Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Publication
- Publication Type
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
The Great Valley And The Meaning Of The Civil War, Edward L. Ayers
The Great Valley And The Meaning Of The Civil War, Edward L. Ayers
History Faculty Publications
To understand the coming of the Civil War, then, we need to pick up the story before Fort Sumter and to carry it deeper than national events. We need to understand both the advocated of conflict and those who sought to avoid it regardless of the cost. We need to understand the communities people fought to defend, the institutions that held them together and that drove them apart.
[Introduction To] Valley Of The Shadow: Two Communities In The American Civil War, Edward L. Ayers
[Introduction To] Valley Of The Shadow: Two Communities In The American Civil War, Edward L. Ayers
Bookshelf
Two communities in America's Great Valley--Franklin County, Pennsylvania, and Augusta County, Virginia--separated by only a few hundred miles, share much in their politics and ways of life. Yet they emerge on opposing sides of a war in which they zealously send their sons to fight and die. Here we see a Civil War that is not the inevitable conflict of rival societies, but a human drama, immediate, particular, engrossing.