Hey everybody, wherever you happen to be this weekend I hope the weather is as fine as here in the Big Apple. By accident more than design, I am having a museum weekend.

Today a friend and I went to the Grolier Club for  “Torn in Two: the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War.” The exhibit is on loan from the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center of the Boston Public Library. The show did an excellent job of explaining the role of cartography in the war. A faulty map was often the case between victory or defeat on the battlefield. (See: Ball’s Bluff.)

Especially poignant were the maps in the section the exhibit’s creators called The Living Room War. A century before Vietnam brought another war into American homes via television, Americans in large numbers purchased maps printed specially for the purpose of following the movements of loved ones on far away battlefields. (Franklin Delano Roosevelt did the same thing during World War 2, encouraging citizens to purchase maps so they could follow along during his fireside chats.) Keep in mind that the mid-nineteenth century was a time when many Americans, North and South, had never traveled more than fifty miles from their homes. One map from 1861 had a portrait of Elmer Ellsworth in the upper left hand corner and Benjamin Butler in the upper right. I was greatly moved by one front page article, accompanied with a simple sketch of Sharpsburg and the Antietam battlefield, published in Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune just days after the battle.

Also on display was “Panorama of the Seat of War.” Looking at it, one understands the geographical advantages enjoyed by the Confederacy in the Eastern theater. The mountains and waterways intersecting the entire area created formidable challenges for the Army of the Potomac. As a ranger friend at Antietam National Battlefield points out to visitors during his orientations, soldiers at the time had no GPS devices in 1862. Oddly, this is something people today often have difficulty imagining.

Panorama of the Seat of War, John Bachmann, 1861

Also on display were these famous lithographs. It is always special to see the originals. Again, note the map motif.

General Winfield Scott’s Anaconda Plan

Pro-McClellan 1864 political cartoon

Not everything in the show was from the Civil War era. On display was a detail from “Freedom’s Tracks: A Map of the Underground Railroad,” a map produced by the McElfresh Map Company in 2005 showing the routes runaways slaves used to escape bondage. Alas, I have no picture to show. In order to see it you will have to travel to the Upper East Side yourself. “Torn in Two” will be open to the public through April 28, 2012.

A while ago I got a last minute call from another friend asking if I would like to venture to Queens tomorrow to visit the Noguchi Museum. The outdoor sculptures should be especially beautiful with the cherry blossoms in full bloom.

It is so good getting out of the house after the winter, even the mild winter, we had. Enjoy your weekend.

(images/Library of Congress)

In the 1990s Harrisburg, PA mayor Stephen Reed envisioned a campus of museums dedicated to the preservation and exhibition of artifacts going back to colonial times. To this end, the city spent millions collecting pieces from across the country. The idea, as I understand it, is that the city would profit in the long run through the tourist dollars the museums would attract. In 2001 the National Civil War Museum opened in Reservoir Park. Less than an hour’s ride from Gettysburg, the museum is worth adding to one’s itinerary. It is a beautiful, modern facility with a collection few others can match. The scope is equally impressive, covering the entire Civil War era from 1850 to 1876. In 2009 it became one of the Smithsonian affiliates I mentioned the other day. Sadly the plans for the additional museums never came to fruition, the economic crises and budget deficits of recent years having rendered these plans untenable. Now Harrisburg has commissioned a New York auction house to sell a signifacant portion of the city’s historical collections to pay off the municipal debt. The sale will be held across eight days this coming July after a full inventory.

I do not know enough about the city’s fiscal troubles, though I am sure they are severe. These are tough choices, but I hope city officials are thinking things through. They held a similar auction in 2007 that netted the city $1.4 million. It is not clear how large the city’s holdings will remain after this 2012 sale. During New York City’s darkest years in the 1970s some New York institutions resisted the temptation to sell despite the obvious short term gains. Today, these museums and repositories are enjoying a renaissance of record crowds despite Gotham’s own very real financial difficulties. Something to consider.

(image/Confederate Bowie (top) and Naval knives in NCWM collection, Claire H.)

Baseball great Ted Wiliams was such a notorious tightwad that when he shopped he often paid by check, hoping the store owner would keep the check as a souvenir, thus saving Williams the money not deducted from his bank account. It is not clear how many of our presidents were also cheapskates, but we now know that a good many of them also paid by check. Last year workers at an Ohio bank discovered a trove of checks collected by a former executive decades ago. The checks were last seen in 1983 after a takeover and presumed lost in the ensuing decades. All told, there are about seventy written by twenty-four presidents and other luminaries such as Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, and Thomas Edison. One was written by George Washington in 1799, the year he died; Lincoln wrote a check for $800 to “Self” on April 13, 1865, the day before he was mortally wounded at Ford’s Theater and two days before he died. Some speculate he cashed the funds to pay debts incurred by Mary Lincoln. For several months the bank displayed the items on a rotating basis at various branches in the six states where it does business. They are currently on display at the William McKinley Presidential Library and Museum through February 28th. Bank officials are considering donating these fascinating documents to a repository such as the Smithsonian.

These are the things that remind us that historical figures were real people who lived real lives, even performing that types of mundane tasks we each do every day.. Pics here.

Private Walter G. Jones, 8th New York Cavalry, and his New Testament

With the Hayfoot at work and no football for the first Sunday in months your humble writer was left to his own devices to keep himself entertained today. I decided to visit the Museum of Biblical Art to see the newly opened exhibit Finding Comfort in Difficult times: A Selection of Soldiers’ Bibles. The museum is part of the American Bible Society, an institutuion founded in 1816 to promote the reading of scripture and the abolition of slavery. I have always had an interest in the Bible as a librarian and historian and had been looking forward to this exhibit since reading a recent review in the Wall Street Journal. I was not the only one. When I asked the receptionist if attendance was good she said it had picked up since the WSJ article appeared. On the questionaire I was asked to fill out before leaving there was even a box to check off labeled “Wall Street Journal” for “How did you learn of the show?”

Finding Comfort examines the history of soldiers’ Bibles from 1861 to the present day, but the bulk of the exhibit is dedicated to the Civil War. About half of the thirty six monographs on display are from that conflict. Taking a “Hate the sin; Love the sinner.” approach, the ABS distributed Bibles to both Union and Confederate troops. The logistics of transporting and distributing Bibles to rebels proved difficult however, and the vast majority of the books were given to Union men. There were similar groups in the South that tried to pick up the slack. The Bible Society of the Confederate States of America, for instance, was one such organization that did so. Still, this was not enough. My favorite in the exhibit was a Bible published in England by Oxford University Press for the British and Foreign Bible Society. Copies of these King James Versions of the New Testament were shipped in bulk to the Caribbean to be smuggled into Charleston, South Carolina aboard the blockade runner Minna. The ship, the Bibles, and all the other goods aboard intended for the Southern war effort did not make it. The Minna was overrun by a Union ship on December 6, 1863 and towed into a Federal port.

Most of the Bibles on display are small tomes designed for their lightness during the march and to fit snugly in a soldier’s pocket. Indeed, the story of a Billy Yank saved from death by the Bible carried in his breast pocket is one of the cliches of the war. Finding Comfort is an apt title for the exhibit. The years 1861-65 were indeed difficult times and the ABS provided meaning and comfort throughout the war to hundreds of thousands of men who were scared, far from home, and facing death on a daily basis. Most poignant to me were the photographs and handwritten notes in some of the items. It is always jarring to me to walk into a museum off the street, examine the personal items of individuals like these in solitude, and walk back into the cacaphony of the city. It is like being in on a secret that those around me are not aware. The exhibit is small, but worth seeing. A good way to do it is the way I did today: catching the show and then having a walk in nearby Central Park.

The Civil War is better than football. It is the real life story of people not very different from us who did extraordinary things under the most trying circumstances. Not a bad way to spend Lincoln’s Birthday.

(image/Library of Congress)