Second, as Purdue University historian Elliott Gorn has written, there is a significant difference between memory and history. The war encompasses all those things. If the same percentage had fallen in Vietnam, there would be 4 million names on the memorial wall in Washington instead of the 58,219 inscribed there. The Civil War's devastation reaches into our own time as Americans, often with a vested interest, try to make sense of it all. That's why questions have been raised in some quarters about what story will be told on the 28 Civil War battlefields, and how it will be told.
Military enthusiasts are concerned about losing the battle stories.
While he agrees that there is a place for African-American issues, he does not want to see slavery dominate the discussion. Yet it is the general lack of mention of the topic of slavery at the battlefields that led Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill., to push through a congressional directive last year encouraging the Park Service to begin talking about it. So Jackson introduced language in an appropriations bill directing the Interior secretary to encourage park managers to include the topic of slavery in park displays. . No one knows better than Park Service rangers that Americans bring varied and deeply held beliefs to the battlefields. Pitcaithley argues the Park Service's mission requires that rangers step forward as educators.