Publication of Note | September 2023
Clarence R. Geier and Stephen R. Potter, eds. “Archaeological Perspectives on the American Civil War” Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000.
*Throughout 2023, the “Publication of Note” portion of the newsletter will contain some of the director’s favorite collections of essays relevant to the Civil War era in the Shenandoah Valley.
While this volume should be considered critical for any student of the Civil War as its 18 essays cover a wide array of topics, this outstanding anthology includes three essays quite relevant to the conflict in the Shenandoah Valley. The first, an essay co-authored by Joseph W.A. Whitehorne and Clarence R. Geier, explores the Battle of Cool Spring. The authors’ analysis of the terrain along the banks of the Shenandoah River reveals much about how Union troops, outnumbered at the battle, utilized the landscape as an ally. Whitehorne and Geier, along with Shenandoah University Professor of History Warren Hofstra, Ph.D., contributed an essay about the Sheridan Field Hospital established in Winchester in the aftermath of the Third Battle of Winchester. Impeccable research and writing still make this essay the standard history of the largest hospital of its kind constructed during the conflict. The final essay in the volume of import to those interested in the Shenandoah Valley explores the experiences of African Americans in the Shenandoah Valley from 1850-1880. Authored by historian Kenneth Koons, one of the foremost experts on the Shenandoah Valley’s agricultural history, this compelling contribution includes various statistical tables which enumerate various aspects of slavery’s history in the Shenandoah Valley including the occupations of enslavers, occupations of African Americans, and relevant census information.
