“Beyond the Mere Routine of Everyday Life”: Encounters & Experiences during the Civil War
Saturday, April 2, 2022
On the campus of Shenandoah University, Winchester, Virginia
“The Picket Guard” by Alfred Waud (Library of Congress)
On April 3, 1864, David Catlin, a soldier in the 9th New York Heavy Artillery, penned a letter to his son and explained that he didn’t have much to write about “beyond the mere routine of everyday life.” While Catlin might have considered his wartime life “routine,” his experiences and those of countless Civil War soldiers, civilians, enslaved people, free blacks, and politicians proved anything but during those four tumultuous years. The McCormick Civil War Institute’s 2022 spring conference will explore a variety of encounters and experiences during the Civil War–from soldiers’ interactions with each other, enemy combatants, and enslaved people; soldiers’ encounters with the environment; and African Americans’ encounters with President Abraham Lincoln.
REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN!
To register via Shenandoah University’s online registration system (Elevate) please follow the link below.
Login Instructions for Elevate
To register via paper registration, please click on the link below, print the form, fill out, and mail, along with payment, to the address on the registration form.
Registration fee of $30 covers cost of all presentations and lunch in Allen Dining Hall.
Scholarships available for educators and students. For more information on obtaining a scholarship please email jnoyalas01@su.edu
Schedule
- 8:30-9:15 a.m.: Check-in, Henkel Hall, Shenandoah University (1460 University Drive, Winchester, Virginia)
- 9:15-9:30 a.m.: Welcome and unveiling of “A Good Cause”: Letters from the Ninth New York Heavy Artillery
- 9:30-10:30 a.m.: “Am Becoming an Abolitionist Fast”: Union Soldiers’ Encounters with the Shenandoah Valley’s Enslaved (Jonathan A. Noyalas, Shenandoah University)
- 10:30-10:45 a.m.: Break
- 10:45-11:45 a.m.: “Nature’s Civil War: Common Soldiers and the Environment in 1862 Virginia” (Kathryn J. Shively, Virginia Commonwealth University)
- 11:45 a.m.-1:00 p.m.: Lunch in Allen Dining Hall
- 1:00-1:35 p.m.: “Outlived the Odium Placed Upon them by the F.F.V.’s”: Learning from the 1890 Veterans Census (alumni & student panel with Caitlyn Graulau, Kimberley Oliveto, Jay Richardson, and Nicole Roland)
- 1:35-1:45 p.m.: Break
- 1:45-2:45 p.m.: “A Cessation in Hostilities:” The Uses and Misuses of Civil War Soldier Fraternization (Lauren K. Thompson, McKendree University)
- 2:45-3:oo p.m.: Break
- 3:00-4 p.m.: In A House Built By Slaves: African American Encounters with Abraham Lincoln (Jonathan W. White, Christopher Newport University)
Please note that Harpers Ferry National Historical Park bookstore will be on-site throughout the day selling various books relevant to the conference’s theme, including those written by the speakers. Speakers will be happy to sign books throughout the day.
For questions about the conference, contact Jonathan Noyalas at jnoyalas01@su.edu or 540-665-4501.
About the Speakers
Jonathan A. Noyalas is director of Shenandoah University’s McCormick Civil War Institute, the founding editor of Journal of the Shenandoah Valley during the Civil War Era, and a professor in the history department at Shenandoah University. He is the author or editor of fourteen books including most recently Slavery and Freedom in the Shenandoah Valley during the Civil War Era published by University Press of Florida in the spring of 2021. Noyalas has authored more than 100 articles, essays, book chapters, and reviews for a variety of scholarly and popular publications. In addition to teaching and writing Noyalas has consulted on various public history projects with organizations such as the National Park Service, American Battlefield Trust, Shenandoah Valley Battlefields National Historic District, and National Geographic. Noyalas has appeared on NPR’s “With Good Reason,” C-SPAN’s American History TV, and PCN. He is the recipient of numerous awards for his teaching and scholarship including the highesthonor that can ever be bestowed upon anyone teaching at a college/university in Virginia–the State Council for Higher Education in Virginia’s Outstanding Faculty Award.
Kathryn J. Shively is the author of Nature’s Civil War: Common Soldiers and the Environment in 1862 Virginia, winner of the Edward M. Coffman Prize in military history and the Wiley-Silver Prize for best first book on the Civil War. Dr. Shively earned a PhD in history in 2010 from the University of Virginia and a BA in English literature and poetry from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2002. An associate professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, Shively specializes in the Civil War and Reconstruction, early American military history, and environmental and medical history. Currently, Dr. Shively is writing a biography of Confederate general Jubal A. Early’s influence on the rise of modern American “scientific” historical practices.
Lauren K. Thompson is the Samuel Hedding and Charles Samuel Deneen Professor of Early American History at McKendree University in Lebanon, IL. She completed her PhD at Florida State University in 2015 and her MA at West Virginia University in 2010. Her book, entitled Friendly Enemies: Soldier Fraternization during the American Civil War, was published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2020. She also produced a chapter in a collection entitled A Forgotten Front: Florida during the Civil War Era (Tuscaloosa: Alabama University Press, 2018) and an article in Civil War History. Dr. Thompson received research fellowships at the Army War College in Carlisle, PA and the Virginia History Society in Richmond, VA. At McKendree, Lauren teaches the following courses: Civil War Era, African-American History, Race & Ethnicity in U.S. History, the American Revolution, and Labor History. January 2019, she received McKendree University’s Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Humanitarian Award. During her graduate school years, she worked as a seasonal ranger at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park in Virginia.
Jonathan W. White is associate professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University. He is the author or editor of twelve books, including Abraham Lincoln and Treason in the Civil War (2011), and Emancipation, the Union Army, and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln (2014), which was a finalist for both the Lincoln Prize and Jefferson Davis Prize, a “best book” in Civil War Monitor, and the winner of the Abraham Lincoln Institute’s 2015 book prize. He serves as vice chair of The Lincoln Forum, and on the boards of the Abraham Lincoln Association, the Abraham Lincoln Institute, and the John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History at the University of Virginia, as well as the Ford’s Theatre Advisory Council. His most recent books include Midnight in America: Darkness, Sleep, and Dreams during the Civil War (2017), which was selected as a “best book” by Civil War Monitor; and “Our Little Monitor”: The Greatest Invention of the Civil War (2018), which he co-authored with Anna Gibson Holloway. This fall he will publish To Address You As My Friend: African Americans’ Letters to Abraham Lincoln with the University of North Carolina Press, and My Work Among the Freedmen: The Civil War and Reconstruction Letters of Harriet M. Buss with UVA Press.
