littledoug
Corporal
- Joined
- Apr 1, 2011
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The article below describes a new exhibit prepared for the State Historical Museum of Iowa honoring the lives and travails of civil war soldiers and civilians. The apparent intent is to focus on simple and mundane things that help give perspective. Perhaps worth a visit if anyone is in the area. This is from the Des Moines Register today.
Nothing brings history back to life like a
150-year-old hunk of bread. It's a slab of
hardtack, a lumpy cracker enshrined in a
wooden frame in the State Historical
Museum of Iowa's new exhibit about the
Civil War.
The soldier who received it decided it
would make a better souvenir than a
snack. So there it sits now, with more than
300 other artifacts the museum staff
dusted off to tell the war's sprawling story
in various personal, peculiar ways.
A sewing kit from a soldier's girlfriend
reveals the note she stitched inside, "from
the gal I left behind." A photograph shows
a dog who followed the 23rd Iowa Infantry
into battle and became its mascot.
Samuel Byers of Oskaloosa escaped from a
South Carolina prison by carving a hole in
the wall. He returned after the war and
sawed out the wall around the hole for a
keepsake. Anyone who sees it on display
will no doubt wonder how it felt to wriggle
through.
And that's the point: What was it like —
what was it really like — to live through the
war that almost untied the United States?
What happened to the guys from
Davenport and Fairfield and Waterloo? And
what happened to their families back at
home?
The 10,000-square-foot exhibition opens
Saturday and helps answer those
questions, starting with its title, "Iowa and
the Civil War: Nothing But Victory." The
words come from a letter Capt. Jacob
Ritner wrote to a loved one in 1863.
"Our army never was in better spirits or
more enthusiastic in the cause than at
present," he explained. "We expect nothing
but victory."
But he was wrong. Victory came with a
higher price than anyone could have
guessed. An estimated 76,000 Iowans
served in the war — almost half of the new
state's eligible men — and more than
13,000 died. About 8,000 were wounded
between the war's eruption in 1861 and its
weary end in 1865.
"Nobody predicted a four-year bloodbath,"
said history curator Jack Lufkin, who helped o
rganized the 150th anniversary
exhibition.
The show is designed for students and
experts alike, with displays that sweep
from Iowa on the eve of the war, when
pockets of the state still were unsettled, to
the aftermath, when fiercely proud
veterans rewove the fabric of small-town
life. There are displays of guns and
cannons and battle flags. A campsite
simulates life on the front lines with audio
recordings of letters the soldiers sent
home. (WHO-TV reporters Dan Winters and
Andy Fales supplied the voices.)
The curators zeroed in on Iowa's role in the
war partly because the artifacts from the
museum's collection tell such good stories
and partly because the state's role has
been overlooked. The big newspapers at
the time were out East, and so were the
bloodiest battles: Antietam, Md.;
Fredericksburg, Va.; Gettysburg, Pa.
But most Iowans served mainly on the war's
western front, fighting for control of the M
ississippi River and access to New
Orleans. Many of the soldiers who trained i
n Burlington and Keokuk saw their first
combat in Missouri, at Belmont and Wilson'
s Creek, before marching on to Arkansas,
Kentucky and Tennessee.
"Some of these battles that hardly anybody'
s heard of were really important," Lufkin
said.
Some of the people were really important,
too. Grenville Dodge of Council Bluffs
served as a spy and employed more than
100 agents. Alexander Clark of Muscatine
helped form the state's first black
regiment, with recruits from both Iowa and
Missouri.
Annie Wittenmyer of Keokuk found the
conditions in military campsites so
appalling that she established a hundred
"diet kitchens" and cleaned up the
makeshift hospitals.
"No soldier on the firing line ever gave
more heroic service than Annie
Wittenmyer," the Union Army's Gen. Ulysses
Grant once said.
But in this exhibition, which will remain
through next year, the stories that resonate
the most are from ordinary Iowans who
were never singled out. Visitors won't easily
forget the artificial leg of Moses DeMarce,
who lost the original version to a surgeon's
saw in North Carolina. They will remember
the cannonball-studded tree trunk
someone hauled back from Georgia.
And the next time they tear open a
package of saltines, they might recall that
nasty old hardtack Lt. Henry McArthur
tucked in his pocket for the long march
home.
se Imageoom
"Iowa and the Civil War: Nothing But Victory"
WHEN: Begins Saturday, runs through 2013. 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday, noon to 4:30 p.m. Sunday.
WHERE: State Historical Museum of Iowa, 600 E. Locust St.
ADMISSION: Free
Related events
Saturday: Civil War re-enactors from the Sons of Confederate Veterans will interact with visitors throughout the opening day, state Sen. Dennis Black will sign copies of his book, "Profiles of Valor: Iowa's Medal of Honor Recipients of the Civil War," and historians Tom Morain and William Juhnke of Graceland University will present a debate at 2:30 p.m., "Point/Counterpoint: Was the Civil War Necessary?" (Note: Tom Morain is this reporter's father.)
Other activities are planned throughout the next few months, including workshops for school groups (April 17 to 20); visits from the Iowa Cavalry regiments and their horses (May 19 and June 23); and lectures with Doug Jones on the Iowa Freedom Trail (June 15), Laura Poresky on women's Civil War clothing (July 13, Oct. 14) and David Connon on Iowans who fought in the Confederacy (July 28).
INFO: (515) 281-5111, www.iowahistory.org
Nothing brings history back to life like a
150-year-old hunk of bread. It's a slab of
hardtack, a lumpy cracker enshrined in a
wooden frame in the State Historical
Museum of Iowa's new exhibit about the
Civil War.
The soldier who received it decided it
would make a better souvenir than a
snack. So there it sits now, with more than
300 other artifacts the museum staff
dusted off to tell the war's sprawling story
in various personal, peculiar ways.
A sewing kit from a soldier's girlfriend
reveals the note she stitched inside, "from
the gal I left behind." A photograph shows
a dog who followed the 23rd Iowa Infantry
into battle and became its mascot.
Samuel Byers of Oskaloosa escaped from a
South Carolina prison by carving a hole in
the wall. He returned after the war and
sawed out the wall around the hole for a
keepsake. Anyone who sees it on display
will no doubt wonder how it felt to wriggle
through.
And that's the point: What was it like —
what was it really like — to live through the
war that almost untied the United States?
What happened to the guys from
Davenport and Fairfield and Waterloo? And
what happened to their families back at
home?
The 10,000-square-foot exhibition opens
Saturday and helps answer those
questions, starting with its title, "Iowa and
the Civil War: Nothing But Victory." The
words come from a letter Capt. Jacob
Ritner wrote to a loved one in 1863.
"Our army never was in better spirits or
more enthusiastic in the cause than at
present," he explained. "We expect nothing
but victory."
But he was wrong. Victory came with a
higher price than anyone could have
guessed. An estimated 76,000 Iowans
served in the war — almost half of the new
state's eligible men — and more than
13,000 died. About 8,000 were wounded
between the war's eruption in 1861 and its
weary end in 1865.
"Nobody predicted a four-year bloodbath,"
said history curator Jack Lufkin, who helped o
rganized the 150th anniversary
exhibition.
The show is designed for students and
experts alike, with displays that sweep
from Iowa on the eve of the war, when
pockets of the state still were unsettled, to
the aftermath, when fiercely proud
veterans rewove the fabric of small-town
life. There are displays of guns and
cannons and battle flags. A campsite
simulates life on the front lines with audio
recordings of letters the soldiers sent
home. (WHO-TV reporters Dan Winters and
Andy Fales supplied the voices.)
The curators zeroed in on Iowa's role in the
war partly because the artifacts from the
museum's collection tell such good stories
and partly because the state's role has
been overlooked. The big newspapers at
the time were out East, and so were the
bloodiest battles: Antietam, Md.;
Fredericksburg, Va.; Gettysburg, Pa.
But most Iowans served mainly on the war's
western front, fighting for control of the M
ississippi River and access to New
Orleans. Many of the soldiers who trained i
n Burlington and Keokuk saw their first
combat in Missouri, at Belmont and Wilson'
s Creek, before marching on to Arkansas,
Kentucky and Tennessee.
"Some of these battles that hardly anybody'
s heard of were really important," Lufkin
said.
Some of the people were really important,
too. Grenville Dodge of Council Bluffs
served as a spy and employed more than
100 agents. Alexander Clark of Muscatine
helped form the state's first black
regiment, with recruits from both Iowa and
Missouri.
Annie Wittenmyer of Keokuk found the
conditions in military campsites so
appalling that she established a hundred
"diet kitchens" and cleaned up the
makeshift hospitals.
"No soldier on the firing line ever gave
more heroic service than Annie
Wittenmyer," the Union Army's Gen. Ulysses
Grant once said.
But in this exhibition, which will remain
through next year, the stories that resonate
the most are from ordinary Iowans who
were never singled out. Visitors won't easily
forget the artificial leg of Moses DeMarce,
who lost the original version to a surgeon's
saw in North Carolina. They will remember
the cannonball-studded tree trunk
someone hauled back from Georgia.
And the next time they tear open a
package of saltines, they might recall that
nasty old hardtack Lt. Henry McArthur
tucked in his pocket for the long march
home.
se Imageoom
"Iowa and the Civil War: Nothing But Victory"
WHEN: Begins Saturday, runs through 2013. 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday, noon to 4:30 p.m. Sunday.
WHERE: State Historical Museum of Iowa, 600 E. Locust St.
ADMISSION: Free
Related events
Saturday: Civil War re-enactors from the Sons of Confederate Veterans will interact with visitors throughout the opening day, state Sen. Dennis Black will sign copies of his book, "Profiles of Valor: Iowa's Medal of Honor Recipients of the Civil War," and historians Tom Morain and William Juhnke of Graceland University will present a debate at 2:30 p.m., "Point/Counterpoint: Was the Civil War Necessary?" (Note: Tom Morain is this reporter's father.)
Other activities are planned throughout the next few months, including workshops for school groups (April 17 to 20); visits from the Iowa Cavalry regiments and their horses (May 19 and June 23); and lectures with Doug Jones on the Iowa Freedom Trail (June 15), Laura Poresky on women's Civil War clothing (July 13, Oct. 14) and David Connon on Iowans who fought in the Confederacy (July 28).
INFO: (515) 281-5111, www.iowahistory.org
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