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Book Review
Methods/Theory
Edward L. Ayers and Anne S. Rubin. Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War. With CD-ROM. New York: W. W. Norton. 2000. Pp. 103. $49.95.
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Anyone in the history profession still unaware of the Valley of the Shadow project has simply not been paying attention. The brainchild of Edward L. Ayers, it began life in 1991 as a website offering a unique collection of primary sources with which students could study the American Civil War. The project has grown exponentially since then, garnering much attention and numerous awards. Now it has been made available on CD-ROM. |
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The basic premise of the project is that a great deal can be learned about the Civil War by intensively studying the experience of local communities. Ayers offers two communities for our intimate inspection, one Southern and one Northern, and invites us to compare their experiences. Augusta County, Virginia, and Franklin County, Pennsylvania, are separated by only 125 miles, but in the mid-nineteenth century they followed very different paths. When war came in 1861, men of Augusta enlisted to fight for the Confederacy and men of Franklin for the Union. |
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