Places You Shouldn’t Go?

As that interview reminds us, Gettysburg, in many ways, is the perfect fusion of historical identity and tourism. That you can go to one place, have a nice trip, but feel affirmed in your American identity. I guess what I’m wondering, Peter, was that invented at Gettysburg? Were they building on anything that we’d had before?

PETER: Yeah, I think so, because somebody else stood at Gettysburg. And that was Abraham Lincoln, and he evoked the memories of 1776. And that looks back to a historical consciousness that begins with the nation, born with the nation. And Americans were intensely conscious of the Revolution. And no, they weren’t history tourists in the sense that you’re suggesting at Gettysburg, but they did go places to see where it had happened.

ED: That sounds like tourism to me.

PETER: It sounds like tourism to me too. But it’s short range, and very often it didn’t require going to some particular place because people lived where the Revolution had been fought, and there were guidebooks that were written and published in the 1820s and ’30s about how to locate sites within a place like Boston where things had happened. These weren’t historic sites in the modern sense that they were all gussied up and sacralized. They were part of the fabric, the urban fabric of American cities. But it was just the knowledge that they were walking in the same footsteps as their fathers and people who were, well, still living. History was alive and it was there.

ED: Did they worry about that past being paved over or left by American progress? What did they do to preserve what they had?

PETER: Yeah, I think you’re right. And in the antebellum decades leading up to the Civil War, there’s a growing concern. Well, as the veterans of the Revolution die often and as the younger generation seems to be less intimately acquainted with that vital story, that sense of history receding into the past, and maybe we need reminders. How are we going to keep the memories alive and sustain the nation? I think that’s a concern north and south in the years leading up the Civil War.

And it culminates with the effort of the Mt. Vernon Ladies Association to raise funds across the nation to preserve George Washington’s home as a kind of a temple to the union, to the nation, the memory of the American Revolution, the father of our country. But that was in a way because all space had lost its specific historical resonance for Americans. They needed have sites, well, something like churches, places where they could go, and affirm their identity as Americans. Particularly, Ed, as you know when the union seemed on the verge of falling apart then more than ever you had to remember the fathers.

ED: Yeah, all that culminates right before the Civil War. So maybe tourism was some indication of what people had deep forebodings about.

PETER: I think that’s right, Ed.

ED: Well, Brian, that was pretty persuasive by Peter, that we didn’t invent everything at Gettysburg. But have you really improved on it since?

BRIAN: Well, I think what you nailed in Gettysburg, Ed, is that Americans for the first time began to embrace the notion that we are not just a loose confederation or a union, but actually we might be one nation.

ED: Yeah, we stopped referring to the United States in the plural, and started referring to it in the singular.

BRIAN: That’s perfectly put, Ed. And I think once Americans felt a bit more secure about being a nation, and didn’t have the kinds of questions they had in Peter’s period and during the Civil War then they could focus on what kind of nation are we? And I think we can look to tourism to answer that question. We’re a nation that consumes, consumes a heck of a lot.

And so if you want to look at the iconic tourist spots across the 20th century that continue to define what American identity is I think you need to look at the Disneylands and the Disney Worlds, and very much like in the 19th century, these start locally, these start with amusement parks at places like Coney Island. But quickly, they emerge into national, ultimately international magnets for consumption.

PETER: So Brian, what does modern American tourism tell us about the way we think about our history as a nation?

BRIAN: Peter, it tells us that what we share in common is our incredibly productive economy and our mutual success in being able to enjoy the fruits of that labor by doing whatever the heck we want to on vacation.

ED: But tell me this. Wouldn’t a place like Pearl Harbor speak of the same impulses as behind Gettysburg? If you go to Washington and you see the Washington Monument, Peter, or the Air and Space Museum, the Museum of American History, the Vietnam Wall memorial, aren’t all these things basically the same impulse as we’ve had since the beginning, Brian?

BRIAN: Yes, Ed. I do not mean in any way to say that you can’t find some of the very same reasons for traveling to a particular site that Peter talked about or that you talked about. Yes, there is a continuity. But I think it would be a mistake to ignore the vast amount of money, energy, and thought that is spent on finding ways to send Americans places, maybe a day away, maybe an ocean away to keep them entertained, to take our tourism to places and locales that have nothing to do with history or American history.

PETER: And Brian, that statement that the past is a foreign country is interesting here, because we can go to historic places like Colonial Williamsburg and make believe we’re in that foreign country– the past. But in some profound way, it’s not us.

BRIAN: You could say it’s not us or you could say, it’s us trying on a wig in the morning and teeing off on the 17th tee in the afternoon.

ED: Well, the good news is that the people can listen to BackStory to and from any of these destinations, and get their shot of history.