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Exhibition Reviews
"In the Cause of Liberty." The American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar, Richmond, Va. http://www.tredegar.org/.
Permanent exhibition. 10,000 sq. ft. H. Alexander Wise Jr., founding president; Jennifer Gaudio, curator; Anedra Wiseman Bourne, director of marketing and public relations; Sara Poore, director of education; Adam Scher, director of museum services.
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| Taking up residence in the old gun foundry of the Tredegar Iron Works, the new American Civil War Center at Historic Tredegar occupies some of the most interesting real estate of the Civil War. South Carolina's Fort Sumter may have been where the war began, but it took a place such as Tredegar to provide Confederates with the weapons needed to sustain their rebellion for four bloody years. Spread across several acres along the banks of the James River, the Tredegar Iron Works produced over half the cannon used in the Confederate war effort. Located in Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, Tredegar was only a short distance from both the Confederate capitol building and the wartime home of Jefferson Davis. From this central site, one could have witnessed some of the most important moments of the war, including the final evacuation of Richmond in 1865, which signaled the end of the Confederacy. |
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It seems a fitting locale, then, for a new historical center that attempts to help visitors grasp the large sweep and scope of that massive war. Most museums and centers concerned with the Civil War tell the story of a particular place, if they are located on a historic site, or they shape their displays around a particular collection of historical artifacts. The American Civil War Center, instead, seeks to orient visitors in the larger story of the war and provide an overview of the entire conflict. In so doing—according to the center's founding president, H. Alexander Wise Jr.—the center hopes to serve as a place where visitors can gain a sense of the whole war before delving into the numerous other sites (and there are many in Richmond and across Virginia) that examine more specific aspects. |
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The center's permanent exhibit, "In the Cause of Liberty," is organized around the chronology of the war from three perspectives: Union, Confederate, and African American. A tour of the exhibit begins with an interactive film, "What Caused the Civil War?" in which visitors are asked to choose what they believe was the primary cause of the war: disagreements about states' rights, economic competition between the North and South, tensions over westward expansion, or battles over slavery. When the results are flashed on the screen, the film's narrators explain that lurking beneath every cause was the issue of slavery, the institution at the heart of the war. And it is this focus on slavery as the war's catalyst that serves as the primary interpretive lens for the center. As visitors follow the chronology of the war throughout the exhibits, reading about events from the three perspectives, the ways that slavery was deeply woven into all aspects of the war come to the fore time and again. |
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After watching the film, visitors make their way through the first-floor exhibits, which march in sequence through the first three years of the war. A timeline of events covering one of the walls wraps around the entire center, helping visitors keep themselves oriented as they make their way through the dizzying sequence of the war's events. Within the sections on each year are numerous displays with maps of the war's changing landscapes, the words of people who lived through those changes, and statistical displays meant to evoke the scale of the wartime forces that swept across both North and South. Scattered throughout are also a few exhibits featuring historical artifacts such as manuscript letters, army uniforms, and various weaponry. Another film, this one on the Emancipation Proclamation, greets visitors as they move from 1862 to 1863 and reiterates the centrality of slavery to the war's progression. A third film, "1863: The War Comes Home," concentrates on the destructiveness of the war and the devastation it wrought in people's lives. |
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