The Confederate Years: A Simple Telling of a Complicated Story

The Museum of the Confederacy, opened in 1896 by the daughters, wives, and sisters of members of the Confederate army, is set nestled away in the heart of the Virginia Commonwealth University, piggybacking Broad Street in downtown Richmond, Virginia. Although not a very large museum in comparison to the Virginia Museum of Fine Art or the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C., the MOC boasts of “containing the world's most comprehensive collection of artifacts, manuscripts, and photographs from the Confederate States of America.”1 In addition, the website promises to “transport [you] back in time as you wander past "Stonewall" Jackson's forage cap, J.E.B. Stuart's LeMat pistol, and Robert E. Lee's field tent. Learn about lesser-known topics like the daily lives of common soldiers, life on the home-front, and the Confederate Navy.”2 With promises such as these, one would expect to walk into the MOC and be blown away by the sheer number of artifacts it has on display, and the interweaving of history and story to give a well-rounded view of life in the Confederate South. Although the MOC does ultimately fulfill this promise, it is necessary to visit three separate exhibits on three separate floors in order to see all aspects of Confederate life, which leaves the visitor feeling lost and confused about what exactly the museum finds important to share with its audience. 

Through the front doors of the Museum of the Confederacy, there is a large atrium with the welcome desk on the left, and a small open room on the right that houses the gift shop. The visitor is informed that the main exhibit, The Confederate Years: The Southern Military in the Civil War, is straight at the back of the atrium and the tour is self guided. The exhibit begins with a large slate-blue wall with only a few placards upon this wall, and is directly next to the bathroom walkway, which gives the impression that this exhibit was a second thought and had been placed haphazardly into this portion of the museum because it was the only space left. As the visitor gets closer to the beginning of the exhibit, they notice a full-sized replica of a Civil War era canon, which is about the most exciting piece of the whole exhibit. Wandering through the twists and turns of the exhibit provides endless text about the battles that were fought during the war, their outcome, and the repercussions of said outcome. However, each placard is less exciting than the one before, and written with such lack of enthusiasm that the visitor quickly loses interest in reading them altogether, instead relying on the bold print and the artifacts to tell the story.

In a traditional museum, relying on the artifacts to tell a story would be a valid and highly educational experience; however, at the MOC, I found that the random array of artifact, the little information provided about each item, and the substitution of real artifact with replicated pieces was disappointing and gave very little information about the people who fought for the South. The organization of The Confederate Years exhibit takes the visitor chronologically through each battle fought, but the artifacts that accompanied this story seem to have been randomly picked up off the ground and assigned to a historical member of the Confederacy so as to gain more attention and more validity for the object. The true artifacts they had seemed to be placed in each case as an afterthought, and do little to tell the story of Confederate life or the progression of the war. Additionally, because there are so few artifacts within this exhibit, each case seems empty and bland, while there are large spaces of wall that have absolutely nothing on them except the same drab slate-blue paint that encompasses the entire exhibit.

  As a born and bred member of the Union who attends school in the Confederate capital of the south, I wanted to learn about the famous Confederate generals who I had heard about in passing while learning about the Civil War and who are memorialized on Monument Avenue in Richmond. However, what I found in the MOC was a brief overview of “Stonewall” Jackson and Robert E. Lee, and only in relation to the battles that they fought in. If the visitor had not known who they were before and why they are so important to the battles that the Confederate Army won during the war, then they would have no more of an idea about them after going through the exhibit and reading every plaque. Their names seemed to be thrown into various cases to garner excitement about certain battles or to say that the artifacts the MOC has on display are important artifacts because they came from Lee and Jackson. 

            Overall, the Museum of the Confederacy did provide minimal information about the Civil War, but it was apparent that not only was there a remaining bitterness over the loss of the war, but a lack of enthusiasm in telling the story from the point of view of the Confederates. I focused my critique on the main exhibit that is advertised by the museum, but I also toured the two other exhibits in the museum which include The War Comes Home and Between the Battles which show what life beyond the active fighting was life. These two other exhibits provided more information about what Confederate life was actually like, which was something I was expecting the main exhibit to feature. The director of the museum had the opportunity to combine these three different exhibits that are housed in the museums four walls into one cohesive exhibit to explain all aspects of the Confederacy, but the organized separation of the life of the soldiers, women and children, and then the battles of the war, provide the visitor with the sense that these three aspects of Confederate life never interfered with each other, and had nothing to do with the success or life of the other. Had the MOC combined the three exhibits into one, there would be less blank space, a better distribution of artifacts, and a complete story that had a shared enthusiasm for how the Confederacy changed history by banding together and fighting for what they though was right, instead of the resigned feeling that the dark and gloomy main exhibit provided. 

1. "The Museum of the Confederacy: About The Museum." The Museum of the Confederacy:. Accessed February 17, 2012. http://www.moc.org/site/PageServer?pagename=abt_ov_main.

2. "The Museum of the Confederacy: About The Museum." The Museum of the Confederacy:. Accessed February 17, 2012. http://www.moc.org/site/PageServer?pagename=abt_ov_main.