Antietam National Battlefield Park is opening new exhibits focusing on the impact of the battle and the issuance of the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation a few day afterwards on local Black communities. According to the Washington Post:
When the park embarked on renovations to its visitors center, the time was right to determine how to tell this bigger story, Park Ranger Keith Snyder, the battlefield’s chief of resource education and visitor services, said. With help from an advisory team composed of historians and rangers from other Civil War battlefields, the staff developed five “universal” themes for its interpretation going forward: conflict, terror, survival, memory — and freedom.
“We’re trying to reach a broader audience,” Snyder said, “because I think it’s safe to say that some folks are not as interested in battle tactics as they might be the concept of freedom.
“That’s why these concepts are universal. Both are equally important in a battlefield. But if you tell a broader story, logically you would have a broader audience.”
…“Our story is is a bigger story than just the details of the battle,” Snyder said. “It’s important for people to understand why 100,000 men came here to destroy each other. It’s important to understand the legacy and the outcomes of the worst day and this bloodiest day in American history … the battle details are critical, too, because you have to understand the battle to understand how the outcome came about.”
But it’s that “outcome” park officials want visitors to better understand.
“These are broader questions that are important if you want to have a fuller understanding of why this event happened and what it meant,” Snyder said.
Lincoln’s proclamation, Snyder noted, was the “first step to freedom for four and half million Americans” and one of the greatest outcomes of the battle.
But it didn’t have much effect on enslaved people in Maryland as this state had not seceded — although Lincoln, probably correctly, regarded that possibility as a threat. Emancipation in Maryland would come in with a new state constitution in 1864.
New opportunities bear the fruits of freedom
Thriving Black communities developed in the shadows of Antietam’s battlefield, and that’s one of the stories park officials plan to tell.
“The question we’re trying to get at is what did that freedom mean for the people nationally and locally,” Snyder said. “And the best example of that, which will be part of our exhibits, is Tolson’s Chapel.”
That little building on High Street in Sharpsburg, built in 1866 to serve the Methodist Episcopal congregation, quickly began serving double-duty as a school for Black children.
The National Park Service recently commissioned a study by local historian Edie Wallace, who spearheaded the Tolson restoration, about post-war Black communities in the region. Her report, called “They Have Erected a Neat Little Church,” is available online at tinyurl.com/56ht287d.
Wallace looked at rural communities near Washington — in Maryland, Virginia and eastern West Virginia — including Sharpsburg and the community of Red Hill near Keedysville, and the impact of war and Reconstruction on how they developed.
“Their resilience and their determination to live, grow and thrive, to whatever degree they could ‘under the most adverse circumstances,’ should serve as a beacon of hope for all Americans, now and in the future.”
Accordingly, artifacts from Tolson’s Chapel will be on display in the visitor center’s exhibits when it reopens, Snyder said.
Access to education and freedom of worship is “as powerful as anything we could talk about,” Snyder said. “I think almost every person on the planet … would want to educate and worship to improve their lives, improve their families, and worship in peace.”
“It’s a human story. It’s not red blocks on a map; it’s the human experience of tragedy, and hardship, and victory. I mean, every emotion that a human could experience was experienced on this field before, during and after.”
The newly improved visitor center exhibits will tell that broader story and serve as a “springboard” for the new trail system and tour offerings, some of which are already in place.
This work will allow visitors to get to know “the people that fought here, the people that lived here and the people across the country whose lives were affected by the outcome,” Snyder said.
