Dear journal,
Nearly twenty years ago, I sat behind the front desk of the Carthage Civil War Museum for the first time. I was a college student then, working part-time while writing my senior thesis, "A Wind from the North." I spent those days immersed in county court records, newspaper archives, and old histories written by local men who saw the past through the lenses of power and pride. The museum, with its glass cases, wall-mounted muskets, and framed flags, was the quiet backdrop to my early education in public history.
Now, in 2025, I sit behind the same desk. The building has barely changed. The lights hum overhead as they always have. The displays are much the same, still echoing the interpretive voice of 1980s and 1990s Carthage, a time when the city leaned heavily on the romantic language of valor and tragedy, and less on the uncomfortable truths beneath it. The exhibits reflect the sensibilities of those who built them: men who wanted Carthage to matter to the grand narrative of the Civil War, who promoted the idea that the Battle of Carthage, July 5, 1861, was “the first battle of the war.” In that insistence, we learn less about what happened here and more about what they needed to believe.
That need tells a story of its own.
Calling Carthage “the first battle” served more than a chronological purpose. It carved out a place of importance, claiming that this small Missouri town belonged on the same stage as Fort Sumter, Bull Run, and Shiloh. But the real significance of Carthage was never about size or sequence. What happened here matters not because it was first, but because it revealed the fractured loyalties of a border state, the fragile nature of Unionist control, and the deep undercurrent of Confederate sympathy that still lingers today.
The museum says little about that.
The language on the wall panels tends toward neutral phrasing: “a clash of ideologies,” “brother against brother.” These are safe narratives. They do not name white supremacy. They do not confront slavery. They do not describe Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson’s open rebellion against the state he had been elected to govern, or the fact that the Confederate cause was animated by the desire to maintain a racial caste system. Instead, the displays lean into martial nostalgia, honoring both sides as though they fought for equally defensible causes.
This is the legacy of Lost Cause history, still present in Carthage. It is visible in the flags waving from trucks on side streets. It shows up in the casual reverence for Confederate “heritage.” It creeps into conversations at the museum when visitors refer to the war as “the War Between the States,” or when they ask why “the South” is treated so unfairly in modern textbooks. These moments are not isolated. They are echoes of a public memory that has long resisted the truth.
And yet, the truth is here. We only have to be willing to tell it.
The Civil War did not begin with Carthage, but the battle that happened here was a signal. It revealed that Missouri would not slide easily into either camp. It showed that Union control would be challenged not just by formal armies, but by civilians, guerrillas, and political operatives who blurred the lines between rebellion and resistance. It showed that border towns like this one would become laboratories of contested identity—a process that is still ongoing.
I have changed since I last worked here. I have earned a doctorate. I have researched my family and found several ancestors who fought for the Union, Anthony Schreckengaust among them. After the war, Anthony moved to Jasper County, built a farm just north of Carthage, and later retired to a small house on Fulton Street. His story ties me not just to the war, but to this place. And because of that, I feel the weight of what is remembered and what is not.
The museum has not changed much. But I see it differently now. I see its silence. I see what it chooses to emphasize and what it avoids. I see the way certain narratives have been calcified behind glass, and how hard it will be to change them. But I also see possibility. This building is still a place where people come to learn. It can be more than it is.
To work here again is to accept a responsibility. Not just to greet visitors or tidy the exhibits, but to challenge the myths that pass for memory. History is not sacred. It is not neutral. And it does not belong only to those who shout the loudest or wave the largest flags. It belongs to all of us. It demands honesty.
Carthage is still struggling with the legacy of the war. The wounds have not healed because, in many ways, they have never been fully acknowledged. This museum could help change that. It could become a place where hard truths are not hidden, but faced. Where the Civil War is not reduced to uniforms and dates, but understood as a battle over human dignity, freedom, and power; a narrative that continues in the stories we choose to tell today and tomorrow.
Always,
Dave