NPS launches new Civil War website
By Deborah Fitts
July 2005
WASHINGTON, D.C.— The National Park Service (NPS) launched a new Civil War Web site May 25, getting a jump on the war’s 150th anniversary events with its first-ever dedicated Civil War homepage on the Internet. The new Web site can be reached at www.nps.gov/civilwar.
“The American Civil War: Forging a More Perfect Union” will highlight the more than 70 National Park System sites — including about 20 battlefields — that have resources related to the war.
The new Web site will also serve as the headquarters site for all Civil War-related information in the Park Service, including the Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System, a database of information on the millions of individuals who fought on both sides, and the American Battlefield Protection Program (ABPP), which has inventoried the battlefields of the war’s 384 most significant battles.
Project Manager Marilyn Nickels noted that as the sesquicentennial of the war approaches in 2011-15, the Web site will feature NPS sites that figured in the events that preceded the Civil War.
For instance, in 2007 the Web site will highlight the infamous Dred Scott case, which was heard in 1857 in a Missouri courthouse that NPS interprets. The following year will draw attention to the Lincoln-Douglass debates in 1858, which will be interpreted at a number of NPS Lincoln sites. And the raid by John Brown on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, W.Va., in 1859 will be recalled at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park.
“We’ll be looking at all these events of 150 years ago,” Nickels said. “By walking through them, it’s our hope that the public will have a much better understanding of how the nation got to war.”
NPS is partnering in the Web-based project with the National Geographic Society at the Civil War Preservation Trust. Starting this summer, visitors to the site will be able to click on links to National Geographic’s high-tech mapping technology, which will highlight Civil War battlefields.
“It’s going to be spectacular,” Nickels said. “Clearly, one of our goals is to reach the broader public, to inform them about the theaters, the campaigns and the battles of the Civil War. The map approach will help a lot of people connect.”
Nickels said the Web site features a new “thematic” approach to NPS resources, and provides much easier access to Civil War-related resources than in the past. The Civil War Soldiers System and the ABPP site have been “pretty buried” and hard to find.
“This is a portal” to the Civil War in the Park Service, Nickels explained. “It’s a model to help the public find historic themes. There’s a huge amount of information at all our parks, but finding the information has been a problem.”
The site will also provide links to a variety of resources about the events, the participants, leading figures, historical context, and other agencies and organizations that will be commemorating the 150th anniversary. Among them will be historic sites in Kansas, where the struggle over slavery was highlighted in the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.
Visitors will also be able to link to NPS’s cooperating nonprofit, Eastern National Park & Monument Association, for a listing of Civil War books for order.
