| Submitted by: Mark R. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 15 February 2005 |
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Four days later Port Hudson also surrendered and the Union had unrestricted use of the Mississippi.
(An absolutely indispensable aid for writing about the Civil War or visiting a Civil War site is our cassette of Cliff Edelman's score to the film GETTYSBURG, quite possibly the best historical film ever made. Somehow the film and the score makes the whole misguided fight seem noble.)
Rather than take the direct frontal assault on the battlefield, we marshaled our forces. We left the park and got a room for the night at the local Super 8 Motel.
For lunch we stopped at a fast food place called Granddaddy's. We went up to the counter and ordered from a woman who was obviously anxious to get back to her table, her cigarette, and to staring off into space. I think she resented our interruption. We ordered anyway. I got a Muffeletta. It is like a hot cold cut sandwich.
Fortified for the hot adventure ahead we returned to the battleground for the driving tour. We had purchased for $4.50 an audio tape that was a guide to the battleground. This has got to be the most over-monumented stretch of ground in the country. There are hundreds of separate monuments. Each state that had men who died had multiple monuments up to commemorate their courage. Ohio must have dozens. Perhaps hundreds.
You drive all over the battlefield seeing where such and such a General had his gun emplacements for such and such a battle. In the middle of this is a site having nothing to do with the Battle of Vicksburg. In December of 1862 one of seven sister ironclads for the Union was torpedoed. Actually it had a bomb attached to it and the bomb was detonated by wires from shore. The U. S. S. Cairo sank to the bottom of the Mississippi. The ship was commissioned on January 16, 1862. It was sunk December 12, 1862. One hundred and two years later to the day, December 12, 1964, the Cairo was brought up from the Mississippi mud. To say it was restored would be misleading. There is a bit more there than the frame, but most of it is not there. But you can see its ironclad hull, its engines, where its cannons were. Just about everything. Beside it is a whole museum devoted to the artifacts found inside. You can see an assortment of bottles, there's the Bosun's whistle, fifes, boots, scissors, signal bells, a cannon, and lots of good stuff. The boat is 175 feet long and 51 feet wide.
There is also a Hebrew cemetery.
We completed the battleground tour at about 6 PM. We drove around Vicksburg for an hour looking at old houses. We got back to the motel about 7 PM and watch the last two hours of a three-hour documentary on D. W. Griffith. It asks the question about how this great filmmaker could have failed so much in the end. The problem with Griffith, in my opinion, was that even his most successful films were weak melodrama.
He made them at a time when the public could be moved by weak melodrama. They were manipulative stories well-told. I don't think Griffith changed, I think public tastes are what changed. Intolerance has a good message, but the stories are individually mediocre. A story about human intolerance does not need a race at the end to hold our interest. Of course, some of his philosophy has made it to exploitation films of today. Now I sort of respect his Broken Blossoms. But with everything else wrong with Birth Of A Nation it is just a sort of silly story. It is a long way from being a decent film by later standards.
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09/07/97--Biloxi, Mississippi: Jefferson Davis Museum:
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Well, this morning we will be at the 60% point of our trip. This is the kind of trip it will be hard to describe for people when they ask what did we see. It is like asking when you used to trick or treat, what kind of candy did you get. Well, it was a little bit of this and little bit of that and a bit of this third thing. It wasn't predominantly anything.
Breakfast was at the Waffle House. I ordered a Chili Omelet. The waitress commented that it was different. Different was what I was looking for. I did not get the 'World Famous Hashbrowns.' What the heck makes something world famous, anyway? Does that mean somebody in another country knows about them? That is one of those meaningless adjectives. For that matter Hitler was world famous. It isn't necessary to be good to be world famous.
As we drive toward Jackson the car passes 150,000 miles. It is still going. Toyotas are good cars.
It might have been worth it to see the art museum in Jackson, but it would have meant sitting around there three hours or so until it opened. It is a hot, lazy, Sunday morning.
Mississippi is the state with the lowest per capita income in the country. Looking through the AAA book it seems to have just about the fewest attractions of any state. Well, if that is the case the United States must be doing something right. It is a pleasant drive. We probably saw more poverty in Louisiana. Nice countryside. I might not expect to find the Bolshoi Ballet dancing anywhere nearby, but if things don't get a lot worse than what I am seeing in Mississippi, things aren't too bad.
We pass a sign for a 'Psychic and Tarrot Reader.' Not psychic enough to know how to spell 'tarot.'
In Hattiesburg there is a University Pawn Shop. It has a big sign in front saying 'Hock it to Doc.'
Another thing I have seen is somebody sells a do-it-yourself Calvary Kit. A bunch of places I have seen identical groupings of three crosses. Two white crosses about twelve feet high and a yellow one fifteen feet high in the center. I have seen this about ten times in ten different places and each time the crosses look identical. Someone must sell a kit.
We pass a place selling military surplus. On their front lawn they have two tanks. Evelyn says they are probably decoration rather than sales items. I wouldn't bet on it. There are people hereabout with some funny ideas.
I think this is the mating season for the bugs that go splat on the windshield. When you stop the car they seem to land on the car in back to back joined pairs. You drive past a forest and they go splattering over the front of your car. They go out in a blaze of sex and glory. I don't know whether to feel sorry for them or envy them. Maybe I'll just squeegee them off the windshield and not give it much thought. We drive through the DeSoto National Forest.
The radio plays a tall tale of a New York City fireman. This is a children's program from Public Radio. But New York seems to be a wonderful and exotic place. I have to visit that New York some day. Maybe some day we go in for bookstores we will look for it.
There is a sign for a Bible Factory Outlet.
We get to Biloxi. Looks like a nice town but there is something of a mystery. It is a mile or so from 28th Street to 14th Street. It is only a few hundred yards from 14th to the beach. There are a bunch of missing streets somewhere. It has a beautiful long beach with white sand. Apparently after Labor Day there just is not much swimming. At least that is what we were told. At the turn of the century, I have been told, that nobody really swam much. It seems a pity for Davis to have had this beach and not swim.
Beauvoir is something of a minor site of history. It is Jefferson Davis's last home. Beauvoir was acquired by Sarah Dorsey in 1873 by Sarah Dorsey who had invited Davis for a visit. He rented one of the buildings then rather than leave he bought the estate. He lived there from 1877, twelve years after the Civil War ended, until his death twelve years after that. There he wrote his memoirs and a history of the Civil War from the Confederate viewpoint. The setting is terrific with a charming view of the Gulf in the front and a nice garden in back. Just a short distance back is a railroad track that could bring visitors. After he died in 1889 his family sold the estate to be used a home for Confederate veterans and their wives, widows, servants, and orphans. By 1940 the numbers of people qualifying dropped off and by 1956 the home could be closed. Today the estate is a modest museum to Jefferson Davis and the Civil War.
What makes this museum unusual is that instead of being owned by the government, it is owned by the Mississippi Division of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans. This means that they don't have to be even-handed. The film has slaves who fought for the confederacy then were forced to fight for the Union, but who claim they avoided helping the Union. The bookstore has books like The South Was Right by Kennedy and Kennedy (no, not those Kennedys). But the point of view is that Jefferson Davis was near to God. His artifacts are illuminated with Biblical quotes like 'Verily, verily, I say unto you: he that readeth my word and believeth on him that sent me hath everlasting life.' The whole museum is subtitled 'A Memorial to the Lost Cause.'
The film they run to explain what it is all about tells how Davis's daughter announced she was engaged to and wanted to marry a man she knew. When it came out that she was to marry the son of a pre-war abolitionist there was an uproar and she agreed to break the engagement. This is given as an example of her nobility.
The museum does not have a large collection. They have a death mask and catafalque. Then there are more standard items like a cannon, Southern uniforms, that sort of thing. One novelty item is a picture of Jefferson Davis with vertical struts. Look at it straight on and you don't see the struts. Look at it from the left and you see only the left sides of the struts and it becomes a picture of Stonewall Jackson. Looked on from the right it is a picture of Robert E. Lee.
I was listening to another couple, perhaps sixty years old. Both speak with Southern accents. She sees a picture of Jefferson Davis and asks if he was a President. Her husband explains that he was the President of the Confederate states during the Civil War. It is a moment of culture shock for me and I find out later for Evelyn. It is hard for be to believe this woman does not know who Jefferson Davis was. It is doubly strange since she has a Southern accent. It is triply strange: why come to a museum of Jefferson Davis not knowing who he is?
We walk the grounds and see a little of how Davis lived toward the end of his life. But this tells us little about the Civil War.
There is a separate building for Davis's library. I look at the books on the shelf and clearly the originals have been removed and replaced by books from a used book store. My guess is that this was done in the 1960s since I notice on the shelf the spy novel Tree Frog by Martin Woodhouse. There is also a eader's Digest collection of condensed classics including Madame Curie.
As we walk the grounds we learn a little about Southern gentility, but not too much about Davis himself. I don't have a lot of feel for the man. He is so loved in the South but he was only a moderately good commander. He did not really understand warfare even of his own time. He does not seem to have had a lot of personality. I was hoping something here would make him come alive for me, but there is nothing here but a stiff inflexible old man. He was a stiff inflexible young man. His idea of good warfare was two armies meeting on the battlefield and the South trouncing the North. Joe Johnston may have been able to do more good for their side by using guerrilla war tactics, hit and run, but that was not what Davis wanted. Maybe he had his sense of honor wrapped up in it, like the Japanese not wanting to win if they had to use a dishonorable weapon like the gun. But I don't see a great man in Davis. Maybe you have to be Southern.
There are a lot of grounds to walk including a graveyard out back. |
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