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The Antietam visitor center features a poster whose words transport us back from this carnage to contemplate its meaning. The poster’s words were written by William Childs, a surgeon for the 5th New Hampshire Infantry, a month after the battle, while he was still on the field treating the wounded. “When I think of the Battle of Antietam, it seems so strange,” he wrote. “Who permits it? To see or feel that a power is in existence that can and will hurl masses of men against each other in deadly conflict—slaying each other by the thousands is almost impossible. But it is so—and why, we cannot know.”44
Collaborating with Historians in Colleges and Universities: Fort Vancouver National Historic Site and the Rhode Island School of Design Many survey respondents and other contributors noted the potential of partnerships with higher education to do everything from filling basic labor gaps with undergraduate interns to creating robust collaborations with local faculty. Among the most successful partnerships nationwide are found in the Pacific Northwest, where Fort Vancouver NHS enjoys a thriving partnership with Portland State University (PSU) through the park’s Northwest Cultural Resource Institute (NCRI). The Public History Field School, available to graduate students in the PSU public history program, is designed to “build on the context of their introductory coursework by providing a focused, hands-on immersion into how history is promulgated” by the NPS. In this eleven-week program, “students actively apply knowledge gained through group discussion, directed readings, research, practical exercises, peer review, and class instruction to crafting programs and interpretive media for the public.”45 Fort Vancouver chief ranger and historian Greg Shine has an adjunct appointment in the PSU history department. In his dual role, he teaches the upper-division public history seminar, Historic Site Interpretation (Public History Field School) on-site at Fort Vancouver. In 2009, the students created an online exhibit, Beyond Officers Row: Duty and Daily Life at the U.S. Army Fort Vancouver.46 In the 2011 course, Shine “led Portland State University students through discussions, directed readings, practical exercises, on-site instruction, and research in the creation of a plan for the national park system to use podcasting and other new media techniques to tell the story of the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War.”47 The collaboration allows PSU students to glimpse public history in action, while the park harnesses the skills and interests of the rising generation in the development of podcasts and other digital media. As Shine teaches a group of students about the theory and practice of public history, his course also engages his peers across the NPS, exposing students to an everwider array of sites and history while serving his colleagues both by producing materials of use and interest to them and by providing a forum where they can connect with one another. In another exemplary collaboration, the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and NPS have organized a course around the use of wood from felled “witness trees.” In a joint furniture studio and history seminar, senior critic of furniture design Dale Broholm had become intrigued by the opportunities presented by these trees after visiting Gettysburg NHP, where trees still
44 Child, quoted in George C. Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 182. 45 NPS, Fort Vancouver, “2011 Public History Field School,” http://www.nps.gov/fova/historyculture/2011-public-history-field-school.htm. 46 NPS, Fort Vancouver, “Beyond Officers Row: Duty and Daily Life at the US Army Fort Vancouver,” http://www.nps.gov/fova/historyculture/dailylifebarracks.htm. 47 NPS, Fort Vancouver, “2011 Public History Field School.”