This summer, I packed my hiking boots and headed to Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, a memorial composed of four Civil War battlefields in eastern Virginia, to be a historical interpreter for the National Park Services.
I looked forward to traveling, pursuing my history degree, and working on the front lines of my field. I was also excited to take a break from the intense political atmosphere at Hillsdale. I imagined that “the Civil War wasn’t about slavery” was the most controversial statement I would encounter all summer.
That changed on June 17, when the murders of black churchgoers by a white supremacist in Charleston, South Carolina threw Civil War history into the forefront of American news. The Confederate battle flag, an already-contested symbol, became the topic of renewed debate. Stand-alone depictions of the flag were withdrawn from National Park bookstores, though it remained in park museums as a historical artifact and teaching tool. Park visitors breached the flag topic frequently, and my encounters with guests became more lively as the flag debate continued.
As I hoisted the flag over the Wilderness Battlefield one morning, a gentleman asked why I did not raise the “Stars and Bars,” the first flag of the Confederate nation.
Once, an elderly man asked me in a hushed drawl, “Are you southern-born?” He feared that I might portray Confederate soldiers in a purely negative light. Another visitor asked if I had read the book “1984,” claiming the removal of the flag mirrored the cultural purging that occurs in Orwell’s novel.
Other visitors became angry when I tried to explain that the flag remained in our museum as an artifact: “Don’t give me the spiel the park taught you to say!” Some became angered enough to sign a petition calling for the resignation of our chief historian.
Despite some tense interactions with visitors and a failed protest led by the Sons of Confederate Veterans (only a dozen people showed to the “protest and canned food drive”), most of my experiences with visitors remained incredibly positive. Many thanked me for keeping history alive and preserving significant American sites. Children came to the park wearing Confederate or Union caps, excited to learn more about our country’s past. Other park guests photographed me as I raised the American flag over Chancellorsville the morning of July 4. Elderly visitors looked on with tears in their eyes as I pointed to maps and told them where their ancestors fought, were wounded, or even died. More than 7,000 visitors attended the park’s Memorial Day Luminaria event, paying tribute to the 15,000 soldiers interred in Fredericksburg National Cemetery.
The chief historians of the park described the battlefields as places of reconciliation, where all Americans could appreciate examples of bravery, heroism, and sacrifice. My supervising historian reminded staff early in June that he was not our true boss: we really reported to the soldiers who fell in battle in Virginia’s fields and forests. We were not park rangers, but “stewards of their memory.”
Perhaps the most touching moment I witnessed this summer occurred on a quiet August afternoon, just before I returned to Hillsdale. A young woman with car trouble waited for a tow truck at the Wilderness Battlefield Exhibit Shelter. I noticed her spread a cloth on the grass. Picnicking on the battlefields remains a common problem within the park, so I sighed and prepared to recite park rules.
I noticed her place a scarf on her head, fall to her knees, and bow her head to the ground in prayer. This woman prayed toward Mecca. She prayed on ground stained with the blood of men who fought and died there one hundred fifty years ago. She prayed under the United States flag that I raised earlier that morning. While the Civil War was not a religious war, it preserved the country that protects the freedoms that we hold today—the same freedoms that allowed that young woman to kneel in prayer without fear for her safety. In that moment, I was reminded of the sacrifices of both Northern and Southern soldiers. I was reminded of the results of that long and bloody war, and of the years of fighting that preserved the Union. Finally, I was reminded that, under the flag of the United States, we can all learn about our national history, and practice our rights as Americans.