Museums Books

“The [Vicksburg, Mississippi] courthouse survived with only one hit, and now housed Vicksburg’s city museum. It was the most eccentric—and politically incorrect—collection I’d yet visited in the South. In the “Confederate Room,” alongside a piece of original hardtack and a copy of the Vicksburg Citizen printed on wallpaper because newsprint ran out, I found a pair of Confederate trousers “made by a plantation mammy” and a photograph of a Southern matron with “her slaves who refused to accept freedom.” An exhibit on Jefferson Davis, who delivered his first public speech on the courthouse grounds, stated: “There was a very special relationship between Jefferson Davis and his slaves. He was not only their master but also their friend.” Another display pointed out: “Ironically, Gen. U.S. Grant was a slave owner while Gen. Robert E. Lee freed his slaves.”

This last was a hoary bit of Southern propaganda. Grant’s in-laws were Missourians who owned slaves before the War; Grant acquired one from them and set him free a year later. As for Lee, the slaves in question were those his wife inherited in October 1857, with the stipulation that Lee, as executor, emancipate them within five years. Lee missed the deadline and didn’t free the slaves until December 29, 1863.

In another room, I found a Ku Klux Klan hood with eye holes and a red tassel. “The Klan’s purpose was to rid the South of the carpetbag-scalawag-black governments, which were often corrupt,” the accompanying text said. “Atrocities were sometimes attributed to the Klan by unscrupulous individuals.”
― Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War