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The New Battle for Gettysburg
00:31:27
President Trump's executive order to restore "truth and sanity to American history" targets esteemed institutions such as the Smithsonian and the National Park Service. It accuses them of promoting "a divisive ideology that reconstrued America’s...
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- [00:01]
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Host
July 1863, Union and Confederate armies meet at a small town in Pennsylvania. After three terrible days, thousands of dead men and horses cover the battlefield, a Union victory forcing the Rebel army of General Robert E. Lee to retreat to Virginia. Gettysburg was the bloodiest single battle of the Civil war of about 90 of 94,000 Union troops. There were 23,000 casualties, with more than 3,100 killed of more than 71,000 Southerners, 28,000 casualties and some 3,900 killed. Gettysburg became a national military park in 1895. The National Park Service took over in 1933. Today, about a million people visit Gettysburg annually. It is the most visited Civil War site in the national park system. But a new battle is underway, and it's not being fought with rifles and cannons, but with executive orders and competing ideas. It began in March, another bold move.
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Kevin Levin
By President Trump, this time taking aim.
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Host
At the Smithsonian Institution and the focus of an executive order that aims to.
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Kevin Levin
Remove what the administration considers anti American.
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Host
Ideology unless it stops promoting what he is calling divisive race centered ideology, including.
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Kevin Levin
At our museums, national parks and monuments, the executive order reads in part. Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort.
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Host
President Trump signed his executive order restoring truth and sanity to American history without any fanfare. There was no press conference or Oval Office photo op. But he did talk about these issues publicly in his first term when he launched a short lived initiative to counter the 1619 project. Among other things, American parents are not going to accept indoctrination in our schools.
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Kevin Levin
Cancel culture in our work, or the repression of traditional faith, culture and values in the public square. Not anymore.
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Host
Arguments, debates, public policy, disputes over how best to interpret and teach US History, whether on a battlefield or in a classroom, have been going on for ages. This current fight has has its origins in the controversy over the 1619 Project and recent social justice movements such as Black Lives Matter. In the name of correcting leftist overreach, the Trump administration is pushing its own brand of indoctrination. But here's the thing. The Smithsonian and national parks like Gettysburg are not pushing pseudo history. I've visited Gettysburg many times it is a sobering experience to stand there on the battlefield and reflect on what it must have looked and sounded like. The tour guides and wayside markers and monuments and memorials enrich the experience. No one is being indoctrinated there. Kevin Levin writes the Civil War Memory newsletter on Substack, and he has been following this story since the National Park Service was ordered to review public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties within the Department of the Interior's jurisdiction and to restore federal sites dedicated to history, including parks and museums, to to solemn and uplifting public monuments that remind Americans of our extraordinary heritage. Consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect union, an unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity and human flourishing. To borrow the words used by the Secretary of the Interior. After Trump's order, Kevin has a number of articles about this issue at his newsletter. Again, it is called Civil War Memory. He is a historian and public educator based in Boston. Our conversation Next History is defined by.
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Host
Kevin Levin, welcome back.
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Kevin Levin
Great to be here.
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Host
You know, every July, I usually visit Gettysburg, which is not far from Washington, with my older brother Ian. However, we were not able to make it this July, but your recent work piqued my interest. I was wondering, I was curious, what am I going to find up there? I guess we'll discuss that in a minute. I do want to start, however, before we get to Gettysburg, how you reacted to the executive order that was issued March 27, one of many executive orders issued by President Trump since he returned to office. It was titled Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History. How did you react when you saw that?
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Kevin Levin
Well, first, again, thanks for the invitation to be here. You know, it came out, as you said, in March, March 27th. By that point, it felt like we had been down this road for over a year in terms of Trump statements regarding history and the demonization of history teachers and museum staff, et cetera. So we'd already heard a bit along these lines, but I think the executive order really solidified for me that this was going to remain a top issue, that this was going to remain in the news. He was going to remain focused on leveraging or politicizing American history for his own political purposes. And, you know, more specifically, I was horrified by the executive order. I mean, this is as clear a statement attempting to undercut both history educators in the classroom and public historians in places like the National Park Service and Smithsonian. You know, these are people who do important work for all of us. It's never a good thing to see these people demonized in such a manner.
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Host
Well, my reaction was restoring truth and sanity to American history. We know where this is going. It's going to achieve the exact opposite of the stated aim. But this is. You're right, this is not new. At the end of President Trump's first term, they introduced some idea, it was like a counter argument to the 1619 Project, which itself was also politically motivated and cynical interpretation of history. And this was the right wing version that Trump wanted to do, but it went nowhere. Obviously, he didn't win reelection, but I guess he's trying to bring it back. So why don't we talk then about how this executive order is or might affect Gettysburg? Why is it problematic? You were just up there in Gettysburg. There's supposed to be some review process, right? I mean, what stage is this all in? What does the executive order actually say?
- [07:32]
Kevin Levin
Well, I think even before we get to that, we first need to recognize that the National Park Service, including Gettysburg, has already experienced against a 25% cut in their staff. This has been devastating to the ability of frontline interpreters and maintenance staff to be able to do what they're supposed to do, which is protect our historical sites and interpret them. And again, Gettysburg being one of them. So that's important to keep in mind. And the budget that was just passed by Congress and signed by the president will cut another $1.2 billion. So this isn't over. So that I think we've got to establish before we talk about the interpretation side. But what happened was, after the March 27 order, a couple weeks after, I should say, actually mid May, the Department of Interior sent a memo to all Park Service sites ordering them to begin a review process of all their interpretive assets, including monuments and memorials, wayside markers, museum exhibits, and to review them for anything that violates the Trump administration's view of DEI and anything that it believes to be anti American or unpatriotic, anything that doesn't celebrate American history. And so that process is ongoing, and I suspect it will continue through July and into August. We should hear. I don't know what we'll hear once the review process is Completed, but we will have to wait for the results. I have.
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Host
Well, it's vague. I mean, it's vaguely worded.
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Kevin Levin
It's not just vaguely worded. That's bad enough. It's also that there doesn't appear to be any clear rubrics or guidelines established to help NPS staff complete this process. Who is actually going to do the reviewing again? What standards? And so all of these are unknown questions. I don't have any sense of what's going on behind the scene, in part because many of my friends in the National Park Service are rightfully so resistant to talking about this.
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Host
Yeah, sorry. The National Park Service is Civil War battlefields, but it's so much more. I mean, any federal property, you will see wayside markers or plaques or information, just information about where you are that is historicized, that tries to place the location into its proper context. So we're gonna talk more about the Civil War. That's your specialty. But yeah, this is all over the country. There's federal property and large national parks. Where you say the staffing has been cut now. Yeah. Just for my listeners who maybe haven't been to Gettysburg, those who listen in Europe, they may not be aware of just how many of these media we'll call them. The Gettysburg battlefield is gigantic. You take a self guided tour, you have to get in your car and you drive around. The battle took place over three days. A large property. There are thousands of items. Kevin. Right. Wayside markers, statues, memorials, monuments all over the place. So that would be a huge process to evaluate all of them, I guess.
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Kevin Levin
No question, you're right. It is a huge battlefield. Add to that, of course, the guided tours of NPS staff, you know, that are offered to visitors. You're right. That most people do experience the battlefield in their cars, but of course, there's a large visitor center that was only recently completed within the last 20 years. Modern film.
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Host
That's right. Narrated by. Narrated by Morgan Freeman. Yes. Yeah, go ahead.
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Kevin Levin
And I should say one of the best Civil War exhibits that you'll find at any NPS site, in part because if people do visit one Civil War battlefield, it's going to be Gettysburg. And so they made it a point not just to offer a museum exhibit about the battle specifically, but also about the broader war and so the history of the Civil War and also the controversy surrounding how it's been remembered over time. So any of that material is obviously up for review.
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Host
Well, did you. You were just up there. Did you notice any changes?
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Kevin Levin
Well, the one obvious one is the addition of what we're calling these QR codes that the Trump administration or Department of the Interior forced NPS to place in visitor center and on the field itself. And what these QR codes allow visitors to do, this at least is the intention behind the codes is allow visitors to report any interpretive assets that they feel are demeaning that are an attempt to undercut a sort of patriotic view of the United States. And fortunately, from what I've read and people I've talked to, it's not working. It's actually receiving the vast majority of comments are positive in favor of what the National Park Service is doing. And so that part hasn't worked out for the Trump administration, thankfully.
- [12:17]
Host
Well, actually, I did find one that I found offensive, but I still don't want it removed. And it's maybe not what the Trump administration has in mind. You talked about this in one of your newsletters. Two markers you actually identify that might, you know, come under scrutiny. One is the War for Memory marker that places the North Carolina monument in context. So this is what I mean about finding it offensive. It is lost Cause mythology, that North Carolina monument that was dedicated some, what, 50 years after the end of the war, but I still don't want it removed. Any type of Confederate monuments and statues belong in museums and on battlefields with the proper context. Right. The milieu in which these monuments were erected and all this Lost cause nonsense.
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Kevin Levin
Yeah. The marker is an attempt to, as you rightfully point out, contextualize the monument. One way to view it is an attempt to diffuse the power of that monument. And whether that's possible or not, we can talk about that, but it is a way to contextualize. And the marker simply places the monument within a broader historical timeline. I think it's important to understand that many of the monuments, specifically the monuments in Gettysburg. And remember, we're only talking about, when we talk about Confederate monuments, we're talking about state monuments. The vast majority of monuments are Union monuments, and they are regimental monuments. But for the Confederates, they're by state, and they start in 1914 or 1917 with the Virginia Monument, and they extend all the way into the early 1970s. So understanding the North Carolina monument, you have to understand what's happening in the country in 1929. You have to understand the lost caused Jim Crow America. To understand a monument dedicated in the 1970s, you have to understand the context of the Civil Rights era and the post Civil Rights era. So these monuments don't speak for themselves in terms of the history that they reflect. And I guess one way to think about this is the Civil War itself. The history of the Civil War, the 1860s, is actually the least relevant to understanding these monuments. I know that's going to sound kind of strange, but that's the difference between history and memory. And that is what I think these markers, at least the one at the North Carolina monument, is attempting to address how we choose as Americans, to remember our past.
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Host
The North Carolina monument mentions heroism unsurpassed.
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Kevin Levin
You're quoting the marker that is part of the monument itself, that Gutzon Borglum, who started out as the sculptor for Stone Mountain in Georgia, went on to sculpt Mount Rushmore. That is part of his creation. But the wayside marker, again, is an attempt to contextualize both the granite marker in front of the monument and the monument itself itself. And that text is a very typical Lost Cause, pro Confederate sort of celebration of Confederate soldiers. That monument is. Is right on the field of Pickett's Charge, looking out over a farm that was owned by a free African American family that was forced to flee as Confederates entered Pennsylvania in the summer of 1863.
- [15:29]
Host
I did not know that. Here's the inscription. To the eternal glory of the North Carolina soldiers who on this battlefield displayed heroism unsurpassed, sacrificing all in support of their cause. Their valorous deeds will be enshrined in the hearts of men long after these transient memorials have crumbled into dust. 32 North Carolina regiments were in action at Gettysburg 7-1-23, 1863. One Confederate soldier in every four who fell here was a North Carolinian. That is garbage on that inscription, but it belongs on a battlefield again with a context. And we're talking about how this wayside marker that places this monument in context could potentially be targeted. We don't know for sure. And there's another one, too. We'll talk about the Warfield House marker, perhaps.
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Kevin Levin
I mean, again, if the recent past is any, you know, helps us to sort of anticipate what might come out of this. You know, the Trump administration has made it a point to minimize and even erase African American history. Beginning with websites, Arlington National Cemetery, other federal agencies that include, you know, historical content have been removed or rewritten. Obviously, the naming or the possibility of renaming ships honoring Medgar Evers, you know, the question about Harriet Tubman that's been in the news, all of this suggests that. That the Trump administration is targeting African American history, that an attempt to single out the story of emancipation or the struggle for civil rights at different points in American history is somehow problematic. And I think Gettysburg is a great example because I think most Americans who visit that battlefield know next to nothing about the fact that Gettysburg in south central Pennsylvania was the home of hundreds of free Black families in 1863. And again, the arrival of the Confederate army, you know, was a direct threat to these people. In fact, we know that hundreds of them were kidnapped by Robert E. Lee's army. Lee's army was essentially functioning as a slave catching army in the summer of 63. And so the warfields, the Abrams who I mentioned in regard to the North Carolina monument, these families had to flee. A marker like that gives you a sense of what was really at stake at Gettysburg. You know, we like to reflect on what ifs at Gettysburg. What if Robert E. Lee had made it this different decision on July 1, 2 or 3? What if there were more men in Pickett's Charge? Could they have won that battle? We should be very careful about engaging in that kind of imaginative exercise unless we are really willing to deal with the consequences of those what ifs, what it means for real families who were living there in 1863. And I don't think that most people are going to think about those types of questions unless there are wayside markers on the battlefield. Because getting back to your earlier point, most people experience the battlefield solely from their car and get out at certain points.
- [18:32]
Host
I did not know that about the free African American community in Gettysburg. So a little more context here because, you know, you might show up at this battlefield and see these monuments to the Southern states and say, oh, they must have put that up in 1866 or something. Right? Right. I have James McPherson's book here, this Mighty Scourge. He has a chapter dedicated to Lost Cause mythology. He's talking about how there are hundreds of monuments to Confederate soldiers and their commanders planted on courthouse lawns and other public spaces across the south again in the early 20th century. McPherson writes, if the Confederacy had raised proportionately as many soldiers as the post war south raised monuments, it might not have succumbed to overwhelming numbers. White children played a conspicuous part in these monument unveiling ceremonies so that the rising generation with no personal memories of the war would understand the heroism of their fathers. The climactic such event occurred in 1907 when 3,000 children pulled a large wagon containing the statue of Jefferson Davis through two miles of cheering spectators to the site of the colossal Davis Memorial on Monument Avenue in Richmond. So how do you define the myth of the Lost Cause? And do you believe it's being smuggled back into these exhibits. And just for the record, it doesn't sound like anything at Gettysburg has actually changed yet. But how do you define the myth of the Lost Cause?
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Kevin Levin
Yeah, I think the Lost cause is a narrative that takes shape after the Civil War among defeated white southerners trying to figure out how to move on. How do you move on from overwhelming defeat? How do you move on from the scale of death that many of these communities witnessed? How do you move on from, you know, the realization that perhaps God was not on your side, that slavery has ended? 4 million people are now free. Slavery was not just an economic system. It was also a system of racial control for slaveholders and non slaveholders throughout the South. So all of these things needed to be addressed. And so what we call the Lost Cause is that narrative. So instead of talking about, as white southerners did in 1861, that they were seceding over the issue of slavery, the issue of states rights became front and center in their explanation for secession. They may have been defeated on the battlefield, but Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and others remain the sort of quintessential Christian warriors. And slavery itself, we're not going to apologize for. We're not going to be able to bring it back. White southerners will say, but slavery was a benign system. Race relations in the south were peaceful during the antebellum period. And we have to blame those evil Yankees for coming down here and ending our peaceful civilization that collectively becomes known as the Lost Cause.
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Host
Yeah, the cause of secession was slavery. Right. They seceded to preserve their institution, but it brought ruin upon the South, Total defeat and humiliation. So that had to be erased then in this mythologizing, almost coping mechanism.
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Kevin Levin
But you made a really good point in quoting McPherson regarding the dedication of the Jefferson Davis monument in Richmond in 1907. Because children by the early 20th century become absolutely central to perpetuating the Lost Cause. Because now we're at a point where you have a generation of people who never experienced the war, never experienced what they would have viewed, what white southerners would have viewed as the horrors of Reconstruction. So imparting the Lost Cause narrative to them through monument dedications and textbooks, the United Daughters of the Confederacy that's responsible for many of those monuments. Their most important, important work was in controlling the history textbooks that students use in their classrooms. And they would have reviewed those books to ensure that they included a Lost Cause narrative.
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Host
It took a long time to overturn that stuff. So, yeah, I mean, I grew up in the 80s and 90s, and I understood that Slavery was central to all of this. But if I had been born 50 years earlier. No. I would have gotten a much different interpretation if that. Yeah, you're right. So at Gettysburg, my experience there has been the tour guides are terrific. They have an encyclopedic knowledge of the battles they're talking to you about. They can name every regiment, battalion, this, that, and the other thing, where it was and what happened and why the battle failed or, you know, everything.
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Kevin Levin
Yeah.
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Host
These tour guides, they have to take a test, Right. These people are. I mean, maybe some of them are volunteers about to say they're professionals, but they're very professional. They know what they're talking about. This idea that they're just trying to indoctrinate people in some kind of liberal or left wing ideology is nonsense. Talk a little bit about the preparation that goes into becoming a Gettysburg tour guide.
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Kevin Levin
Yeah. So a clarification here. We're talking about two different groups in this regard.
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Host
Okay, good.
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Kevin Levin
So I think the president, in his executive order, is specifically singling out the National Park Service and the park rangers that perform various functions, including guided tours. There is no test for that. Many of them are college graduates. They have degrees in public history, it's, etc. The group that you are referring to are what are called licensed battlefield guides. And the licensed battlefield guide program is pretty much as old as the Gettysburg battlefield. This is going back to the 1890s, the turn of the 20th century. And this was an attempt to ensure that the story of the veterans themselves would be told, would remain front and center. And so what that means for the battlefield guides is a kind of, as you point put it, an encyclopedic knowledge of the battlefield, of troop movements, of decisions, of essentially what happened during those three days at Gettysburg. And you can hire an lbg, you know, if you want to go to a specific part of the battlefield, you hop in there in the visitor's car and you spend about an hour or so at that specific site. So their knowledge is both broad in terms of Gettysburg and very focused on the battle itself. I find, however, that many of them don't have. Their understanding sort of decreases a bit when you move off the battlefield. And so, you know, you have to know what you're getting, you know, when you're going for an LBG guide as opposed to a National Park Service guide. But they both serve an important function, I would argue.
- [24:58]
Host
Are you concerned that National Park Service guides, who are the target of the executive order. There's going to be a chilling effect, Martin.
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Kevin Levin
There's no question about that. But I think it's even worse than that. I think we are looking at the beginning of long term damage because many of these guides are college graduates. They come through public history programs, they intern at National Park Service sites during their vacation, their summer breaks, et cetera. They come to a sense of wanting to, to embrace the mission of the National Park Service at a young age. And I think we have to be prepared for the fact that it's likely that very few students moving forward will consider a career in the National Park Service. Given the situation, why would you focus all of your energies on a career that you don't know whether you're going to have a job next week or tomorrow? So there's so much uncertainty. And so I think you're right. I mean, I think the self censorship is a concern, but the long term question of whether we're going to have enough guides out there across the NPS system is for me an even bigger concern.
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Host
Everyone, Republicans, Democrats, people who don't give a hoot about politics goes to national parks. And here's the shame of it, you know, this whole idea of, you know, liberal indoctrination at these places is, which is presumably what this executive order is trying to combat. When I go to parks, I go to Harpers Ferry every July or August. I'll be going up there again soon, so federal property. And when I go to private institutions like Mount Vernon and Monticello, I'm spoiled living in Washington, have all these great places near me. I find that the presentations are terrific, the guides are professional and that the people, the visitors want to hear. The complexity. Now, I know there have been stories about some people getting unruly at Mount Vernon or Monticello. Not too many, but once in a while somebody will object and get belligerent. A visitor, you know. Why are you talking so much about slavery? Well, you're at a plantation, man. For the most part though. And this, again, this is just my experience. I don't know what your experience is. You can tell me. People want to hear this stuff.
- [27:10]
Kevin Levin
I completely agree. I've experienced all of those things at National Park Service sites. And there is no reason why on occasion you might find something that you disagree with. That's the nature of history. I always find things that I disagree with when I visit historic sites. In terms of interpretation. I mean, obviously I'm looking for certain things and maybe I, as opposed to other people, this is my field. So I think about it in a different way. But I would never go from that observation to what we're experiencing now, which is a kind of demonization and undercutting of the agency itself, the National Park Service specifically. And I agree. I think this is a bipartisan issue. I have walked the battlefield. I have led tours of Republicans and Democrats, people of different political persuasions. And I think we need that diversity of perspective. I think our historic sites are still places where we can go to find a kind of common ground, common meaning, and even a common past. As controversial as that sounds, I'm not ready to give up on that. And I think, you know, we need to fight for this. It's worth protecting.
- [28:16]
Host
Many, many conservatives are Civil War enthusiasts, and the Trump executive order is insulting to their intelligence. It's almost like saying you're a baby who can't hear that, what, there is slavery here or what, whatever it might be.
- [28:28]
Kevin Levin
And the, the surveys suggest that both Republicans and Democrats, as I think you're pointing out, want that complicated history. They want to be challenged in the classroom and I think at historic sites. No question about that.
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Host
Last thing here, America at 250, it's starting. @ least these places are getting prepared, right, to have their new exhibits and their ceremonies, celebrations, what have you. What do you know about how the administration is trying to influence the interpretation of the American Revolution in places like Philadelphia or wherever?
- [29:03]
Kevin Levin
Yeah, well, we do know from the executive order, the Restoring Sanity executive order that the Trump administration did does have its eyes on Independence hall in Philadelphia. That obviously is the site where gives us the Declaration of Independence. I suspect that we are going to find sanitized kind of overall interpretation that comes out of Independence hall and the National Park Service at that site specifically. And I think, you know, the Trump administration is doing whatever it can to control how this commemoration unfolds. Think about the cancellation or the gutting of the National Endowment for the Humanities. You can go from there. In terms of ways in which history projects at the local level are being impacted, I think it's still early to get a sense of what this will look like come next summer. I think it's important to keep in mind that most Americans will experience, if they experience anything at all in terms of the commemoration at a local level. And so the difference between that and how the nation as a whole celebrates next July 4th is, is still up in the air because we don't really have a sense of what's going to happen in Philadelphia yet. So there's the National Park Service, but there are other stakeholders in Philadelphia. There's the National Constitution center, the American Revolution Museum. These, of course, are really fine institutions. And so we're going to have to just wait and see this to get a sense of how all of this unfolds.
- [30:26]
Host
Okay. Well, you know, it should be a celebration. The Declaration of Independence is a document of world historical importance, but it shouldn't be infantilized. Is that a word?
- [30:39]
Kevin Levin
If it's not, I get your meaning here. And I agree.
- [30:42]
Host
We shouldn't be treated like babies who can't understand complexity. Thank you, Kevin.
- [30:47]
Kevin Levin
I agree. My pleasure.
- [30:50]
Host
On the next episode of History As It Happens, the eminent political theorist Robert Cohen Rohan says Donald Trump's approach to foreign policy is undermining American soft power and hastening the end of the American century. What if the American century is already over? That is next. As we report History As It Happens, remember new episodes every Tuesday and Friday. My newsletter comes out every Friday. You can sign up@historyasithappens.com or just go to Substack and search for history and it Happens. And now you can find us on Facebook, too.