On July 10, the Atlanta History Center will open its most ambitious exhibit yet: “More Perfect Union: The American Civil War Era.”
With hundreds of artifacts and roughly 9,000 square feet of space, the exhibit takes on the herculean task of telling the long tale of the Civil War. And it begins with a bang – or more accurately, the din of dozens of overlapping frenzied voices.
According to Sheffield Hale, the President and CEO of the Atlanta History Center, the exhibit design takes visitors through the story, from the foundations of slavery to shots fired, a fraught war and the long legacy it leaves behind.
“At the entrance, we want people to realize how fraught it was, how people were divided, and why they were divided,” Hale explained.
The first alcove is packed with screens, each showing photos and illustrations from the Civil War era. Voices are layered atop each other. It’s overwhelming, and Hale says that is the point. “That’s the way they were fighting with each other.”
Hale is unwilling to sugarcoat the war. In fact, he thinks the history center is tackling bigger questions than taking a side. How did we get here? Why do people believe what they believe? Who was left out of the American project?
Perhaps most vitally, what does a more perfect union really look like?
Through a lengthy timeline, the exhibit attempts to answer the question. It begins with slavery. As Dr. Gordon Jones, AHC Senior Military Historian and the exhibit’s lead curator, explained: slavery is the foundation of the United States.
Slave labor was used to build the physical structures, tools and goods of the early United States. But it created a contradiction at the core of the country. Who is free? There were dueling visions at play, and the center shows both of them.
Hale’s favorite detail is the striking inclusion of Frederick Douglass’ landmark 1852 speech “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” The history center has 15 of about 100 known copies of the speech, with one on display in the exhibit.
Just above the speech plays an audio recording of Douglass’ words. His question of freedom rings out and mixes with audio of gunshots from the next room over. It creates cacophony, and brings each piece of the war into conversation.
As the exhibit continues, the story moves into the start of the Civil War, and the “most profound transformation in American history,” as 4 million men and women become free Americans.
Each glass case is packed with artifacts, from harrowing racist booklets to threadbare American flags. One flag was hoisted above a former slave refugee camp in Virginia. Freed Black men and women would get married under the flag and take a piece of the thread as a souvenir.
There are guns and bullet-ridden clothes and letters from abolitionist John Brown. There’s a massive book of photos once owned by William T. Sherman. They’re the big names of Civil War history. Here, though, they are placed in a greater context.
Hale calls it a “bigger, broader narrative” that brings the Civil War era to the modern day. At AHC, these artifacts are in conversation with each other. The words of Union and Confederate soldiers are presented side by side. Jones thinks it speaks for itself. He asks: ”why would we insert our words into theirs?”
“It’s just being honest,” Jones added.
To the team at AHC, the exhibit is a major accomplishment. It is also a turning point in the long-standing approach to Civil War history. 30 years ago, Atlanta’s historians had to work with a handful of artifacts and far greater gaps.
Dr. Gordon Jones curated both the original 1996 “Turning Point” Civil War exhibition and “More Perfect Union.” He said the older exhibit was an “important step” for Civil War interpretation, but the landscape has changed in 30 years.
“It’s not just the evolution of our scholarship and collections, but we also have a new audience that is looking to understand how we get to our present moment,” Jones said.
To meet newer audiences and explain the “how” of the modern day, AHC had to acquire artifacts. Hale said they spent 30 years “filling gaps” in the narrative. The effort paid off. One “bucket list item” stands out: A regimental flag of the United States Colored Troops. It is the only flag of its kind in the Southeast.
As a curator, Jones said the AHC collection is “every bit as good as the best USCT collection that I have ever seen.”
But decades ago, the flag would never have made it to the AHC Civil War exhibit. The updated approach only happened through years of collecting and a $16 million investment.
“I don’t know any place that has tried to take on this much real estate, this much history about the Civil War and its causes all in one spot, and almost bring it up to the moment,” Hale said.
“More Perfect Union” is a permanent exhibit, with the second phase “Hard Hand of War: Soldiers, Weapons and Mass Production” set to open in the Goldstein Gallery this winter. Together, the galleries will round out more than 15,400 square feet of space dedicated to the country’s fraught history.
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