Major General Joseph Hooker, who suffered a stunning defeat at the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863, General Ambrose Burnside (notice the
sideburns), who was defeated in the disastrous Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862, the elderly Winfield Scott, who served as the Union Army general-in-chief, and Major General George B. McClellan, who organized the Army of the Potomac but was removed from his command after the tactical draw at the bloody Battle of Antietam in 1862. On the subject of that event, President Abraham Lincoln was famously quoted as saying “If General McClellan does not want to use the army, I would like to borrow it for a time.”
General Lee lost his most successful commander when Stonewall Jackson was fatally wounded in the Battle of Chancellorsville in the spring of 1863. There, in a daring and successful surprise night attack on the Union flank, Jackson was mortally wounded by “friendly fire”.
In the spring of 1864, the new Union commander, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, began a series of campaigns to wear down Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Lee inflicted heavy casualties on Grant’s larger army, but was unable to replace his own losses. This is the scene at Appomattox, Virginia, on April 9, 1865, when Lee surrendered to Grant. Lee, dressed in a new uniform, is shown reading the surrender terms. Looking on is Grant, his boots muddied by a long ride in the rain that morning.
Great pictures, as always! Maybe I’m too young to appreciate them, but wax museums seem to be too old-fashioned for me. Then again, I’ve never seen a Civil War wax museum! It could be interesting!
Wow, fascinating post! I really like that the museum uses wax figures to tell the story, it makes it all much more real to me when I can imagine the people who lived then going about their lives and doing the things we read about in textbooks. Great photos!
Interesting. These “animated” museums bring history home in a better way than normal museums.
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