Word: museum
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Court House Museum in Vicksburg, Miss., a visitor is hard pressed to find evidence that the Civil War is over--or the War Between the States, as it's called in Vicksburg. Exhibit cases contain Confederate uniforms and still-polished Confederate weapons. Photographs of "loyal slaves" who, the captions approvingly note, refused to leave their masters even after the war. A white hood from the original Ku Klux Klan, described as a "fraternal organization" protecting the South from the ravages of Federal troops. A shrine to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, his portrait lovingly protected in its own special room...
...exhibits at the museum acknowledged the fact of slavery but implied that the institution was benign. One placard noted, "Masters provided housing, food, clothing and medical care for their slaves. Harsh treatment was rare, though cruelty did occur...
There was no mention of abolitionism, except to say that "efforts to free the slaves began in the South; ironically, Gen. U.S. Grant was a slave owner while Gen. Robert E. Lee freed his slaves." The museum even implied that President Lincoln worded the Emancipation Proclamation so that his in-laws in Kentucky could legally keep their slaves...
...treatment of the Ku Klux Klan was even more troubling. According to the museum, the actions of the Klan were morally equivalent to those of Union soldiers, who "were often guilty of theft and murder" against defenseless Southern whites, and Northern carpetbaggers, who "were exploiting the ignorance of the former slaves for their own selfish purposes." Worst of all? The abolitionists, who dared "to place blacks in positions of authority." This was Alice in Wonderland history, a version in which everything I had learned was turned on its ear and served up as fact. And yet the white-haired Vicksburg...
...looking for the South, skip the Old Court House Museum, and leave Margaret Mitchell at home. Frankly, my dear, there's a far more interesting country waiting to be discovered...