The National Civil War Museum

The museum is in Harrisburg, the state capital of Pennsylvania. We’d heard of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, but not the capital Harrisburg. Maybe that’s because it’s never featured in a popular song or been a product (Philadelphia cheese). But it was in the news in 1979 when Three Mile Island nuclear power station caused America’s worst radiation contamination leak. Three Mile Island is 3 miles downstream from Harrisburg, hence the name. We drove past it on our way to the museum and it seemed to be fully operational. Nothing to see now, of course, apart from prize luminous vegetables in all the gardens.

Back to the museum. It was built in 2001, a handsome building in parkland overlooking the city. It sets out to explain the origins of the war, the conflict, and the aftermath. It begins with an examination of slavery and how it was fundamental to the southern way of life. The slave auction poster below shows how negros were traded like any other commodity. Difficult for us to imagine how this was a part of everyday life.

War came in 1861 following the declaration of separation from the Union by South Carolina, followed initially by 6 other states, and then others after the war had started. Their reasons for taking this extreme step went beyond the slavery issue and was really to avoid domination by the economically stronger and more industrialised north. In its early stages, the war paralleled the First World War and was seen as something of an adventure, as reflected by the recruitment posters.

Again, as with the First World War, the reality was anything but romantic. The war was fought with increasingly modernised weapons that could, and did, decimate troops charging at one another. An example of this weapon development was the rifle, photo underneath, with a modern copper-cased cartridge and good rate of fire.. The war had started with muzzle-loaders that could have come from Cromwell’s army two hundred years earlier.

To give some idea of scale: more American died in the Civil War, some 700,000 of them, than in all other conflicts added together. More than half fell to disease, but were still deaths equally attributable to the war.

And how did we rate the museum? Well, it could have been better. Sound effects are great in proportion, but these weren’t. Simulated cannon fire from the battle of Gettysburg drowned out the soundtrack of a southern lady describing the slave plantations, all to a further loud background of songs of the day (e.g. John Brown’s body). It sounded like pub kickout time on Saturday night in Huntingdon. Much too distracting when trying to absorb the text alongside each exhibit. No café or fast food either, very un-American, and a lost opportunity for marketing Gettysburgers