Gettysburg battlefield mired in past Museum's visitors don't get up-to-date, full sense of history

GETTYSBURG, Pa. -- So, you want to learn about the Civil War.

You go to Gettysburg. Big battle. Museum. Artifacts everywhere: cannon, muskets, pistols, bullets, flags.

Slavery?

Didn't slavery have something to do with it? You navigate through the halls of the Visitor Center of the Gettysburg National Military Park, past the exhibits on Civil War navies, medicines, canteens.

Then you come to the closest thing on slavery -- a glass case the size of, say, a Yugo. It is an exhibit about U.S. Colored Troops.

On the heels last weekend of the largest Civil War re-enactment ever, 135 years after those three bloody days in Gettysburg determined the outcome of the war, you still would have little idea from the national park exhibits here that the war was fought largely over slavery.

Slavery, however, is just part of the problem. The exhibits at America's most famous, most toured Civil War battlefield, with more than 1.8 million visitors last year, are by all accounts outdated, confusing and badly in need of an overhaul.

"I don't think anybody deigns that a quality museum," said Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. "I think everyone agrees a new museum would be preferable."

That includes visitors: "It wasn't real self-explanatory," said tourist Tom Castle, a 28-year-old Navy engineer from Colts Neck, N.J.

Among the first to agree are the National Park Service rangers who run the center.

"You walk in, and this is what you get, and people say, 'Now what?'" said park spokeswoman Katie Lawhon, referring to that familiar puzzled look. "We have to do a much better job of orienting the visitors."

The park plans to do so. Under a $39 million public-private partnership being considered, a new museum visitor center would open as early as 2003, and it would focus on six themes: (1) how the nation dissolved into war; (2) the Gettysburg battle; (3) the soldier's point of view; (4) the civilian perspective; (5) Lincoln's Gettysburg Address; and (6) how the nation honors the memory of those who fought there.

"We want to tell a bigger and broader story," said Brion FitzGerald, the park's chief of the interpretation and protection division. "Put it in terms of the world picture today. These types of struggles for freedom and equality are occurring in a number of different places around the world."