c-span3. to join the conversation, like us on facebook at c-span history. >> next on the civil war, eric leonard of anderson i have national historic site discusses the rise of prison camps. this i vent is about an hour. >> that conference last year, you know, i -- circumstances conspired so that i was a fleeting head on the screen and i'm very pleased this morning to actually be present and projecting images of prisoner of war camps and military prisons on the screen instead of me. i don't think i represent well

that big. i'm going to negotiate a very dangerous set of rapids this morning. the professor at georgia southwestern state university who is married u in fact torks one of my employees, dr. glen robins, he says and i agree completely, generally, you can either talk about andersonville or the other military prisons of war. it becomes emotionally difficult to try to do both. i hesitate to use the acronym p.o.w. in a civil war context. it's a 20th century term. and i wliek to talk about.

so it tends to slow me down a lot. fall outside of the traditional heroic narrative of the war. and, again, you lose objectivity very quickly the longer you stay down in the wreckage of the war. andersonville is the most famous of the military prisons. it's a long way from the rest of the civil war world, both literally and figuratively, the prison site was chosen on purpose 150 years ago to be as remote and as insulated a place in the confederacy far from perceived locations battle.

and 50 years later, this remains the narrative. we have the tendency to talk about off to the side of the main narrative of the war. it's, you know, as we talk about battles and campaigns, oh, by the way, there's this crazy thing happening at anderson i have and other places. when prisons exist because of the war, prisons are influenced because of the war. this past fall, the ft. benning

sergeant major's association dedicated a powmia monument 50 feet. from the train tracks. it's very bold. and on the backside, what's missing? 50 feet from where 45,000 american soldiers entered captivity. they're not present. this is about 200 feet from a monument dedicated to the heroic story of the kmoonder of that. so there's a precedent here already.

at the prison site itself, they face out. they face the prison wall and the road that loops around the site designed for the visitor to stand up literally on the outside looking in. and that existence, again, prevents us from experiencing, understanding this story, you know, in very important ways. it's impossible to overstate how much lost cause persists within the genera of military prisons. this narrative, you know, by design, is a very narrow one built upon concepts of false equivalency and distracts from understanding by focusing on

blame. and we'll explore exactly how that happens. this narrative and how narrow it is, is beginning to show its age. we talk about prisons like they're in a box and focusing ochb, well, yours are worse than ours: as one example of that, one book was pulled by its publisher because one author swore up and down he was being play jarized. that's so narrow that plagiarism is part of the process, in many respects. what's maddening ant this is how universal the prisoner of war experience is. in the course of the war.

an average soldier of both sides during the course of the conflict has a one in seven chance of becoming a prisoner of war. the united states soldier has a one in 11 chance. a confederate soldier, just pick one of them, they have a 25% chance. this is a universal consequence. it's a critical part of the experience. there's no better example of the edges of how to talk about prisoners of war than america's now the most famous prisoner of war. the emotions, the controversy.

the anger, the suspicion are a ri minder that prior to vietnam, prisoners of war were not view ed as heros. they were viewed as suspicion. as failures, as men who were cowardly who failed to do their duty. and they couldn't. they could have done something better. they shouldn't have got caught. men come back from cry ya were so held in suspicion, you know, over fear of brainwashing by communists, that that leads to the creation of the code of conduct. this is a universal story. the prisoner of war story, it's deeply controversial and deeply complex.

survivors and families began struggling before the war ends. the missing sl jer's officer whether i shalled in 1865, run by clara barton, would indefinitely find answers from the battlefield and from the prize pen. it's in this capacity that cl aurks ra bar ton accompanies the article thi quarter master's expedition that establishes the anderson nationalville. her work here is limited to identifying the dead or graves or establishing the cemetery and she did not do those things. the u.s. army under the command of quarter master james moore

established the cemetery. >> clara bar ton took her story on the road and relics of the prison become tourist attractions across the country. beginning in 1876, prisons and prison treatment, north and south, became a political device

by which southern democrats and republicans bludgeon each other in the process codifying. it is to them and their memory to better include them and how we talked about the war. the first avenue is the discussion of policy.

the leader code is announcing that black soldiers are equal and to be treated equally. it's the excuse, but that's the reason that giants appear late in 1864 primarily in the south, but like wise, in the north. and that begins in 1863 at the battle of f 26789 wagner.

these men are getting a very good example that the governor of south carolina wants to execute them for the slave insurrection that they've been a part of. later in 1864, they're normalized and that's when they start dying. their time at charles ton, all things considered, wasn't quite as bad as what was to come.

sherman's exchange is very, very critical to the history of andersonville. the prison in sass bury operated. in 1864, it stops being the place that you can play baseball at: the second avenue of discussion is the question of systems of manage t. ment. what choices do each side make

in managing military prisons and the prisoners in their care and what resources do they allocate to prisoner care. as prison populations just expand you have a prison in the south where they're just jammed in there until thanksgiving. that's really scary. it's a threat to the security of richmond. on multiple level, it's a stressor on the resources of richmond. let's move them away. in the north, there's a much greater capacity.

training camps are being switched. food and other things are no longer necessarily up to you. you have to wait for them to be provided. the differences in management and scale are so large that they are not equal. and cross come parsons are, quite frankly, not the same. those are eventually replaced by barracks.

across the united states is a vast network. inco incomp tans is often advanced and removed. he trains a cadre where names were appearing over and over again. it's worth noting that two of the names on that prison board

are command level officers at andersonville. this map shows major military prisons in the north and south in july, 1864. and by major, i'm defining them at at or above 1,000 prisoners in population.

north rn prisoners are everywhere. all the way up to san francisco harbor. when you read the ors, they're transporting prisoners all of the time. by august, 10% is held in a 26 1/2 acre enclosure in southwest georgia.

the third and most critical is a mistake to think that prisoners had identical experiences. one emotion is fear. fear of the prison experience has become, you know, this idea of capturing a prisoner. it's always in the back of your mind as a soldier in the field. he closes it with this thought.

it is to death or a southern prison. his works provided him with interactions around the prison with civilians. his journal is full of just the con stant rumors he's hearing and his hope for the cause.

he's struggling with the choice he made. he's getting better treatment. he's no longer working in prison while he's working as a clerk and he also spends quite a deal of time in the diary recounting how he gets into the prison and he's bringing in supplies that civilians are bringing. journey. this idea of being transported to an uncertain -- oops, capture. i'm getting ahead of myself. john january, from illinois, remember, i was captured between macon and atlanta, georgia, august 1st, 1864. i was stripped and searched. everything was taken from me. i had no idea what kind of place i was going to or i would have risked my life to escape.

being taken to the stockade, i was three days without food. the captivation from one camp to another camp, the 11th united states colored troops, he's a white, noncommissioned officer. they are moved eastward in the late fall of 1864 as concern over sherman's presence is creating massive disruptions. facing a journey with an uncertain destination.

left columbus at 5:00. nothing worthy of note. where the road heading to andersonville, here, we heard the report that we were to go to andersonville prison and, from the reports, we heard of that place. we dreaded the very idea of making our entrance there. what terrible expense was that which endured while laying there at the valley. near the switch of andersonville road. we pass it, listening with throbbing hearts, the signal from the engineer to back off and switch on the fatal road. but, no, we get faster and faster.

thank god we are free from the fate of the president. there are themes of landscape. the prisoner spent a great deal of time describing the intimate facilities in which they're held. and yet, these descriptions are auchb admittedly incomplete. halfhearted. even to those who spooernsed it first happen. nothing to eat, nothing to wear. no fuel. hardly any water. i shall certainly not consider it a heaven or a decent place.

that prisoner's experience is defined by the wall. whatever is holding them in. a military prison is not simply the stockade. and, yet, that immediate landscape, the stockade is drawing a feature. prisoner drawings of southern facilities, and just one example, the drawings of robert held by the virginia historical society. he has multiple maps of andersonville showing its evolution during his captivity there. what you really see is the fact that there are guns pointed at you. when he's moved to the camp

laughton facility in the fall, he's paroled out. and, as a consequence, his drawings of the prison facility are almost hype accurate. in terms of not only the stockade, but placement of exterior features. prisoners of war face impossible choices mplt it's almost a moral calculous where the equations are all different. as one example of that, john tarsney, a michigan soldier held in andersonvrksz ille and then in the fall during one of the exchanges in november of the sick and the wounded, he realizes he's just too healthy. he doesn't qualify for the

change. the suspicion was that soldier was so weak, he was not going to live through the night. he stops and spends the time with this soldier to get his name, his regimen, his squad within the prison where he's captured other important details. the next morning, as just before the prisoners selected to exchange are to assemble, he walks back by the soldier again and the soldier is calm. he puts his own name on the dead man. it's what can you do to live.

without risking your life. what can you do? >> certainly, andersonville escape is a very unsuccess vl thing, but it's being tried all of the time. southern prisons become places where prisoners are the slaves. when they escape, they are hunted by dogs. at andersonville, one of the things that distinguishes them, when you're caught, you're brought back and heavily punished. many of those punishments sound like they're straight out of slave narratives. iron caollars, balls and chains prisoners are whipped.

escape is a very unsuccessful thing. and why do you do it? escape is hope. the other part of the escape story, more so in the prisons and the carolinas than andersonville is this. who is risking their lives to aid flooing soldiers. a small class of white southern unionists, and they're certainly taking risks, but by the 1930s, the presidents of slaves assisting escaping prisoner social security so common that southern historians laugh about it as a cliche. southern prisons become a place where the underground railroad is flipped. slaves are risking their lives.

certainly, at andersonville, this is a very intimate relationship between the prison site. these places remain among the war. visitors and a certain kind of visitor to andersonville, one of their first comments tends to be, well, prison is just as bad as andersonville. there's an absolute legitimate reason why they say this. almost always. one of their ancestors was at whatever prison. and it's a reminder to the individual, where ever you're at, it's the worst place. this is a reminder to me, too,

that forgiveness is an on going process. this is a self inflicted wound. i will admit to you that this is my favorite prisoner of war monument that's not at andersonville. the keystone has a single word. americans. these places have an untapped potential and what we do to each other, the choices that prisoners and guards at each facility face when trying to guard people that are, in fact,

us. we have met the enemy and it's us. survivors do. john january, corporal of company d, 14th illinois volunteers, survive and capture during the stoning. i quoted him earlier. at florence, he suffers so bad that their response is, hmm, you're going to die, kid. impossible choices with the help of his friends, he amputates his own fee.

feet. after the war in testimony to congress, he declares i want -- i went from home full of hope with an ardent desire to do something for my country. flushed with health and strength. i came home warn down to nothing, to confident me only to thought that i have tried to do my duty and that my sufferings were to dry to do a good cause. thank you. >> first one to the bar. and i'm already in my head listing the things that i didn't say.

>> yes, i hear you. >> is the mckinley canter book reasonably accurate? in a general way? >> there's no middle dwround on canter's book. i have one minor complaint, otherwise. kanter's 1955 700 page magnum opus is an incredible piece of work. it does the impossible. it provides a 360 degrees view. the personality is outside of it. he used primary source material. that even to this day some riders refuse to engage in. it's an incredible book. mid one complaint as a word smith, he was an expert in words. provocative words, memorable words. and he picked one single term

for prisoner shelter. when prisoners use dozens of terms, shelter, tent, hut, burro. blanket tent. shanty. he picks shabang. john january is one of only four prisoners in primary source material right after the war that works trial and congressional itinerary. only four times does that phrase appear. and january literally says we called our shelter shabangs. and i'm sure he did. otherwise, it is remarkable. it's a very difficult read. >> yes, i wonder if you could tell us about the relationship between winder and sutton? sutton was very indifferent to

him and didn't seem to take very many steps or even respond to his letters. >> the intention is once they're out of richmond, a sort of out of sight, out of mind sets in. and there's a very clear, cognitive disconnect as commanders at camp sumpter are writing to richmond saying we need this, we need this, we need this and nothing is happening. and inspectors come in and say they don't have this, this and this. at a certain point, what are you going to do? and so, i don't know to what extent exactly the relationship between sutton and winder, you know, where it sets. winder, he moves largely because there's a realization that that strategy of centralization is failing as prisoners from the

overlying campaign just continue to stream its facility. designed to double its capacity. >> robert domingus, chula vista, california. i'd like to know a little bit more about this man. john who? >> john january. >> is he an officer? >> no, he's enlisted with only a small number of officers. he's a non-commissioned officer. >> and did he have gangrene in his feet? >> that earlier, the other illustration is out of a harper's weekly. he's also described as being -- his body weight is well under a hundred pounds. whether or not he had gangrene, i'm not certain. there are other versions of this photograph that show him standing with a top hat.

another version of this picture also includes the pros thetices on either side of him. and, for me, you know, i find it very hard to look at this picture in light of the men and women who have been maimed in the last ten years overseas for, you know, roadside bombs, which is a little bit different than choosing to take off your on feet to save his life. >> david keller, chicago, illinois. i'm part of an organization in chicago, we're working to establish a historic site for camp douglas. >> yes. >> and hopefully, eventually, an interpretive center. and it's really a challenging thing to do. it's pretty close to the center of the city. relative to anderson, i can only imagine the challenges of trying to establish a site for a camp

that housed federal prisoners deep in thehearted of georgia, setting aside the land, a funding for the monoyumts and all of the stuff that goes along with that. can you talk a little bit about the establishment of that park and history of that? >> it's something that desempbs a lot of scrutiny. the confederacy is receiving a lot of choices and they're allocating a huge amount of resources to, during the course of a single year, build not one, but two military prisons simply in the state of georgia. the consumption begins in january of 1864. 900 slaves are impressed from across central georgia to fell trees, to, you know, rough-view the logs, dig trenches to then put those 20 foot logs in to create a 15 foot tall perimeter.

at the same time that that's happening, it's important to note that this is a little bit more, this wider connection, he has a son and a nephew that are command-level staff. and as the first prisoners are beginning, the week within the first prisoners arriving, there are frantic letters of we only have a hundred rifles. right off the bat, they're having problems attaining supplies. this part of it is a pernicious consequence of state's rights. the gov forof georgia is being dependent upon to provide slides, to provide troops to this confederate military facility in a state to run out

richmond. he chooses not to help very often. the only thing worse is two of them. the construction begins in august and that's a 42 acre enclosed stockade. it's designed very intentionally with the lessons learned of camp sumpter that flows millions of dal lons a day as to posed to a tepid trickle. and at camp laughton, in the six weeks it operates and prisoners are evacwaited from it, 700 men die. >> mike wright, east stroudsburg, university. is there mostly sedentary places?

>> andson -- >> what's the question? >> oh, 2 question is johnson's island or this site in eastern georgia. and, you know, how do i feel about it. it's great. the -- especially at camp laughton. that siet was essentially forgotten. and the joke there is a garage water student about six years ago really wanted to finish his degree in archaeology. and his professor said oh, the fish and wildlife service, there's going to be nothing there. wrong. that that prison was aban d abandoned in a hurry.

it's not quite that simple. when they move, they take their stuff with them. it's post-farm, post-war u it's cleaned up during the prisons operation. johnson's island is really valuable. certainly, dr. bush's book about the literacy is where he's then illustrating with archaeological finds is really valuable and trying to, again, personalize this story. >> i'm robert holmes from piedmon, north dakota.

i wonder if the bill is exemplary or was it qualitatively different from places like elmyra or was it simply four times as large? >> well, we'll use elmyra as an kmampl. elmyra operates for about a year. the total number of confederate prisoners of war held there is smarter than the numg beryl of dead at andersonville. the total number of dead is smaller than the dead of a single month at andersonville. so the scale is off the chart. its's the exception that sort of proves all the rules of southern prisons, if that gets toward an answer to your question. >> not entirely. there's said to be about 2900 dead in elmyra. andersonville, roughly 13,000 dead or 45,000. so you're looking at the same

25-30 pnt of burial rates. percentages are really misleading. if andersonville stopped dead in july, it would remain the place of prisons. on a personal level, it's different. the business of captivity and how the operational culture of that place exist and not simply in a vacuum. very often, there are towns around them.

>> hello. i did some research on union veterans and i went through several newspapers in washington, d.c. and the american tribune out of indianapolis. often times, they would have vignettes from stories of the war. and there was a ton of stories about being a prisoner. it almost becomes a genera in itself. so i just wonder if you have any additional comments about the popularity of the stories of being a prisoner after the war. >> it's driven by zefl interest. in the early 1880s, congress passes a law by which former

prisoners of war, not the other way around. can receive a higher pension to the tune of $6 a month. that creates a massive cottage industry in publishing. if you write a story, your experience, that's proof to the pension board. the further away they are published from the war, the more they reflect memory. and the rest they reflect accurately the prison experience. and so we -- it becomes a paradox. you want to quote them as primary sources. but sometimes you just have to worry about to what extent their exaggerate something or a myth that they may not have witnessed

at all. one of the major voices behind it is john mcelroy whose memoir is published in 1879. for better or worse in many respects. >> i'm cathy wright from down in richmond, virginia. i know there was a concentration of numerous p.o.w.s. i was wondering in there's civilian populations helping prisoners escape.

>> that, i can't speak to you as much as i'd like. certainly a lot more research in terms of confederate prisoners. a book i'd recommend is not military prisoners, but nonetheless, the adventures in confederacy. living prison, castle thunder, later salisbury. they make an escape. there's a focus on unionists who are assisting them in their run to freedom.

in the fall, it's still an off chance that more likely you could go to escape by october. for a good time to get to that blockade line, they're in this role in the 1890s, his great pain in telling the story is he waited too long to try to touch base with this person who's critical to his survival. he passed away just a couple of years earlier. this prisoner not able to say thank you in the way he thought he ought to.

a big thing seems to be the mistreatment of prisoners by the gangs that operated there. i have not come across that story in other prisons. and i'm wondering whether that was unique to andersonville or just a part of the story that's not included in the story in firsthand accounts. >> are you referring to the raiders? >> yeah, in new york. that's one of the great mythologies of the prison. the turner film uses the raiders as literally its narrative device.

what do guards do? they keep you in. there is essentially no apparatus. at this place, the prisoner who is arrive at andersonville, in february, march and april, they've been prisoners for 6-9 months, at least. they've been held in the richmond complex. to them, when they first get to andersonville, their lives are better. this is a better place. there's more space. there's debris leftover from construction to build shelters. these prisoners, where he's

transferred march 1st, he has the cloets on his back. that's all he has. and then may comes. and you get prisoners from north carolina from the overland campaign. from the wilderness and other battles that are coming straight from the battle field. they were guarding a town. these guys have really nice kits. knapsacks, blanket rolls, shelter halves. they're rich beyond measure to the prisoners that are held there. in prisoner memoirs, in the diaries, you know, we use raider with a small r. it's 150 years ago right now and

into next week. a large, massive vigilante group is raised to stop raiding. this image that we have, this fighting off the raiders is sort of a jets versus sharks bit of business. that's post-war mythology. samuel melvin in his diary, he says i saw six victims hung today. his diary is full of long

entries where he struggles with the moral quandary, the fact that it's -- people are preying on each other when they shouldn't. he goes onto describe the regulators. in the fall of 1865, the only thing he did was execute the sixth. >> thank you. >> jorn busset from new york in springfield, virginia. dichotomy there.

>> i'm a member of the prison associati association in the con fed rat star line-up. the death rate there -- or the death numbers are almost as may andersonville, i am told. but i'm not sure of that. but the narrative of the prison seems to be remarkably similar to what you've been describing although it's common to not get tried and executed. and that's one of my questions to bring up wertz, the guy that ran andersonville and paid the price. i trace some near relatives through salisbury and that's why i'm a member. one survived and one didn't. within a week of his exchange he died from the -- and he went in in august of 1864, just in that timeframe that you describe. so just to comment there about salisbury and a question about

wertz. the commandants in other prisons never came to trial as i understand and didn't go that route. so comments please on wertz and company. >> so major john gee commanding at salisbury is the other commander of the prison confederacy who is tried for violations of the war. and he's acquitted. there's a reason for that. well described in the trial the effort he makes to aid prisoners. the effort he goes to to allocate resources to prisoners. and yet, salisbury's -- and this is where that junius and albert book is a good outside observer example in that those two newspaper reporters are at salisbury and they witness it going from where baseball games are played to something else entirely. one of the two of them was working in the hospital and he starts to keep a list of the dead because that fear that

records may not be kept. wertz is one of two confederate staff at andersonville tried for violations of the laws of war. his trial is, quite frankly, one of the darkest holes of study of the war and its consequences. the last time an in depth study of just the trial was written by a legal scholar was 1917. a lot have said around the trial but they don't examine the trial itself. to me one of the truisms about this, people who complain about it never read the trial. the transcript exists and it's a confounding document. the trial lasts 63 days. there are two charges. the first is being part of a conspiracy to, you know, maim and murder american soldiers in violation of the laws of war. the second set of charges is individual acts of murder of

american soldiers by either wertz himself or his subordinate commanders -- his subordinate soldiers at his orders. we know how this ends. he's convicted. during the course of the trial a low level quartermaster employee by the names of james duncan, just a great deal of discussion is spent on how he's beating prisoners and embezzling money and supplies. he's tried and convicted. he spends a year in the military prison at ft. pulaski, georgia. in the beginning of 1866 president andrew johnson commits a merciful act. there's a blanket amnesty of troops and along with that executive order is a prohibition of further military tribunals. it's important to note that a judge advocate generals office, they were not done. they were preparing a massive

set of additional war crimes trials including among them george pickett. forgiveness has to start somewhere, and the united states began to forgive in 1866. and henry wertz, if there's an injustice to him, it's that major -- or general winder had a heart attack in february of 1865 at florence, i believe, and passed before a higher court of judgment, as we say. okay. one more question. okay. >> thank you for your presentation. it was evocative, it was beautiful. your passion for this is clear. i just have a two-part question.

one, it's been a long time since i looked at the -- here to be reminded about the gentleman talking about percentages and numbers are misleading. what can we won or lost by creating a calculus of who created the most deadly camps. in that debate one would want to engage in. and what are the benefits of engaging in that debate? i don't remember the literature that i've read, the stuff i have read seemed to show that they were both cruel, depressing ways -- and as you said to the individual was the worst place in the world. secondly, given the theme of the conference 1864, i'm wondering, too, if you could just elaborate quickly on -- you brought up in the beginning about how race became this damning feature that stopped the exchange of soldiers. could you talk a little bit about the ways in which perhaps

lincoln grant, that this is part of a larger calculus war, a destructive war, a war that is about widespread and massive suffering and how it might have been part of the calculus to not engage in exchanging these soldiers because when you're counting heads you think of war in a new way, perhaps a more modern way, in other words, is there a possibility that these -- or do you agree with the possibility that some of these soldiers were in these places suffering inside the prison partly because of a larger story, a narrative of destructions of war. >> i think you have three questions there. the first is the comparative -- please correct me if i get them wrong. the first is the comparative calculus of prisons and death rates and is that something that's constructive in engage in. then in the third question there

was -- >> i'm asking you the larger -- this calculus of war that also has to do with these men dying inside the prison. >> in terms of the cam paompara numbers, it's a trap. and that's your admiral akbar moment, thank you, james. blame, those numbers are used to essentially -- yours are worse, yours are worse. that to me stops the further dialogue. the systems are separate. they're absolutely separate. the choices that each facility, each commander is making, the choices that each government are making deserve to be explored on their own merits. and in trying to say, well, they're all the same reflects this desire of reconciliation after the war that we are one

nation. the prisons, they just -- they simply aren't the same. so getting into the math then requires much longer discussions. so it's a good starting point, but it's not where we should stop is certainly my thought. then that monument, the monument that i didn't picture that i sort of mentioned in andersonville dedicated by the united daughters of the confederacy in 1909, it quotes general grant on one side and throws him under the bus. it is hard on our soldiers not to exchange them, blah, blah, blah. and that's used as blaming, see, it's grant's fault, it's grant's fault. the problem is on the day he's writing that there's 32,000 prisoners at andersonville. that doesn't explain that. the language he uses in that full letter which we'll be exploring possibly in my breakout session in a couple of days -- shameless

self-promotion -- has a lot -- echoes much of what's been said about bowe bergdahl in the last two weeks. every soldier that we exchange of our enemy is going to come back and kill americans. we shouldn't do it. that is grant's point, that confederate soldiers have this funny persistence of going straight back into the field where many of their soldiers many of their enlistments are out while they're in prison, they either go home or they're so debilitated they can't go back to the fight. the men who do like sergeant major robert kellogg or boston corbett are in a sense a real rarity to that. and so that's not entirely a direct answer, but it's certainly part of it. this idea that we don't want an exchange because it's to our advantage not to is, quite

frankly, secondary because on the same day that grant writes that letter, benjamin butler writes a letter that says every other point of exchange has been settled. the question of the black soldier is the only one that remains. and so it's still very central to why exchanges have just been stopped. thank you. >> you're watching american history tv. all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. to join the conversation, like us on facebook at cspanhistory. each week american artifacts takes viewers into archives, museums and historic sites around the country. next we visit the smithsonian national museum of american history in washington, d.c., for a tour of their centerpiece