Valley Civilian Experience to be Focus of SVBF Symposium

November 30, 2009 | Posted by javal

Harry and Allan had begged me to let them go to the top of the hill early in the morning to see what was going on. I had given permission, thinking of no danger other than occurred every day; but now, how I repented having let them go, and sat all that fearful afternoon in terror for fear my boys had come to harm.”

– Cornelia Peake McDonald, resident of Winchester during the First Battle of Kernstown, 23 March 1862

A mother separated from her children while a battle rages; a family huddled in a basement while shells crash overhead; a pacifist preacher murdered on a lonely back road; tiny communities overwhelmed with dead and dying soldiers; barns, mills, and crops destroyed by passing armies; parents waiting helplessly for news of their wounded son’s fate in a distant battle.

Heartbreaking experiences were common in the Shenandoah Valley during the tumultuous years of the Civil War. The Valley was a magnet for conflict, with devastating impact on the lives of the people who lived here. There was no safe haven and the home front became the front line of battle. The experiences of the people who lived through those days are among the most remarkable and moving stories of the war.

On Saturday, December 5, 2009, the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation will host a day-long symposium examining the civilian experience in the Shenandoah Valley during those strife-ridden years. Taking place at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, “Home Front to Front Line: The Civil War Era in the Shenandoah Valley” will feature five notable scholars of the Civil War period in the Valley: Dr. Edward L. Ayers (keynote speaker), Dr. Jonathan M. Berkey, Kenneth E. Koons, Jonathan A. Noyalas, and Nancy T. Sorrells.

Keynote speaker Dr. Edward L. Ayers is a nationally and internationally renowned Civil War scholar who is currently the President of the University of Richmond. Previously Dean of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia where he began teaching in 1980, Ayers was named the National Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 2003. A historian of the American South, Ayers has written and edited ten books. The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. In the Presence of Mine Enemies: Civil War in the Heart of America won the Bancroft Prize for distinguished writing in American history and the Beveridge Prize for the best book in English on the history of the Americas since 1492.

A pioneer in digital history, Ayers also created The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War, a web site contrasting the stories of Franklin County, Pennsylvania, and Augusta County, Virginia, that has attracted millions of users and won major prizes in the teaching of history. Ayers has received a presidential appointment to the National Council on the Humanities, served as a Fulbright professor in the Netherlands, and been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Ayers was also the chair of the first annual Signature Conference of the Virginia Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War Commission, “America on the Eve of the Civil War.”

Nicholas Picerno, Chairman of the Battlefields Foundation’s Interpretation and Education Committee stated, “We are especially fortunate to have Dr. Ayers as our keynote speaker. He is a remarkable, spellbinding speaker, and is recognized as one of our nation’s leading historians. His work to chronicle the incredible story of the civilian experience during the Civil War has not only given him a well-deserved reputation as one of the foremost scholars on the subject; it also makes him the perfect person to headline this program.”

Topics during the symposium will include:

· “Our once beautiful but now desolated Valley”: Farming in the Breadbasket of the Confederacy

· A Separate Sovereignty: The Shenandoah Valley’s Confederate Women

· “A torn and bleeding country”: War on the Home Front

· Uncertain Freedom: The African Americans’ Civil War in the Shenandoah Valley

Event details include:

•Date: Saturday, December 5, 2009

•Time: 9:00am to 4:00pm — Registration begins at 8:00am. (Lunch on your own)

•Location: Mary Baldwin College, Staunton

•Fee: $25 ($10 for students)

•Registration: Advance registration is required—a registration form may be downloaded from the events area of the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields website (www.ShenandoahAtWar.org).

This event will also mark the release of the Foundation’s third booklet on the history of the war in the Valley, Home Front to Front Line: The Civil War Era in the Shenandoah Valley. The booklet, which features chapters on civilian life from a variety of perspectives during the turbulent years of the war, will be available for sale and signing during the day. The cost for the booklet is $8.00. The complete three-booklet set, which includes Home Front to Front Line and the previous booklets, “If This Valley Is Lost, Virginia Is Lost”: Stonewall Jackson’s Valley Campaign and “Give the Enemy No Rest”: Sheridan’s 1864 Shenandoah Campaign, is also available for $20.00.

The symposium will be held at Mary Baldwin College in historic Staunton, Virginia, and will feature two lectures in the morning and three in the afternoon. Symposium attendees will also receive special lodging and attraction offers for the weekend.

The fee for the event is $25 ($10 for students) and advance registration is required. Interested individuals can register by downloading the registration form from the events area of the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields website (www.ShenandoahAtWar.org).

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