MUSEUMS
Pulling out the Big Guns
WITH A NEW MUSEUM, CHARLES PENDLETON FILLS IN THE GAPS IN VICKSBURG'S CIVIL WAR NARRATIVE By Cheré Coen
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Charles Pendleton pictured with exhibitions at the new Vicksburg Civil War Museum. Photo courtesy of Visit Vicksburg.
n a quiet weekend in Vicksburg four years hago, a Civil War gun show piqued the hcuriosity of resident Charles Pendleton. As a Black man, he recalls the discomfort his presence invoked in other attendees and sellers. “I just wanted to buy guns,” he said. But people would approach him, saying things like, “You know, this war wasn’t about slavery.” Fascinated by the features of the antique guns, particularly those from the Civil War era, Pendleton continued to attend these events, eventually accumulating a collection of guns he believes to be the largest in Mississippi. Along with his collection grew a deeper curiosity about their history. He began researching the Civil War and the following Reconstruction years, studying the lives of soldiers on both sides of the conflict. He visited various Civil War museums, noting with concern the lack of information available on the role slavery played in the war, and on the lives of enslaved people at all. Then, one day, his antique dealer Hardy Katzenmeyer showed him a collection of historic pre-Civil War documents, one of which was a bill of sale for a seven-year-old child named Ella, who was sold for $350. Reading about a child sold in 1848 and “guaranteed a slave for life” stirred something in Pendleton. He approached his church congregation in the hopes they would be inspired to support an exhibit he would curate,
but there was no interest. He tried to find what happened to Ella, but hit dead ends, experiencing yet another instance of American history left untold. Looking to his now vast collection of Civil War-era guns and other artifacts, he realized that he could play a role in telling the whole story. In the spring of 2021, Pendleton opened the Vicksburg Civil War Museum as a non profit, with a mission to educate visitors on the war, its context, and its impact—especially focusing on the contributions of African Americans during combat. A key element of the museum are its letters of secession from each Confederate state, documents he hopes every visitor reads when they first arrive. The letters demonstrate that slavery was indisputably the main issue of the war, he said. For instance, “A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union” lists the refusal of new slave states into the Union and the nullification of the fugitive slave act as reasons for Mississippi’s secession. It also rejects “negro equality, socially and politically.” “No one can debate that this was a war that ended slavery,” Pendleton said, emphasizing the importance of having conversations about slavery’s role in the war, and its long-term effects on society. Pendleton also uses his artifacts and historical documents to showcase the African Americans who fought
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