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Dusty,
I apologize if this is not the correct forum to post this. Since the events concern funding from, and support of, local museums and Civil War sites in the Charleston area and State of South Carolina, I thought everyone would like to be informed on the situation with the 150th events in South Carolina.
Nick Miller
I apologize if this is not the correct forum to post this. Since the events concern funding from, and support of, local museums and Civil War sites in the Charleston area and State of South Carolina, I thought everyone would like to be informed on the situation with the 150th events in South Carolina.
Nick Miller
Funding clouds Civil War plans - Finding money for commemoration likely to be tough battle
By Robert Behre (Contact)
The Post and Courier
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Tyrone Walker
The Post and Courier
Lowcountry historians, re-enactors and other groups met last month to throw out some ideas for commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.
They would like to hold a symposium on the war's cause, mark the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Ordinance of Secession in late December 2010, stage a special commemoration of the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation and even mount ambitious re-enactments of the firing on Fort Sumter and the Battery Wagner assault on Morris Island.
They just have to figure out a way to pay for it all.
"It's a really bad time to be doing this," said Eric Emerson, director of the Charleston Library Society and vice president of the Lowcountry Civil War Sesquicentennial Committee. "It's going to have to turn around pretty fast for there to be the kind of commemorative events we anticipated when all this started."
Rodger Stroup, executive director of the S.C. Archives and History Center, said this state lags well behind Virginia, which has set aside $4 million for its sesquicentennial plans.
Stroup said state planners held seven meetings across the state that produced a varied set of ideas. The Civil War here was waged largely along the coast until the war's end, when troops under Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman blazed a trail through the middle of the state.
Stroup said he had hoped to receive about $200,000 in state money to assist local groups with holding educational or commemorative events. But that seems impossible this year, as his own agency already has had to slash its budget by 22 percent and plans to cut even deeper next year.
"Our budget is going to be somewhere around where the budget was in the early 1970s," he said. "I don't think the general public realizes what's happening. It's pretty grim."
Organizers hope to get private donations and accommodations tax money from Lowcountry cities, whose hotels and restaurants stand to benefit from Civil War buffs.
But private funding can be tricky given the lingering controversy over how central slavery was to the beginning of the war, Stroup said.
"People don't want to be seen as promoting one side or the other or one issue or another," he said. "There's just a hard-core group of people that feel like slavery was not the cause. We've got the declaration of causes right here in this building. One of them says 'to preserve slavery.' You can't get around it."
Robert Rosen, a Charleston lawyer who has been appointed to the state commission, said organizers plan to address that by ensuring that all viewpoints — those of the Confederacy, the union and the African-American population — are commemorated but not necessarily celebrated, especially given that the war cost the lives of more than 600,000 Americans.
"The mission includes teaching the general public about the causes, course and legacies of the war from the Union, Confederate and African-American perspective. A big tent, everybody's involved, not a bunch of Confederates running around celebrating secession," Rosen said. "My goal is to bring all the best Civil War historians, all the people who've written recent books about everything and really go to town."
Stroup said a federal stimulus bill could include money for historical projects. During the Great Depression, the government created jobs by paying people to take oral histories and slave narratives and make measured drawings and photographs of significant buildings and sites.
"People chuckled at those during the Great Depression, but those have turned out to be tremendously important historical resources," he said.
Other ideas from Lowcountry colleges, museums and historians include opening a museum to the Hunley in 2014, the 150th anniversary of its sinking of a Union ship, the world's first successful submarine strike.
"It would be great if there were funds to have some sort of educational components for schools in Charleston, Berkeley and Dorchester counties," Emerson said.
Emerson said he is assembling the wish list of commemorative events and plans to approach the Legislature for financial help, despite the bad timing.
"If we don't ask the state for money this budget cycle, then we're behind the curve," he said. "2010 is the (150th year since) the Ordinance of Secession."
By Robert Behre (Contact)
The Post and Courier
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Tyrone Walker
The Post and Courier
Lowcountry historians, re-enactors and other groups met last month to throw out some ideas for commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.
They would like to hold a symposium on the war's cause, mark the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Ordinance of Secession in late December 2010, stage a special commemoration of the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation and even mount ambitious re-enactments of the firing on Fort Sumter and the Battery Wagner assault on Morris Island.
They just have to figure out a way to pay for it all.
"It's a really bad time to be doing this," said Eric Emerson, director of the Charleston Library Society and vice president of the Lowcountry Civil War Sesquicentennial Committee. "It's going to have to turn around pretty fast for there to be the kind of commemorative events we anticipated when all this started."
Rodger Stroup, executive director of the S.C. Archives and History Center, said this state lags well behind Virginia, which has set aside $4 million for its sesquicentennial plans.
Stroup said state planners held seven meetings across the state that produced a varied set of ideas. The Civil War here was waged largely along the coast until the war's end, when troops under Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman blazed a trail through the middle of the state.
Stroup said he had hoped to receive about $200,000 in state money to assist local groups with holding educational or commemorative events. But that seems impossible this year, as his own agency already has had to slash its budget by 22 percent and plans to cut even deeper next year.
"Our budget is going to be somewhere around where the budget was in the early 1970s," he said. "I don't think the general public realizes what's happening. It's pretty grim."
Organizers hope to get private donations and accommodations tax money from Lowcountry cities, whose hotels and restaurants stand to benefit from Civil War buffs.
But private funding can be tricky given the lingering controversy over how central slavery was to the beginning of the war, Stroup said.
"People don't want to be seen as promoting one side or the other or one issue or another," he said. "There's just a hard-core group of people that feel like slavery was not the cause. We've got the declaration of causes right here in this building. One of them says 'to preserve slavery.' You can't get around it."
Robert Rosen, a Charleston lawyer who has been appointed to the state commission, said organizers plan to address that by ensuring that all viewpoints — those of the Confederacy, the union and the African-American population — are commemorated but not necessarily celebrated, especially given that the war cost the lives of more than 600,000 Americans.
"The mission includes teaching the general public about the causes, course and legacies of the war from the Union, Confederate and African-American perspective. A big tent, everybody's involved, not a bunch of Confederates running around celebrating secession," Rosen said. "My goal is to bring all the best Civil War historians, all the people who've written recent books about everything and really go to town."
Stroup said a federal stimulus bill could include money for historical projects. During the Great Depression, the government created jobs by paying people to take oral histories and slave narratives and make measured drawings and photographs of significant buildings and sites.
"People chuckled at those during the Great Depression, but those have turned out to be tremendously important historical resources," he said.
Other ideas from Lowcountry colleges, museums and historians include opening a museum to the Hunley in 2014, the 150th anniversary of its sinking of a Union ship, the world's first successful submarine strike.
"It would be great if there were funds to have some sort of educational components for schools in Charleston, Berkeley and Dorchester counties," Emerson said.
Emerson said he is assembling the wish list of commemorative events and plans to approach the Legislature for financial help, despite the bad timing.
"If we don't ask the state for money this budget cycle, then we're behind the curve," he said. "2010 is the (150th year since) the Ordinance of Secession."
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