New Orleans Journal (2004) Excerpt

Visited the Confederate Museum yesterday.  It freaked me out a little.  Though the museum claimed to be “non-ideological” that claim was patently contradicted (and how could it be otherwise?) by the exhibits.  Their bookstore sold poisonous racist propaganda from something called the “Pelican Press” and their exhibits… well, let’s just say they didn’t tell the whole story.

Actually, what they mostly had on display were the accouterments of Confederate officers.  It was a very top-down, aristocratic notion of the Confederacy.  Jefferson Davis was memorialized by a great deal of personal articles—from his slippers to his portmanteau case.  (Davis lay in state in the very building at his death in New Orleans in 1889 or 1898.)

The museum even had a crown-of-thorns supposedly hand-woven by Pope Pius IV as a gift for Davis during his incarceration by the Union forces for two years.

In a case, I came across a printed copy of the secession resolution passed by the Louisiana State Legislature, too.  An odd document that attempted to reserve certain privileges and treaties already enacted on the State’s behalf by the U.S. Government.

What moved me the most was standing in front of a display case with the field uniform of a general who was almost exactly my height.  The case rested on the floor, so I could easily imagine stepping into his clothes.  He was my height or a bit taller, but much smaller in the shoulders than I was.  Still, it made the war and the past seem touching and spooky.

There were also films, colorized, of Confederate war veterans trudging, hobbling, being wheeled or, in one case, being carried on a litter, during some Confederate Memorial Day parade in New Orleans around the turn of the last century.  They all had long, long white beards.  Free people-of-color also tragically signed up for Confederate duty, it turned out.  In New Orleans, which had a strong free mulatto tradition, two companies were formed, but Richmond couldn’t stand the idea of non-whites defending the South, so they wouldn’t ever let them fight.

The man—a beared, bearish figure—who collected my five dollars at the door, asked me where I was from.  I told him “New York City,” and quickly turned away.  (I wasn’t sure I could manage to be polite…)  He made some sort of pleasantry which I had to turn around again to half-respond to with a half-smile.

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Last night, after the clouds blew away, a crescent moon appeared over the Crescent City.  A Turkish symbol.  (Why?  What are the origins of that?)  Also an ancient symbol of virginity.  (How ironic that it appeared here!)  Attribute of Artemis at Ephesus.  And Cymbele.  Later, the Virgin Mary in Renaissance paintings.  And St. Ann.

Cold sky.  Goose bumps before sleep.

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Click here for earlier New Orleans Journal (2004) excerpt.