Bright Lights, Bold Adventures: 1846-1878

Centennial 1876

From the exhibitions, Americans gained an unprecedented view of, among other things, their country's intellectual and material progress. The Smithsonian gained recognition and esteem through its organizing efforts and the contributions it made. The National Museum would eventually acquire enough additional objects from the Centennial to make serious physical expansion inevitable.

The Smithsonian's part in the Centennial was, predictably, the responsibility of Spencer Fullerton Baird. He had responded to a request from President Ulysses S. Grant in 1874 to join other government representatives, and had been made a member of the Centennial Board. In January 1876, he affixed to Henry's annual report an appendix describing the preparations. ''The most suitable exhibition on the part of the Smithsonian Institution should embrace, in the first place, the history, condition, functions, workings, and general results of the Institution itself; in the second, a display of the mineral and animal resources, as well as of the ethnology, of the United States."

Baird was careful to distinguish between the Smithsonian's publications, international exchanges, meteorological observations, and expeditions, on the one hand, and, on the other, the possessions of the National Museum, which would clearly predominate in Philadelphia. His thorough, dutiful reporting-"The birds will include all the forms that are appreciated as being eatable and as supplying feathers, plumes &c.... The kinds specially beneficial or injurious to the farmer will also be exhibited"-must have concealed his inner glee.

The Centennial became a triumph not of ideas but of things, most of which were unlikely to appeal to the pure scientist. All the states and most nations were represented in more than 30,000 displays, at least a quarter of them belonging to the United States, whose facility at the Centennial covered two acres. The Smithsonian shared the U.S. Government Building, put up at a cost of $110,000, with the departments of War, Interior, Navy, Treasury, Agriculture, and the Post Office, but the Institution's plot was the largest, and included space devoted to the Fish Commission, of which Baird was head.

His young assistant, George Brown Goode, only 25, from Wesleyan University, put together the exhibits of fish and animals. Goode's compilation of North American mammals in a 351-page encyclopedia and his exhibits of stuffed specimens standing side by side, offset by the weapons used in their capture, riveted public attention. Among the animals encountered by visitors from all over the country who came to Philadelphia during the six months were a 15-foot walrus, a polar bear and other bears, an elk, and a musk ox.

In the end, Baird's beloved birds were too numerous to be included. But the fishes included maneating sharks, a stingray, a swordfish, various pickled specimens, and more than 400 plaster casts painstakingly painted by a Smithsonian artist. Vessels, tackle, and other implements used in domestic fisheries also were displayed. These objects were reduced to categories with sub-headings, an attempted scientific rendering of the real, empirical, work-a-day world.

Two hundred varieties of fresh fish were presented in two enormous refrigerators with transparent sides; some of the fish were even sold to restaurants on the grounds by the enterprising supplier. Displays of minerals included stunning crystals, ores, building stone, coal, and other examples of the geologically arcane and useful. They had come to Baird from amateur collectors and professionals; some mineral specimens were cut into blocks, and others exhibited on pedestals. Meteorites, marble, and petrified wood added to the display of the elements gold and silver, of such interest to Americans.

These had real competition among the engineering marvels of the age: electric lights and elevators powered by the 1,400-horsepower Corliss; locomotives; and all manner of engineering feats heralding the rise of technology that would dominate American society in the future. But the Smithsonian's displays of natural phenomena, including new agricultural products, "was considered by all visitors," Leslie's magazine reported, "as decidedly the best part of the International Exhibition, in view of the extent and exhaustiveness of the collection and the method and order of its display," something that redounded to Baird's credit-and to Goode's.

Among the exhibits most heatedly discussed was that of the American Indian. A joint project of the Smithsonian and the Department of Interior, the ethnology exhibit was calculated to impress a public already much interested in the subject, one that entailed the last vestiges of the frontier and the problem of continuing guerrilla warfare in the West. Baird had sent out directives to obtain "objects illustrating the habits, customs, peculiarities and general condition of the various tribes, and also...such relics of their predecessors as may be procurable." Among those who received them were John Wesley Powell and James G. Swann, who brought back a formidable collection from Alaska.

Baird sought optimum effect at the Centennial through the use of live Indians, a possibility that did not excite the Department of the Interior; he pressed the issue with stipulations to ensure that only "the cleanest and finest looking" Indians would be displayed, those who could speak English and who brought with them a child, a dog, and a pony. Indians truly representative of the tribes were considered unpresentable, and although the plan to use live Indians was endorsed by President Grant, Congress refused to appropriate funds for moving and housing even "the cleanest and finest looking" such people.

Life-size manikins were substituted for the missing real Indians. The ethnology exhibit lacked the meticulous, taxonomic approach Baird and Goode had brought to mammals and fishes, but it still triumphed in the sheer accumulation of objects. Stone-age specimens from the West Indies were included, but North American tribes predominated. From those of the Southwest-Ute, Paiute, Shoshone, Navajo, Hopi, and ApacheÑcame implements of daily life, including baskets, weapons, and buckskin garments. From the Northwest Coast tribes-Tlingit, Haida, and Bella Bella-came majestic painted canoes and totem poles that rose solemnly above the other artifacts.

A number of grim ironies might have been read into this array. Indians were fast disappearing at the hands of the culture that was including them in its Centennial exhibition. During the height of the celebration, far across the continent, Lieutenant Colonel George Custer led a frontal assault on a Sioux encampment on the Little Bighorn River. The Sioux, under the leadership of Sitting Bull, Gall, and Crazy Horse, annihilated Custer and his 225 cavalrymenÑthe greatest single Indian victory in the West. It cast a pall over the Centennial celebration, eliciti calls for revenge, despite the fact that Little Bighorn marked the end of meaningful Indian resistance.

Baird spent most of his summer in philadelphia serving on judging panels and committees and working behind the scenes to obtain the exhibits he wanted for the Smithsonian. His personal agent visited representatives of individual states and countries with a letter from Baird to "explain more fully the plan of the Smithsonian Institution in connection with the National Museum, and show in what way the contribution desired may be of benefit to yourself as well as to the cause the Smithsonian has at heart."

The Smithsonian eventually acquired the exhibits of 34 countries and numerous states, "a quantity," Baird noted, "far beyond the storage capacity of the Smithsonian building." Once again collections beloved by Baird began to head south for Washington by rail; this time the number of freight cars required to transport them was not two but some number between 40 and 78, depending upon who was counting.

In Baird's triumph lay the seeds of the modern Smithsonian and what can be seen as the eclipse of enry's ideal of contained, autonomous research. This came about in part through the sheer force of material accumulation. Congress authorized transferral of ownership of the Armory building between Sixth and Seventh streets-now the site of the National Air and Space Museum-to the Institution, and there the bulk of the collections sat.

Henry, close to the end of a remarkable career, once again called upon Congress to take responsibility for the National Museum, beseeching the Regents, and presumably posterity, to remember the intent of James Smithson-the increase and diffusion of knowledge. In the 1876 annual report, he praised the Smithsonian exhibits-one can only guess at the self-discipline required to list all those stuffed animals and the "dried, smoked, salted, pickled, and canned" food exhibited with them, the sort of thing Henry often characterized as "trash"-and those acquired at Philadelphia. But, he reminded the Regents, "To preserve and exhibit this increase, or to render it available for education and scientific purposes, an additional building is imperatively demanded."

Henry went on, "the experience of the last year has strengthened my opinion as to the propriety of a separation of the Institution from the National Museum.... [T]he Museum is destined to become an extensive establishment involving a large annual expenditure for its support and a variety of complex operations having no necessary connection with...the increase & diffusion of knowledge....' Smithson gave his own [Henry's italics] name to the establishment which he founded...and in strict regard to this item of his will the endowment of his bequest should be administered separate from all other funds, and the results achieved by it should be accredited to his name alone."

The museum was for education through exhibits, Henry pointed out, whereas the Smithsonian "does not offer the results of its operations to the physical eye, but presents them to the mind in the form of new discoveries, derived from new investigations and an extended exchange of new ideas with all parts of the world." Every civilized nation had a museum, he added, "while there is but one Smithsonian Institution...."

The Centennial had been a financial success-in other words, it broke even-and Congress agreed to put the money from its loan to the Centennial, now repaid, into a new building to house the National Museum. This was estimated to cost $250,000; Baird, by accession, would be its director, and Goode, the avid organizer and exhibitor, the museum's second in command.

George Brown Goode, known as Brown Goode to colleagues, was, like Baird, a naturalist of extraordinary early promise who grew into one of the best museum men of the age. Born the year after Baird was made Assistant Secretary, Goode studied under Louis Agassiz at Harvard, and, because of his strong ichthyological bent, was taken on as a volunteer by Baird at the U.S. Fish Commission. Then he joined the Smithsonian. Goode became what a later Secretary described as "the one administrator...who had seemed to grasp the essential need of combining the recording and documenting function of museum collections with original research and with public education," a happy synthesis of Henry and Baird.

Goode's fragile physique, inauspicious considering the Smithsonian's tradition of settling Herculean undertakings on the shoulders of its assistants, was indeed unsuited to the rigors of Castle life. His health suffered specifically under the load of the Centennial, but he soon became curator of the Smithsonian and one of the seminal figures in its development, both as scientist and historian.

Goode would later write, "The people's museum should be much more than a house full of specimens in glass cases. It should be a house full of ideas, arranged with the strictest attention to system." And, "A finished museum is a dead museum...." To his mind, a museum had three basic functions: as a place of record, with objects identified as "permanent landmarks of the progress of the world"; as a place of research, complete with reference collections; and as a place of education for the interested citizenry. Here he differed from Henry and Baird.

A prime tool in the diffusion of knowledge, in Goode's opinion, was the label, seemingly insignificant in the late 19th century but in fact a world of its own, with paramount future importance. "An efficient museum," Goode wrote, "...may be described as a collection of

instructive labels, each illustrated by a well selected specimen [his italics].

"Goode also wrote, "The collections should form a museum of anthropology, the word anthropology being applied in its most comprehensive sense. It should... illustrate human culture and industry in all their phases; the earth, its physical structure and its products, is to be exhibited with special reference to its adaptation for use" by people.

Joseph Henry pointed out in his last annual report, 1877, that anthropology "is at present the most popular branch of science." A vast amount of material was now available, much of it stored at the Smithsonian, which had put thousands of dollars into the collection of artifacts. The seemingly imminent disappearance of North America's original inhabitants, forecast by many, contributed, para doxically, to their popularity with the public as a subject; so did the desire by some scientists to make sense of the aboriginal experience, as well as the desire, among thoselike John Wesley Powell, to preserve myth and language.

Archaeology may have concentrated on the Eastern half of the continent, but ethnology focused on the Western, and on often hostile tribes. All materials relating to Indians ended up in the Smithsonian's "division of ethnology," which had three paid assistants, all proteges of Baird: Charles Rau, Edward Foreman, and Frank Hamilton Cushing.

Despite Henry's antipathy toward museum man agement, he valued the broad based collection of imple ments under the Smithsonian's roof, those from Europe as well as North America. A new room was devoted to the anthropological exhibits, and in it, Henry wrote proudly to botanist Asa Gray, "I shall make a grand display."

In the same report, Henry wrote:"Nothing has occurred...to change my opinion" that the essential Smithsonian required nothing more than the modest accomodations so scientists could do their research and receive and distribute publications and collections. The castle itself was too large, to Henry's mind, with excess space and activities like those of the proposed new National Museum to stand next door. That should be supported by the government of the United States, not by the Institution. But the Castle couldn't contain all the specimens and amassed objects, and he worried about the financial drain they caused.

A man of contradictions, Henry understood the power and importance of the imagination, yet disliked the whimsical building in which he had lived for so many years. He recognized the need for objects, yet he despaired of meeting the responsibility for the burgeoning collections. And what he considered one of his duties- to preserve type specimens and unique phenomena-was leading directly to the demise of the small research institution he favored.

The force of Henry's personality contributed greatly to the Smithsonian's reputation at a time when its operating revenues were minuscule compared to the funds available to other scientific organizations with government support. The Coast Survey, for instance, received 10 times the income of the Smithsonian. Nathan Reingold wrote in Science in Nineteenth-Century America that the Smithsonian "had acquired the status of a venerable symbol...strange in an institution so relatively young." On the other hand, "limited resources...prevented it from acquiring a major role in the growth of science in America. The organization is a good example of institutional proclivities for drifting into the path of least resistance." But a museum had been stipulated in the bill establishing the Smithsonian.

It is difficult to imagine how Henry or anyone else, even without Baird and Baird's strong propensity to gather, could have resisted participating in and collecting from the pursuit of Manifest Destiny and the general, highly diffuse scientific enthusiasms of the period. The Smithsonian may have had no signal scientific breakthrough to which it could point then, no latter-day equivalent of Henry's telegraph. But the collections and the work done on them, like the exchanges of scientific information, satisfied one interpretation of the will of James Smithson.

Even if Henry's vision of a more limited Institution did not prevail, he "laid the basis for the intellectual advances of future generations of American scientists," historian Wilcomb E. Washburn has written, "who...clearly comprehended the fundamental necessity for support of basic research untrammeled by practical considerations."

In December 1877, Henry had his first attack of what was diagnosed as Bright's disease, a complication of the kidneys. He was 80, and had, according to his doctor, only six months to live. He became the de facto Secretary only, with Baird tending to business and looking anxiously toward the transition. Baird had succeeded in shaping the Smithsonian, and he feared a political appointee to replace Henry might undo all the Secretary and Baird had accomplished. More, Baird badly wanted the position of Secretary himself.

As in the past, he proved capable of political expediency when his career was at risk. He had thoroughly learned the lesson of subservience in the Jewett affair a quarter of a century earlier. In the spring of 1878, Baird wrote confidential letters to his two strongest supporters on the Board of Regents, James D. Dana, dean of geology in the United States, and Asa Gray, botanist and resolute Darwinian. Gray had championed Baird in a fight with Agassiz over Baird's admission to the National Academy of Sciences, one of many squabbles that erupted among America's leading scientists of the day.

Baird confided to him, "I have a right to look forward to the succession, even though I may be unfit to occupy in all respects Prof. Henry's chair. I doubt whether there is anyone who has a poorer opinion of myself than I have in many respects; but I think I can continue in the future as well as in the past, the general routine of the Smithsonian." He asked Gray to help prevent "rivals to supplant me in the Institution"-and affirm the status quo ante.

Baird was 55, about the age Henry had been when he became Secretary. He had grown into a bearded, portly patriarch, but the words might well have come from the eager young naturalist whom Dana had urged on the Smithsonian, way back in 1850.

Henry died on May 13, 1878, in the building about which he had ambiguous feelings at best. His funeral was attended by President Rutherford Hayes and his cabinet, the Supreme Court, and both houses of Congress. The Government Printing Office published 15,000 copies of a 528-page Memorial of Joseph Henry, the title embossed in gold, and Congress appropriated money for the statue of Henry that stands in front of the Castle today.

Henry's accomplishments were legion, and included meritorious service as a member of the U.S. Lighthouse and other boards. He was known for discoveries in electromagnetism and telegraphy, but his experiments with lard as a replacement for whale oil in lighthouse beacons and with Fresnel lenses had broad, practical impact. He had successfully stewarded the Smithsonian through its contentious, formative years; more importantly, his strength of character and the natural respect accorded Henry made him the symbol of the Smithsonian and the key element in the achievement of the Institution's status.

The day after Henry's funeral, May 17, 1878, the Regents unanimously elected Spencer Baird second Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. His ascendancy came on the eve of the Institution's, and the country's, transformation-the Smithsonian into a multi-faceted reflection of the nation's culture, the United States into an industrial power, with, sadly, a vanishing frontier.

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Bright Lights, Bold Adventures: 1846-1878

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