"O Say Can You See?" is a blog produced by the National Museum of American History (NMAH). The blog takes readers behind the scenes at the museum, sharing insights and information about our exhibitions, events, collections, research projects, and more. Readers are encouraged to use the comment area to dialogue with us about the work of the museum.
Editor’s note: This post is by Joan Brodsky Schur, an education consultant and participant in the August 3 opening panel discussion forSeptember 11: Teaching Contemporary History, the museum’s online conference for K-12 educators about September 11.
In these beautiful summer days of August 2011 the last thing I want is to revisit the day of September 11, 2001, in New York City, where I still live. As the school year opens many teachers, wherever they live across the United States, may feel the way I do. But we need to go down the hole of one of history’s darkest days in order to come up with some light to shed on it for our students this September.
Here are a few suggestions I can make after considerable thought about teaching in the 10th year of our post-September 11 world. First, be clear about your goals. Memorializing is a way to express shared grief, to honor lost lives and those who tried to rescue them. By creating works of art, singing appropriate songs, and participating in public service activities, students of all ages can forge a renewed sense of community within their school and beyond. But after memorializing we must also teach history, especially to secondary students who can begin to contextualize it.
A damaged American flag found by a recovery worker in the World Trade Center debris at the Staten Island recovery site.
Teachers justifiably wonder about finding the time to teach about September 11. One way is look for those essential questions that can help us to compare aspects of September 11 to other events in American history as we teach them throughout the year. I have identified five essential questions, targeted toward secondary students, that will hopefully prove useful in this ongoing endeavor.
1. What accounts for the resiliency and spirit of volunteerism in the United States? The American Revolution, Great Depression, and World War II come to mind. In New York City on September 11 governmental agencies at all levels responded to an unprecedented emergency; so did ordinary citizens. At Battery Park over half a million people were ferried to safety by fireboats, yacht cruises, sightseeing boats, and tugs. A similar event occurred on the night of August 29, 1776, during the Battle of Long Island. American forces, pinned down by the British in Brooklyn were ferried to safety in Manhattan by what David McCullough calls “a makeshift emergency armada assembled in a matter of hours.”
2. The United States government needs to protect the safety of its citizens while also protecting our civil liberties. What is the proper balance between the two? The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War, and the Espionage and Sabotage Acts passed by Congress during World War I can be compared to the USA PATRIOT Act, and the “detention centers” like Guantanamo Bay. Each of these efforts to protect citizens may have seemed justified in a moment of fear, but how is their constitutionality judged over time?
3. Under what circumstances is military intervention justified? President Roosevelt’s War Message to Congress of December 8, 1941, can be compared to President Bush’s Address to Congress of September 20, 2001, and declaration of war against Iraq on March 20, 2003, in terms of how each one meets or does not meet the criteria used in “Just War Theory.” These criteria include just cause, right intention, proper authority, last resort, probability of success, and proportionality. (See a lesson plan I wrote on Franklin Roosevelt and Just War Theory.)
4. Once at war, how should the United States protect citizens who are at risk for reprisal? These groups include the French during the French Revolution, Germans during World War I and II, and the Japanese, who were placed in internment camps during World War II. In the wake of September 11, Japanese Americans advocated for the need to protect the rights of Arab Americans and Muslim Americans. For resources on considering the experience of Japanese internees, visit the museum’s website A More Perfect Union: Japanese Americans and the United States Constitution
5. What should be the relationship of the United States to the international world order? Over time Americans have both rejected and accepted membership in/adherence to the League of Nations following World War I, the Geneva Conventions—which in 1949 delineated the humane treatment of prisoners during wartime—the establishment of the United Nations after World War II. How does the Bush doctrine of “American Exceptionalism” following September 11 fit into this ongoing debate about the role of the United States in the world order?
As a collection manager at the National Museum of American History, I often have access to things no one else gets to see, including the mining collection, one of the oldest at the Smithsonian. Recently, I worked with a team to inventory thousands of objects in the museum’s Division of Work and Industry. In the process, I cataloged hundreds of mining lamps.
While searching old records for the catalog number for some of these lamps, the name Dewey kept coming up. It turned out that Frederic P. Dewey was the name of the original curator of the Smithsonian’s mining and mineral collections. In 1884, he arranged to have the interior of a Pennsylvania coal mine photographed, an amazing feat for the time. I located, in this museum’s library, the original paper that Dewey published about the photo shoot, and about how they managed to light the mine. I also found a large publication about the entire mining and mineral collection which Dewey published in 1891; this is helping to unlock secrets to the Smithsonian’s important early mining collections.
Photography underground is impossible without artificial light. This picture shows the dynamo, or electric generator, built to illuminate the underground works of the Shenandoah Colliery. Note that the men running the plant are wearing miner’s lamps with an open flame, often called teapot lamps. Lamps like these were collected for the museum.
Armed with the catalog numbers listed in the 1891 publication, we contacted the Smithsonian’s photo services unit, which is responsible for cataloging all the images taken by its photographers. It turned out that the original glass plate negatives were in cold storage—just where they should have been—only no one knew how important they were, or exactly what the images were until that moment. I learned that the Smithsonian hired a photographer from the Pottsville area of Pennsylvania, George Bretz, to document the Kohinoor Mine at the Shenandoah Colliery for the 1884 World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition in New Orleans.
Bretz’s innovative techniques led him to a career photographing miners and miners’ lives. Later in life, Bretz’s studio burned and his copy of the negatives from the underground mine shoot were destroyed. The ones at the Smithsonian are the only ones left.
These photographs are important because it was one of the earliest photo shoots underground, and it was one of the earliest photographic depictions of coal mining. We are delighted to have re-discovered such an important part of our collections.
Photo of two miners working in the Kohinoor mine.
In Dewey’s paper, “Photographing the Interior of a Coal-Mine,” he points out that many miners had never truly seen their work place until the day the mine was lit: “Many old miners were attracted to the spot, and were, if possible more surprised and interested in the sight than the strangers present. Although most of them had spent the greater part of their lives in coal-mines, yet they had never before seen more than a few square feet of the coal at any one time.”
Fredric P. Dewey was responsible for instigating the collection of many mine-related objects. Among those are some of the earliest mining lamps in the museum's collection. As part of the inventory, we are locating those early lamps and re-uniting this early collection.
Mining lamp, known as a boss lamp.
Miners posing underground in the Kohinoor mine. The time for the photo exposures often took ten minutes, which meant the miners you see posing in the photos had to hold that position for the length of the exposure.
Examine more of George Bretz’s photo collection as part of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County Digtital Collections.
Shari A. Stout is Collections Manager of the Division of Work and Industry at the National Museum of American History.
Somewhat late in the summer of 1784, James Smithson embarked on his first scientific expedition. This “expedition” might have seemed a bit odd to a modern viewer—as it consisted of four gentlemen, with their servants, driving north from London in carriages—but in the 18th century science was often a gentleman’s pursuit and this was how gentlemen traveled.
Their goal was to explore the remote island of Staffa, off the Northwest coast of Scotland. Staffa had recently been visited by Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society in London, and his description of the island’s distinctive basalt columns and remarkable marine caves had captured both the popular and scientific imaginations of the time. In the 19th century Staffa would become a major tourist destination, but in 1784 Smithson’s party would have been one of the first scientific groups—and certainly the first mineralogists—to attempt the rigorous overland journey to see it.
The island of Staffa. In Smithson’s time there was great disagreement about how an island like this could have been formed. Staffa has also inspired a range of artistic works over the years.
Smithson would later become famous for leaving his fortune to found the Smithsonian Institution in the United States. But at this time he was only 19 years old and fresh from his studies at Oxford. The driving force behind the expedition was Barthelemy Faujas de Saint-Fond, a French geologist and mineralogist who planned to use the trip as field-work for a book on Scottish volcanoes. Smithson only learned about the expedition at the last minute from one of his professors, who urged him to join and provided letters of introduction. Smithson dropped everything and rushed to London, arriving just a few days before it departed.
The route Smithson’s group took to Staffa. Today’s highways take essentially the same path.Map by Reginald Piggott from Heather Ewing's The Lost World of James Smithson: Science, Revolution, and the Birth of the Smithsonian (Bloomsbury, 2007).
The events he witnessed, the places he visited and the ideas he encountered propelled Smithson’s early scientific career and influenced much of his later scientific work. As a Smithsonian curator researching the science of James Smithson, I’ve spent much of the last year trying to unravel the story of what Smithson saw on this trip and what it would have meant to him. So much of the story is connected to the specific geology of Scotland and to Enlightenment-era Edinburgh that I came to realize the importance of seeing these places in person. And when I mentioned this idea to my intrepid volunteers Jeff Gorman and Frank Cole, it was not long before we all found ourselves on a unique vacation: following in the footsteps of James Smithson.
Edinburgh
Averaging less than 20 miles a day, it took the expedition several weeks to reach Edinburgh (more than 300 miles from London), and for me this was their first important destination. This is where Smithson encountered the remarkable intellectual flowering now known as the Scottish Enlightenment.
We know that Smithson carried letters of introduction and that he met and later corresponded with the famous chemist Joseph Black. Black was noted for his use of the chemical balance and at the National Museum of Scotland we were able to see some of his actual instruments. Smithson wrote about carrying a balance “of Black’s design” when he traveled in Europe.
The Scottish National Museum's galleries about 18th century life provided a glimpse into the world Smithson explored.
Smithson arrived in Edinburgh at a very interesting time. The city was home to some of the most brilliant men in Europe and they all seem to have been close friends. Smithson was able to meet many of them and although the expedition could not linger more than a few days, he seems to have been strongly affected by the experience and returned for a second visit on his way back to London.
In particular he seems to have been impressed by James Hutton, now known as the father of geology. At the time of Smithson’s visit Hutton would have been just developing his revolutionary theories about underground heat and pressure, and we know that he was recruiting visiting scientists to send him rock samples. Hutton seems to have recruited our hero as well, as Smithson later tried to send him fossils. If Hutton spent any time with Smithson, one of the places he would have taken him was “Salisbury Crags”—an ancient lava flow that literally loomed over the back yard of his house.
The Salisbury Crags, near Hutton's home
This image was taken just a short distance from where Hutton lived, and it’s easy to see why his attention was drawn to this formation. In his time the hard basaltic stone at the top was being excavated for use as paving stones. As new material was exposed Hutton would study it for evidence of structures that could only have been formed by underground lava. To help us understand the unique geology of Edinburgh we arranged a geologic tour of the city, and this turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip. The Edinburgh area was shaped by ancient volcanoes and in Holyrood Park, in the center of the city, we were able to see some of the same formations that Hutton would have studied—and presumably shown Smithson.
On Salisbury Crags, in Holyrood Park, our geology guide Angus Miller points out what Hutton would have called an “unconformity”—a layer of sedimentary rock that has been injected with unground lava.
Inveraray
Edinburgh was the intellectual center of 18th century Scotland, but the expedition encountered a different side of the Enlightenment at the next place it lingered—Inveraray Castle. This was, and still is, the home of the Duke of Argyll, and Smithson’s group reached it only after a long, difficult journey up the west side of Loch Lomand and then overland to Loch Fyne. A modern highway now follows this same route and as we drove we were able to enjoy the rugged beauty of mountains and lochs. But we could imagine the challenge of getting carriages over muddy mountain roads and of finding food and lodging in the rain and dark. We could also imagine the joy of Smithson’s group when they finally reached the Castle.
With large windows and a decorative moat, this castle was never intended for military use, but served as an example of enlightened ideals and manners for this part of Scotland.
Located on the shore of Loch Fyne and situated at the base of a low mountain, the Castle remains today much as Smithson would have seen it. Much more a home than a fortress, the Castle was just being finished when they arrived. The Duke and Duchess were famous for their hospitality and refinement, and Faujas later reported that French was spoken at dinner and that French wines, tableware and manners were at all times employed.
Continuing the tradition of hospitality that Smithson experienced, the Duke of Argyll graciously welcomed us to his home.
For me, Inveraray Castle presents the romantic side of the Enlightenment. The artwork and tapestries, the elaborate gardens and hothouses, even the design of the Castle itself all express something of the idealization of nature and reason that characterized Smithson’s time. And there is also an underlying belief in progress and human improvement, which is an interesting connection to Smithson’s later founding of the Smithsonian.
Sculpture of Perseus and Andromeda by the Flemish sculptor Michael Van Der Voort, 1713. Smithson almost certainly saw this work and one wonders how he would have understood it. Did he see, as many in his time would have, a metaphor of nature and the power of reason?
The expedition could only linger three days at Inveraray, although the Duke urged them to stay longer. They must have looked back fondly to this time during the subsequent days, because they now began the most difficult part of their journey.
Mull
The expedition now headed northwest to the fishing village of Oban, from which they would sail to the island of Mull and, from there, to Staffa. The road was the worst they had yet encountered and they were exhausted by the time they reached Oban.
Our own drive to Oban was much more pleasant and took only a few hours. We arrived in time to visit the local historical society and learn a bit about its history. Oban would have been a small fishing village when Smithson saw it, with a population of only about 600. It began to grow in the 1790s—partly due to interest in Staffa—and today is a pleasant community of about 8,500.
The launching point on Mull to Staffa
Today it’s an easy ferry ride from Oban to Mull, although for Smithson the 33 mile trip could have been daunting—it was the beginning of the stormy season. Once on Mull, Smithson’s group crossed to the west side of the island and the embarkation point for Staffa. They stayed at Torloisk, an estate the Duke had recommended, and from which (on a clear day) they could see Staffa. It took several days before the seas were calm enough to attempt to reach Staffa and even then Smithson reported a harrowing trip. He spent the night on the island, returning the next day with a cache of mineral samples and a genuine sense of accomplishment.
Our own expedition to Staffa was less successful. Modern tour boats leave Mull from the same spot that Smithson used, but on the days we were there the seas were too rough to venture out. The seas around Staffa are notoriously unpredictable—Smithson had to wait almost a week for good weather—but having gotten so close made me determined to come back and try again during another trip.
Leadhills
After Staffa, Smithson returned to Edinburgh for an extended visit and then returned to London. On the way back he visited the important mines at Leadhills, which produced not just lead, but a variety of other metals including zinc, silver and gold.
The Museum of Lead Mining in Wanlockhead. The mine Smithson visited is now closed, but this one is in the same area and dates from the same period.
At the museum in Wanlockhead we were able go a short way into one of the original lead mines, which was an interesting experience. I was intrigued to learn that this area had both lead and zinc mines. Smithson wrote about the chemistry of both minerals and the zinc ore Smithsonite is named after him. Did his interest in these ores begin during this visit?
Northwich
Smithson’s last stop before returning to London was to visit a salt mine in the Northwich area, southwest of Manchester. The underground salt deposits in Northwich have been worked since Roman times and the extraction of salt has led to a series of subsidences (or “fells”) throughout the area. Many of the lakes in Northwich are actually old salt mines that collapsed after the salt was removed.
The Trent and Mersey Canal. Finished in 1777, the canal was one of the first in England.
This was also our last stop, although the mine Smithson visited no longer exists. Instead we visited the Lion Salt Works in Marston which is one of the few remaining 19th-century salt mines. It closed in the 1970s and is now in the process of being restored as an industrial museum. It used a “brine” method of extraction, which is different than the mine Smithson visited, but the site is adjacent to the Trent and Mersey Canal, which was completed just a few years before Smithson’s visit. The canal was built to facilitate shipping salt and, like so much of what Smithson saw on his trip, was what we now think of as the beginning of the British industrial revolution.
London
Smithson returned to London just over three months after he had left. His newfound reputation as an explorer opened doors for him, as did the large cache of mineral samples he brought back. Just 3 years later, in 1787, he was elected to the prestigious Royal Society, becoming its youngest member. Smithson’s scientific career had started.
Washington, D.C.
Historians are more commonly found in libraries and archives than on road-trips, and I must admit to being a bit uncertain about how useful this trip would actually be. But having seen the places Smithson visited and having, in some ways, shared his experiences has proved immensely helpful as I try to piece his story together. In particular, the depth of his interest in geology has been a revelation and my research since returning has been largely devoted to exploring that topic.
Steven Turner is a curator in the Division of Medicine and Science. He’d like to express his appreciation for his “support group” on this trip: Jeff Gorman, Ginni Gorman, Frank Cole and Mary Lou Cole; with a special thanks to Frank, who took on the daunting task of planning this trip and without whom it certainly wouldn’t have happened.
Museums play an important role as gatekeepers to public memory, deciding which events and experiences to preserve so that we may never forget and learn from the past. Considering the enormous effort required to account for human existence in the United States from past to present, choosing which stories and events to publicly display becomes a defining challenge for an institution like the National Museum of American History. For this reason it has been an eye-opening privilege and exciting test to devote my summer work to the often untold story of leprosy in the United States.
Even today, the term “leprosy” commonly inspires biblical references of social outcasts and images of far-off colonies inhabited by disfigured unfortunates, like those depicted in the movie Ben-Hur. Much of the lore surrounding leprosy that stirs such misconceptions still pervades public knowledge in the United States, where the reduced number of people with leprosy as a result of medical advances and government seclusion policies keeps the lived experiences of those who encounter leprosy away from the public sphere. Today, there are an estimated 5,000 people with leprosy in the United States, only a small fraction of the total 15 to 20 million people with leprosy worldwide—the majority of whom are in developing countries such as India, Brazil, Madagascar, and Angola.
The Moloka'i treatment center in Hawaii
The shift to leprosy’s medical name, Hansen’s Disease, began the shift away from the religious and historical stigma attached to leprosy and its affiliation with the derogatory term “leper.” Scientifically substantiated as bacterial disease, Hansen’s Disease recast leprosy as a medical phenomenon, although the disease and those with it still remain highly stigmatized.
Treatment in the United States has centered around two remote facilities: Moloka’i in Hawaii and Carville in Louisiana. Moloka’i was founded in response to the increasing prevalence of leprosy in Hawaii in the 1860s. Pioneered by Hawaiian King Lot Kamehameha V in 1865, “An act to prevent the spread of leprosy” legalized the rounding-up of people with leprosy and institutionalized them in a medical facility at Moloka’i. Under the leadership of Father Damien and the Catholic Church who helped to maintain Moloka’i, people with leprosy were forced to begin new lives in quarantine. The precedent for confinement, mostly fueled by public fears of the disease’s contagious reputation (which was not medically substantiated until recently), did not end until over a century later in 1969 when patients were finally given the right to transfer to other medical facilities for treatment. Today, medical professionals have discovered that approximately 95% of the world’s population is naturally immune to the leprosy-causing bacilli and is in no danger of contracting the disease.
Ladies' dorms at the Carville center in Louisiana
On the United States mainland, the response to leprosy had national implications; in 1921 the federal government purchased the Louisiana Leper Home as a national center for disease containment and isolated care. The instatement of the Federal Marine Hospital #66, a national leprosarium, was unique. The government, under the auspices of the Public Health Service, assumed extensive financial and administrative responsibility to create an institution devoted solely to leprosy’s treatment and containment for the entire continental United States. Only within the last 20 years has Washington returned the Carville center to the State of Louisiana and relocated its research branch—The Gillis W. Long Hansen’s Disease Center—to Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
With relatively few current instances of leprosy in the United States, it can be easy to forget the millions of people who still face the disease everyday across the world. If there is one thing that the history of leprosy treatment in the United States has taught me, it’s that the events and experiences that take place away from earshot, those that we often abstract or forget about, are still realities to others. Museums are powerful tools to remember not only the over-arching medical advances in treatment but also the lived experiences of those who—for better or worse—actually encountered the history we inspect retroactively. Although leprosy’s historical influence has been largely directed by myth and not personal experience, the sheer number of people with the disease in the United States and in the rest of the world marks leprosy as an important collective experience.
Dan Egol is a junior at Middlebury College in Vermont where he is a political science major. He is a summer intern in the Division of Medicine and Science.
The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, more commonly known as the Jefferson bible, is a volume created by Thomas Jefferson containing passages he chose from the four Gospels of the New Testament. Jefferson cut these passages out in four different languages and pasted them on to blank pieces of paper which were then bound into a book for his personal use. A team of four conservators has been tasked with documenting the current condition of the volume, formulating a conservation plan that addresses identified issues, and carrying out an ethical and appropriate conservation treatment to ensure the book can be viewed and enjoyed by future generations.
Knowing what materials Jefferson used when he made The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth helped conservators predict how the artifact would change over time. Observations made during a visual examination and survey of Jefferson’s volume were empirically confirmed by more detailed material analyses, and the results from these tests helped conservators determine what conservation treatment would be most beneficial for the volume.
Microscopic samples of paper fibers and ink
Conservators took microscopic samples of the twelve different types of paper, ten different kinds of ink, and two different adhesives present on the volume’s pages. Sampling locations were carefully chosen to not interfere with printed or written text or to alter the aesthetics of a page. For example, samples from Jefferson’s handwriting ink were never taken from intentional writing locations, but rather were taken from stray splashes of ink along a page margin. The sample sizes, measured in units of one thousandth of a millimeter, ranged from 20 to 200 microns—they were so small, that they were nearly invisible without the aid of a microscope.
Collaborating with colleagues at the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute, conservators employed various types of non-destructive materials analysis to study the composition of the samples taken from the book in order to understand what they were made of and if they are prone to degradation. Micro-X-ray fluorescence(XRF) was used to identify traces of inorganic elements, such as calcium, magnesium, zinc, aluminum, potassium, sulfur, copper, and iron. Knowing whether these elements are present in the papers and inks helps us determine the rate of deterioration. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) was used to detect the presence of organic elements in the inks and adhesives; this analysis revealed that the adhesive Jefferson used to adhere the clippings to the pages contained both animal glue and starch, which is water soluble.
Conservators carried out additional analyses that did not require taking samples from the pages. Near-IR spectroscopy (NIR) was used to measure the amount of gelatin present on the surface of the paper. Papermakers applied gelatin to their new sheets of paper to prepare them for printing and to keep the ink from running or smudging; gelatin protects the paper fibers and reduces the rate at which they deteriorate. Polarized light microscopy helps us identify what plants were used to make the paper by studying the shape of the individual fibers. Micro-chemical testing determined whether the iron content of the handwriting ink would cause more discoloration and breakdown of the paper. A variety of solvent and water mixtures were tested to determine if the pages could be safely washed to remove the acidic by-products of degradation.
Unidentified staining not visible in normal light, but appears under ultraviolet light.
Because certain elements reflect light in uniquely identifiable patterns at different light wavelengths, conservators were able to use specialized imaging to examine the artifact’s state of degradation. Ultra-violet light revealed previously unseen stain patterns on some pages of the artifact. Infrared spectroscopy allowed conservators to “see through” Jefferson’s manuscript inks and examine the paper beneath the writing, checking to see if the acidic inks had damaged the paper’s structure. A colorimeter, an instrument which uses reflected light to record the exact color value of the object beneath it, was used to take multiple readings on every page of the Jefferson Bible at specific locations. Because paper yellows as it ages, the darkening of an artifact, as evidenced by changes in its color values, can help predict the rate and degree of the paper’s degradation.
These varied chemical analyses provided quantifiable data that helped conservators to determine the artifact’s chemical condition and to propose and authorize viable conservation treatment options. In our next blog post about the Jefferson Bible Conservation Project, we will describe the chosen conservation treatment methodology, beginning with the delicate process of taking the volume apart to treat the individual pages. Stay tuned!
Laura Bedford is a Post-graduate Fellow in the Paper Conservation Lab at the National Museum of American History.
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