This is so embarrassing. And sad.
The largest, most comprehensive, and finest collection of Confederate Civil War relics and memorabilia is conserved by the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond. And because the museum's exhibits are saddled with being on the wrong side of history - it contains rebel flags, for God's sake! - administrators there decided in 2007 that the best thing to do with it was to bust it up and send its treasures to smaller museums hither and yon.
For more on that bit of cowardice, go
here.
Well, the efforts of those who intend to diminish as much as possible the history that the Confederacy played in U.S. history have begun breaking ground on their 21st century version of the Museum of
The Confederacy The Southern States in the Years In Which The Citizens Thereof Lost Their Way and Ultimately Regretted the Institutions and Principles They Had Regrettably Built Their Way of Life Upon.
I'll say this for them. At least they aren't sticking it in Zimbabwe:
Confederacy Museum to start Appomattox site
Associated Press
Richmond, Va. (AP) -- The Museum of the Confederacy plans to break ground on its new main exhibit site in Appomattox, where the South's surrender to the Union ended the Civil War.
Officials at the Richmond-based museum said in a release Wednesday that the groundbreaking for the new museum will take place Sept. 23. The 5,000-square-foot space is expected to open in the spring of 2012.
The main exhibit at the Museum of the Confederacy-Appomattox intends to focus on the events that led to the war, and the reunification of the United States. [link]
I don't know whether to laugh hysterically or cry uncontrollably.
First, I'll give them credit where it's due. Appomattox (Court House) is the perfect site for the new museum.
But 5,000 square feet? For its "main exhibit"? Is that a joke?
This, friends, is a 5,000 square-foot building:
The Museum of the Confederacy is going to take one of the most spectacular historical collections this side of King Tut and put it - or a tiny portion of it - in a building the size of an Advance Auto Parts? Why bother?
Perhaps the breathtaking news can be explained by this:
"
The main exhibit at the Museum of the Confederacy-Appomattox intends to focus on the events that led to the war, and the reunification of the United States."
The events that led to the war and the reunification? What 1850 to 1860 and 1866 to 1900?
What's missing in that picture?
Few of the artifacts in the Museum, for what it's worth, deal with either the war's prelude or its fallout. They mostly have to do WITH THE CIVIL WAR. Not its precedent. Not its aftermath. THE WAR. THE WAR BETWEEN THE STATES. NORTH vs. SOUTH. BLUE vs. GRAY. THE SHOOT-EM-UP THAT OCCURRED BETWEEN THE YEARS 1861 AND 1865.
It's no wonder they are going to warehouse the collection in a 5,000 square-foot building. All the
non-Civil War memorabilia that the Museum controls could probably fit in a phone booth. It's a
war museum, you morons!
What, the Museum of the Confederacy is going to transform itself into the Museum of Slavery and Emancipation?
And do it in a freaking 5,000 square-foot building?
Why not just take the 15,000 artifacts currently residing in the museum that
Confederate veterans created, paid for, contributed to, and maintained for decades and burn them, and hang signs of Frederick Douglas and Martin Luther King in its pole building, and be done with it?
I have a better idea. Fire the misguided bunch that has seized control of the Museum and preserve it as it was intended to be preserved by those who built it. If not in the White House of the Confederacy, in
a location where historians and tourists can study and marvel and relive the past. For the curators to have as a goal the closeting of a chapter in American history is appalling. And down-right wrong.
Here's to the Museum of the Confederacy. May it be saved from certain destruction.
