Hampton, Virginia, has been promoting itself as a tourist destination with a campaign advertising the coastal region as a place to “Come Face-to-Face with Adventure.” Visitors are urged to “Discover the history, the attractions and the flavorful culture” of the city. In a display ad, the flavorful culture is illustrated by a chef; the attractions by a shopper and an astronaut (there’s a NASA visitors’ center there); and the history by a pirate and a Civil War soldier. Which is where the advertisement is particularly interesting. Take a look at left.
The soldier is, of course, dressed in Union blue, not Confederate gray. Yes, the Hampton coast is home to Fort Monroe, which the North controlled throughout the late unpleasantness. Still, there is something jarring about a city in Virginia—the state where the Confederacy placed its capital—promoting itself with a sword-wielding Yankee.
Jarring, but perhaps not surprising. In an age of increasing pressure to remove even the most anodyne of Johnny Reb statuary from public spaces in the South, The Scrapbook suspects that Fort Monroe provided the Hampton ad team with a welcome opportunity: a way to celebrate the region’s Civil War significance without having to depict anything so hateful as a Confederate soldier.
We wonder how long it will be before Atlanta builds an ad campaign around General Sherman.
