Rally on the High Ground: The National Park Service Symposium on the Civil War, Ford's Theatre, May 8 and 9, 2000.

Edited by Robert K. Sutton. (Fort Washington, Pa.: Eastern National, c. 2001. Pp. xvi, 103. Paper, $6.95, ISBN 1-888213-72-8.)

It is an article of our professional faith that all people are historians. And all professional historians are ultimately public historians, in the sense that they hope that their scholarship, in some fashion, reaches beyond an audience of specialists. Because these things are so, Rally on the High Ground is an important book. It is the published version of a recent symposium of academic historians convened by the National Park Service to discuss how to "do history" at sites associated with the Civil War. Here is a direct link between scholars who write history and the governmental agency responsible for presenting that history to the general public.

The symposium took place as the result of a proviso added to a 2000 appropriations bill that directed the Secretary of the Interior "to encourage Civil War battle sites to recognize and include in all of their public displays and multimedia educational presentations the unique role that the institution of slavery played in causing the Civil War" (p. v). Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. introduced this proviso following a tour of battlefields maintained by the National Park Service. Jackson also contributed the first of the eight essays that compose this book, in which he explains: "When I go to Vicksburg or Manassas, or any other battle site, I ask what is the historical significance of this particular site. The park service superintendent responds saying right here was a left oblique and right there was a right oblique. So, the historical significance of Vicksburg is about an oblique" (p. 7). Jackson wants more. Demanding a broader interpretive context, he continues: "[I]f the history of Vicksburg is about obliques, maybe Congress should pass another bill eliminating the National Park Service Civil War battlefields and just turn them over to the Army. They can explain obliques better than you guys" (p. 7).

The other essays offered here, written by professional, academic historians, are less strident; but they, too, encourage the National Park Service to expand the interpretation of the Civil War battlefields under its jurisdiction. Ira Berlin points out that slavery is indeed a large part of the story of the war. He suggests, "The task is not to make our history more politically correct. It is not even to assure funding of the battlefields in an often politically poisonous environment. The task is to interpret history in a way that is more inclusive, to make a better history, and a richer history" (p. 19). David W. Blight focuses upon history and memory. He observes that the battlefields of the Civil War have been places of healing and reconciliation--almost exclusively for white people. In a similar vein, Edward T. Linenthal writes, "[W]e honor Civil War ancestors most profoundly when we present them not as stick figures in a comforting morality play, but as complex human beings capable of all the heroism, folly, violence, and contradictory impulses that continue to define the human condition" (p. 42). James M. McPherson also emphasizes context as he describes his experiences leading tours of Civil War battlefields and recalls his research about the motivations of soldiers who fought on those fields. James Oliver Horton writes about slavery as the cause of the war and the challenge of focusing upon it "in a time that is all about race" (p. 73). Finally, Drew Gilpin Faust adds a plea to extend any discussion of battlefields to include "homefronts," and Eric Foner asserts the importance of freedom as a theme in any understanding of the period of the war.

Taken together, these essays extend an ample mandate to the National Park Service to perceive military history as the total experience of people at war. Such a perception is not news to those of us who teach and write in association with institutions of higher education. If this expanded understanding of the scope of military history does help inform the National Park Service--and in turn, the people who visit the battlefields of the Civil War--then Rally on the High Ground will become an important piece of public history indeed.

EMORY M. THOMAS
The Citadel