Smile for the camera? Give me a cool cannon to lean on.

Living near Richmond, Virginia means that there is no shortage of historical sites to choose from. If anything, it just makes it harder to pick which one to go to. This weekend, I decided to head down to Yorktown and wander around the battlefield.  As usual, this spur of the moment trip did not go exactly as planned. I followed the wrong sign and ended up at the Yorktown victory center, instead of the battlefield. The center was interesting, but they are still building almost all of the exhibits so it was definitely not worth the admission price.  After lunch I decided to go find the actual battlefield. I went to battlefield about four years ago, so most of what I saw was review. Not much has changed there either. However, getting lost and ending up at the victory center allowed me to compare it the battlefield. Both had small museums, and both museums featured videos at the beginning. I was not very impressed with the victory center’s opening video. The title was “Liberty’s Call” and it’s purpose was to explain the reasons behind the War for Independence. I had a few problems with the video. For one, there was little substance to it. There was a lot of narration, questions asked and then answered by people on the street, and even some fairly well done cinematic scenes, but there was little actual information given. The information that was given, was not always complete. For example, toward the end of the video there was a summary of the battle of Yorktown in which the role of the French navy in defeating Cornwallis was completely left out. Granted, the video’s focus was not Yorktown exclusively, but it seems to me that any summary of the battle should include the Battle of the Capes because without that naval victory, there would have been no victory at Yorktown. Another example of somewhat incomplete information in the video is their explanation of why the colonies broke away from England. The only reasons they gave were basically land and taxes. More specifically, the Quebec Act, and the Stamp act as well as other taxes. Now, it is undeniable that both of these reasons were incredibly influential at moving the colonies toward independence, but they were not the only reasons. What really bothered me was that the religious consequences of the Quebec act were left out, and the fact that the colonists would pay taxes as long as they had a say in creating them was hardly mentioned. Maybe I am just being picky, but I did not like that video.

View from the earthworks at the battlefield.

Now to contrast that video, with the one at the actual battlefield. The battlefield is a National Park, so I was expecting better, and I was not disappointed.   The video a little longer, but that was fine because it had plenty of substance. The video gave an excellent summary of the battle, and the exhibits in the museum portion added further detail. Over all, the battlefield did an excellent job communicating the history it is supposed to commemorate. I mentioned the victory center, because it was supposed to commemorate Yorktown as well and since it’s less than a mile away, it’s still technically in Yorktown. I just don’t believe that it did a very good job describing the history that surrounded it. I understand that as a private institution it may not be as well funded as the national park, but they were building and entire wing of exhibits, so I think they could have afforded a better video. Who knows, maybe the exhibits will be better when they are finished.