From staff reports

The upcoming 150th anniversary of the Civil War, unlike the commemorations of a half century ago, will be marked with a broader, more reverent recounting of the bloody struggle that wrenched a nation.

But money for sesquicentennial events may be tough to find in a troubled economy and an era of political correctness, some planners say.

“This is not a celebration. There is nothing to celebrate when 700,000 Americans die. This will be a commemoration and everything will be done in a very formal and reverent way,” said James Robertson Jr., director of the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies who headed the federal Civil War centennial commission.

Before the centennial, America felt better about itself, he recalled.

“We were connecting the nation with interstate highways; it was just a good time to celebrate a critical moment in American history,” said Robertson, a history professor at Virginia Tech who is on Virginia’s sesquicentennial commission.

Legislation to create a federal sesquicentennial commission has languished in Congress for years so states and local groups will take the lead.

Bill Seratt, executive director of the Vicksburg Convention and Visitors Bureau, said Mississippi is the only state involved in the Civil War that has not established a commission to coordinate sesquicentennial events. He said he pressed legislators in Jackson Wednesday to create one. 

“We don’t want to try to book the same performer in Vicksburg that Natchez and Corinth are trying to get on the same weekend,” Seratt said, referring to other cities touched by the conflict.

Vicksburg’s plans for sesquicentennial events have been boosted by a $100,000 grant from Preserve America, a White House initiative that encourages and supports community efforts to preserve and enjoy cultural and natural heritage. 

Seratt said the city will use grant money to bring in travel writers and tour directors this June for an event that will publicize plans to commemorate the siege of Vicksburg, as well as related battles in Port Gibson and Raymond.

The anniversary festivities will begin in 2011 and culminate in a “major musical celebration” on July 4, 2013, the 150th anniversary of Vicksburg’s surrender, he said.

The Old Court House Museum is also planning anniversary events, curator Bubba Bolm said, but details have yet to be worked out. “It’s too big of an event for us not to do anything,” Bolm said.

The Vicksburg National Military Park is planning, historian Terry Winschel said this morning, but no events have been scheduled.

Groups in South Carolina, where the war began, envision re-enactments of the bombardment of Fort Sumter and the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation to free sea island slaves.

There is talk of re-creating the battle of Battery Wagner on Morris Island where the famed black 54th Massachusetts fought in a fight chronicled in the movie “Glory.”

But money will be a challenge.

“Certainly for the next couple of years there’s not going to be any state funds available to help with anything,” said Rodger Stroup, the director of the South Carolina Department of Archives and History.

The 150th anniversary of the signing of the Ordinance of Secession is next year — an event that prompted Charlestonian James L. Petigru to famously quip the state was “too small to be a republic and too large to be an insane asylum.”

Staging a conference with international Civil War scholars could cost $50,000, said Eric Emerson, executive director of the Charleston Library Society, who chairs the Charleston area sesquicentennial committee.

Cities in northwest Georgia, southeast Tennessee and northeast Alabama are working together.

Other factors also enter the equation, Stroup said.

“One of the problems we find is that the Civil War — in terms of raising funds from corporations and depending on what you really want to do — is politically incorrect,” he said.

“There are many who will tell you this is not true but it really was a war to continue slavery,” he said.

Most planners agree the commemoration should center on all aspects of the conflict, not just military campaigns.

Robertson sees a more subdued, reflective event than those of 50 years ago.

People, he said, are interested in social history and “what we attained from that war, what we learned from it and where we can go.”

During the centennial, souvenir makers flooded the market with Civil War kitsch, he recalled.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.