The Thin Light of Freedom: Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America

by Edward L. Ayers

Virginia’s Great Valley, prosperous in peace with a rich soil and an enslaved workforce, invited destruction in war. Voracious Union and Confederate armies ground up the valley, consuming crops, livestock, fences, and human life. Pitched battles at Gettysburg, Lynchburg, and Cedar Creek punctuated a cycle of vicious attacks and reprisals in which armies burned whole towns for retribution.

North of the Mason-Dixon line, in the Pennsylvania portion of the valley, free black families sent husbands and sons to fight with the U.S. Colored Troops. In letters home, even as Lincoln commemorated the dead at Gettysburg, they spoke movingly of a war for emancipation. As defeat and the end of slavery descended on Virginia, with the political drama of Reconstruction unfolding in Washington, the crowded classrooms of the Freedmen’s Bureau schools spoke of a new society struggling to emerge. Here is history at its best: powerful, insightful, grounded in human detail.

Genres: History, Civil War, Nonfiction, American History, American Civil War, War, Military Fiction

640 pages, Hardcover

First published October 24, 2017

About the author

Edward Ayers is President Emeritus of the University of Richmond, where he now serves as Tucker-Boatwright Professor of the Humanities. 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 10 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. He was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2013.

A pioneer in digital history, Ayers created "The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War," a website that has attracted millions of users and won major prizes in the teaching of history. He serves as co-editor of the Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States at the University of Richmond's Digital Scholarship Lab and is a co-host of BackStory with the American History Guys, a nationally syndicated radio show and podcast.

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

Reviews

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good read.

[Todd Stockslager · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review title: In the Valley of the Shadow

Ayers has undertaken an approach to writing about the American Civil War that (surprisingly after so many words have been written about it) is unique and insightful. It looks specifically at the war through the eyes, pens, and newspapers of the great central valley of the Shenandoah which runs north and eastward from Staunton, Virginia up through the Mason-Dixon line, then, known as the Cumberland Valley, through southcentral Pennsylvania to Chambersburg and a little village on its eastern edge named Gettysburg. This valley, while populated by hard working farmers and small business owners representing common ethnic, religious and even family backgrounds, was split by the state borders and then the national border between the slave states of Virginia (which joined the Confederacy) and Maryland (which did not) and the free state of Pennsylvania. Rather than dividing his history along the free/slave vector, Ayers looks at this valley as one geographic, economic, and social unit and shows how the war divided and effected this once united region.

The Pennsylvania portion of the valley is dominated by Franklin County, where I was born and have lived about 20 years of my life, and I worked nearly 15 years for the electric company which served the entire valley. I have traveled the major north/south route through the valley then known as the Valley Turnpike and now as US Route 11 and Interstate 81 so many times I know it like home. It is a beautiful country, still dominated by farms, small industry, and transportation as the tractor and trailer traffic on 81 delivers the goods that supply a prosperous and united country.

The Civil War tore this valley apart. Indeed, I have titled my review after the name of the digital archive which has collected and annotated the diaries, letters, newspapers and other documents and manuscripts that documented the region in the years before, during and after the war. The Valley of the Shadow archive can be accessed at http://valley.lib.virginia.edu, and is Ayers's primary source material for this book, which covers from July 1863 through Reconstruction. A previous book covered the antebellum years and the war up to 1863 using the same source material.

Of course July 1863 allows Ayers to start his book with the immediate climactic action of the Battle of Gettysburg, as he describes the view from Augusta County, Virginia, centered in Staunton, of the actions of Robert E. Lee as he headed north into Union territory for the first time, in search of desperately needed supplies and to draw the Northern armies out of Virginia to allow farmers to sow, tend, and harvest the crops that made the Shenandoah the bread basket of the Confederacy. Then he describes the view from peaceful and prosperous Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, the Franklin County seat, which had supplied Union soldiers at a higher than average per capita rate; the Franklin County volunteers included approximately 50 African American members of the famous 54th Massachusetts, whose valor was well-documented in the movie Glory. Obviously, the views in both published sources like newspapers and private sources like diaries and letters differed widely.

One interesting difference Ayers notes is that the Confederacy, even though based on a political philosophy of state's rights and limited central government, actually adopted a central government with stronger military, economic, and taxation powers than the United States. And though centered in the state of Virginia with its rich tradition of political freedom and dissent, the confederacy during its brief life was almost completely devoid of political party action, debate, or dissent. After the establishment of the national government, there were no national elections during the war, and the newspapers and public debate were all owned and controlled by the Democratic party. In contrast, the north saw regular elections for state and local offices on regular annual cycles, and even a major presidential and Congressional election in 1864, and the Republican and Democratic parties, newspapers, and constituencies maintained vigorous, rancorous and sometimes violent debate during the war.

After Gettysburg, while the south would gradually retreat and decline until the end of the war in April 1865, the war was far from over in the Valley of the Shadow. The Union would bring new leaders and consolidated units into the Valley, burning crops needed to feed Lee's main army in Petersburg to the east and capturing Winchester and Staunton. Confederate general Jubal Early would bring the war back to Pennsylvania a year after Gettysburg, staging a raid on Chambersburg and demanding a cash ransom; when town leaders refused, either in disbelief of the threat or in delay until a Union troop could come north from Greencastle, Early made good on his threat and burned down the central business district and homes. Despite the cultural, ethnic, and religious similarities on both sides of the line, the actions of both sides left bitterness that would be remembered for generations.

The November presidential election of 1864 threatened to tear apart the North, as the Republicans rebranded themselves the National Union party, implying disloyalty on the part of those who did not support the cause of Lincoln. Democrats ran ex-General McLellan, still in the uniform and the employ of the Union army, who was expected to be popular with many men in arms, who were given the right to cast their votes from the field to be tallied with the votes in their home districts. Franklin County voters at home actually voted a majority for Democratic candidates in the October elections for state offices, but Republicans won a narrow majority after the military vote was counted. In November's election, a large majority of soldiers in Franklin County as well as nationwide Nationwide voted for Lincoln, helping him to a huge 212 to 21 Electoral College mandate for the platform of finishing the war, reuniting the states, and ending slavery without compromise (see chapter 6 for discussion of the 1864 elections). August County papers in Virginia, Ayers noted, barely paid attention to the northern election,, as they were absorbed with war news closer to home, and were dealing with the declining personal and national impacts of declining Confederate resources.

Still the war continued one more winter, and in late March 1865, just weeks before Lee's surrender at Appomattox, the citizens of Augusta County rallied to the southern cause. Responding to Lee's plea for confederate civilians to pledge food to his starving army, a public meeting in Staunton resulted in a series of strongly worded resolutions supporting the Confederacy:

The people of Augusta, like those of the entire Confederacy, would 'never submit to the yoke of such a people as those with whom our brothers and sons have been engaged in deadly struggle for four years, and who have delighted in sacking and destroying our houses, devastating our lands, insulting our women and murdering our citizens.' . . . . These resolutions, and the contributions to the dying bastion, came from men who had been outspoken and active Unionists before the war. . . . . Augusta County had transformed itself from one of the most proudly Unionist counties in the most proudly Unionist Southern state to a place that stood in the forefront of the war that consumed Virginia. (p. 319-321)

Ayers reports that even in March 1865 slaves were being bought and sold in Staunton and rewards offered for the return of runaways. The once sunny and prosperous valley had indeed become the Valley of the Shadow.

One limitation of a history such as Ayers has written focused on a narrow slice of a larger history around it is that the source material is too scarce that it doesn't allow exposition and alignment of the slice to the whole. Ayers addresses the problem by occasionally inserting short bridge sections in italics tying the story of the Valley to the larger national history. This is an effective approach that keeps the length of the book manageable and the main body focused on the people and events in the Valley. Ayers also references sources to the broader history in his footnotes for those who want to expand out into the bigger picture.

As harsh as the war was in both counties and across the country, the aftermath would proof nearly as difficult. Ayers summarizes the Reconstruction struggles between a waffling and southern-friendly Andrew Johnson and an angry Republican majority in Congress (see the recent history The Republic for which it stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 for a fuller exploration of the topic). And while the war had been won and slavery eliminated, race and recovery dominated both ends of the once peaceful Valley. In the 1867 state elections, Franklin County reverted from a narrow wartime Republican majority to the slightly larger Democratic majority of the prewar years. Voters resented the "Radical Republicans" who were seen to be stalling the return of the southern state to the Union (and their contributions to the federal tax revenues to bring down the high war debt) by their unrealistic and unwanted platform of racial equality.

In Augusta County, voters registered and prepared for a convention to write a new state constitution, the latest Republican attempt (passed over Johnson's veto) to reconcile the states without the taint of former Confederate politicians and supporters of slavery. The Freedmen's Bureau (again passed over Johnson's veto) provided a thin line of support for former slaves against physical, economical, and electoral violence and return of former slaves to the control of their former white masters. The Shenandoah Valley had been dominated by small slave owners or whites who owned no slaves, with no large single crop plantations, and bordered on the western Virginia counties which denounced slavery, stayed loyal to the Union and split into a new state. Yet whites in Augusta County tried mightily to retain their control over the small number of former slaves living among the even smaller number of former white masters. The Staunton newspapers stridently declared that Radical Reconstructionists were no friend of the freedmen, a claim that resonated with truth as some northern states denied African Americans the vote even after the war, and that their best hope was reliance on the friendship and sentimental feelings of their former masters. But underneath the sentimentality was the open threat of physical violence against African Americans as a race:

If black people did not want to be exterminated by the whites as the American Indians had been --"once upon a time, the Indians, over a thousand to one, made war upon the whites, and where are they?", an editor rhetorically asked--black people's "only escape" was to make themselves "the best body of laborers in the world." (p. 432)

When over 75 percent of eligible black voters in Augusta County turned out and over 88 percent of them voted for Republican delegates to the convention, the same newspaper commented:

"The negroes (with some few honorable exceptions, never to be forgotten) have raised their hands against the whites and threaten us with ruin, simply because we are white," the Valley Virginian wrote with surprise, incomprehension, and no apparent sense of irony. (p. 438)

Why does history matter? Woodrow Wilson was born in Staunton in 1856 to a slave holding family, so he lived, breathed and absorbed this culture as a young boy in those formative years. He became president of the United States, guided the country through World War I, and played a large role in shaping the post war world of the 20th century. The outcome of the first world War shaped the second, and that war shaped the landscape of wars and nations since. The US military during Wilson's tenure remained deeply segregated, a symptom of the incomplete Reconstruction and the failure to establish African Americans as fully independent citizens with the full human, political , and economic rights of every American citizen. The outcome of this 150 years of dishonesty and distrust is the need to state simply "Black lives matter" in the 21st century--and the violent racist white backlash against that simple statement. That's why history, this particular history, matters.

[Stan Prager · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review of: The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation
in the Heart of America, by Edward L. Ayers
by Stan Prager (3-24-19)


When I was growing up in the 1960s, the Civil War was often dubbed a struggle of “brother against brother,” uttered with a smack of wonderment at how it was that a nation united by so many commonalities could have could come apart like that, only one short century prior, taking more than six hundred thousand lives in the process? Then, as the centrality of slavery came to be properly emphasized, both historiography and sentiment shifted. Certainly, there were plenty of families divided by war—perhaps most famously Mary Lincoln’s, whose brothers fought for the Confederacy—but the real division turned out to be geographic and defined more by the South’s “peculiar institution” than habit or climate. Alexis de Tocqueville’s oft-cited anecdotal 1835 comments, in Democracy in America, that sharply characterized the vast cultural gulf that lay between free and slave states on opposite sides of the Ohio River, turned out to reflect a true demarcation that saw two different visions of America evolve within a single nation. Slavery defined the south, even if most southerners were not slaveowners, so that long before secession the south had indeed become another country.
That such conclusions can also be overdrawn was brilliantly demonstrated by historian Edward Ayers in his magnificent 2003 work, In the Presence of Mine Enemies: War in the Heart of America, 1859-1863, which surveys the “Great Valley” that stretches north of the Mason-Dixon line to encompass Franklin County, Pennsylvania, and south of it to include Augusta County, Virginia. Slavery was indeed part of the fabric of life in the lower valley in cities like Staunton, Virginia, yet on the eve of the war its citizens still had much more in common than not with denizens of the upper valley in cities like Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, which was free soil. Relationships that went well beyond trade flourished in a porous border of communities that shared a largely common identity. Much of Augusta County was old Whig and staunchly Unionist; when the secession crisis was upon them most fiercely resisted calls to leave the Union. But when Virginia joined the Confederacy, those loyalties quickly shifted. Franklin County had little sympathy for what it viewed as the treason of their southern brethren. Men from both sides eagerly—or not so eagerly, depending upon the man—grabbed muskets and rushed off to the killing fields in the name of honor and duty or simply obligation. The war truly tore the Great Valley asunder, and before it was through both sides were littered with death and destruction utterly unimaginable just a few years earlier.
In his latest work, The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America, Ayers picks up where he left off, taking the saga from the critical turning points of the war that characterized the summer of 1863 to Appomattox and its aftermath, and beyond that through Reconstruction and what was to be its tragic legacy for African Americans. In chapters often bracketed by an italicized overview that puts events in the valley in context with the wider perspective of the war, Ayers narrows the lens to focus upon key individuals emblematic of the struggle on the ground. It is in these human stories that it becomes clear that the noise of cannon fire, calls to glory, and the plaintive cries of the wounded and the dying coming from the valley was actually something of a small-scale version of the greater thunder that echoed across the national landscape in a terrible, bloody conflict that claimed so very many lives before the guns fell silent.

Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley had long been the bread basket for the Confederacy, and its citizens still proudly recalled when Stonewall Jackson made a mockery of three Union armies in its environs in his brilliant Valley Campaign of 1862. But Jackson was dead now, a victim of friendly fire at Chancellorsville, and Federal forces threatened both the farms and the rails that delivered their precious products to grey-clad stomachs. One of the chief motives that took Lee—sans his most famed lieutenant—to Gettysburg was an attempt to divert Union forces to take the pressure off valley farmers and protect cherished crops. Despite his failure there, the valley did win a brief respite, and—to Lincoln’s great chagrin—Lee managed an orderly retreat with a wounded yet still formidable army that was to persist in the field for nearly two full years. In between, the men in Lee’s army were forsworn from the kind of destruction and plunder that they found so abhorrent in the ravages—both real and imagined—visited upon the Shenandoah by the Union, which was universally branded by southerners as uncivilized. The exception was to be the African American, formerly enslaved or just of a matching color, that the Army of Northern Virginia gleefully rounded up and sent south to become chattel. Their version of civilization remained unrattled by such acts of cruelty.
The point has been made that the “total war” of the twentieth century was presaged by the acts of Union forces upon civilians in the Civil War, but that is manifestly overdrawn. Even at its height, as Sherman marched to the sea and Sheridan despoiled the Shenandoah, Grant’s strategic imperative designed to deny the Confederacy foodstuffs and matériel hardly resulted in the slaughter of innocents seen in 1914 and beyond. At the same time, for those who lived through it, it seemed a line had been crossed from an earlier age, even if historians might argue that same line had already been crossed by the British some four-score years prior. There was palpable pain on both sides, even if the south suffered more as the war ground on to its final conclusion. Federal forces indeed quite ruthlessly put farms and factories out of business in the Shenandoah. Earlier restraint eventually gave way, and Confederates mercilessly and without regret retaliated by burning Chambersburg, Pennsylvania in 1864.
Virginia was, of course, the central battleground of the Civil War in the eastern theater, so she had more stories to tell. Many of these stories come from the valley, and some truly tear at the heartstrings:
On [one Virginia] farm, a Union officer ordered a fine mare bridled and led away. When the mare’s colt followed its mother, the farm woman begged them not to take an animal so young that it could be of no use to an army. The officer agreed the animal was useless and simply commanded one of his men to shoot the colt. The woman wept over its body. People remembered these stories for generations. [p240]
But the tear in the reader’s eye for the dead colt and the sobbing woman is quickly washed away and replaced with horror as Ayers recounts another telling episode:
[In Saltville, in 1864,] Confederates, enraged after discovering that they were fighting against black men, killed the wounded African-American soldiers left behind after the failed Union attack. [Diaries of those at the scene reported] … Confederate soldiers … “shooting every wounded negro they could find” [and] that scouts “went all over the field and … sung the death knell of many a poor negro who was unfortunate enough not to be killed yesterday. Our men took no negro prisoners. Great numbers of them were killed yesterday and today…” [General John Breckinridge arrived and] “ordered that the massacre should be stopped. He rode away and—the shooting went on. The men could not be restrained.” The murder continued for six more days, culminating with guerrillas forcing their way into a makeshift hospital at Emory & Henry College and shooting men, black and white, in their beds … A Richmond newspaper printed a tally that showed telling numbers: 150 black Union soldiers had been killed and only 6 wounded, while 106 white soldiers had been killed and 80 wounded. The ratios testified that dozens of wounded African-Americans had been killed …The Richmond paper celebrated the rare Confederate victory over all the “niggers” and Federal troops. [p242-43]
In extremely well-written accounts like these that marry a passionate narrative to solid history aimed at both the scholarly and popular audience, Ayers artfully brings the heartbreaking realities of war in the valley on both sides to our modern doorstep, forbidding us to look away, and compelling us to pick up and cradle the truth of what really transpired.
Of course, as the postwar “Lost Cause” myth took hold, we know now that stories like the dead colt would not only frequently be repeated, but magnified and romanticized, while the slaughter of wounded blacks in Saltville would deliberately be erased. Since most histories of the conflict end at Appomattox or shortly thereafter, readers are denied the painful epilogue of how that came to be so. Here Ayers bucks that trend and keeps going all the way to 1902.
A potent strain in the most recent historiography argues convincingly that while the north claimed military victory, the south ultimately won the Civil War. A week after Lee’s surrender, Lincoln was dead, replaced by Tennessean Andrew Johnson, who welcomed the ex-Confederates who seized political power as the states that had seceded were restored to the Union, while demonstrating little regard for the millions of formerly enslaved African Americans cast adrift in a hostile and economically devastated southern landscape. Despite the efforts of the “Radical Republicans” who controlled Congress to seek justice for blacks through Reconstruction, Johnson dominated events, and blacks found themselves terrorized and murdered by former Confederate elites who would not tolerate steps towards fairness and equality. With emancipation, the former “three-fifths” rule that defined representation was no more, and with millions of blacks now counted as actual persons, newly readmitted states actually gained more political power than they had possessed in the antebellum years. Institutionalized terror kept African Americans from the ballot box and transformed their status into that of second-class citizen, which was hardly challenged in the century to follow.
If the valley was a kind of microcosm of the Civil War in America, by extending his narrative Ayers superbly demonstrates that so too was its unfortunate aftermath for African Americans. The Thin Light of Freedom is an outstanding work on multiple levels, not least in its success in conjuring empathy for all of the victims on both sides, and guiding us to a greater appreciation of how and why the many unresolved elements of that long ago conflict continue to resonate, often uncomfortably, for the United States in the twenty-first century.

Review of: The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America, by Edward L. Ayers https://regarp.com/2019/03/24/review-...

[Erik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ayers's book focuses on two communities, one North and one South, during the Civil War and into Reconstruction. Newspapers, letters and diaries from community leaders and ordinary citizens offer a window into the actions and attitudes of Confederates in Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania.

Only 200 miles apart but tied together by the greater Shenandoah Valley, each community is significant. Augusta County's main town, Staunton, was the rail hub of the Valley, the breadbasket of the Confederacy, which Stonewall Jackson's famous Valley Campaign tried to protect from Yankee invasion. Franklin County's seat was Chambersburg, burned by Confederates in 1864.

Most significant about this book is that it takes the newer approach of historians to stop considering the Civil War and Reconstruction separately, but instead to examine them on a continuum as part of the same story.

[Christopher Humphrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America” by Edward L. Ayers is the follow up work to Ayers’ “In the Presence of Mine Enemies.” In this most recent book Ayers traces the course of the war in July of 1863 (i.e. The Great Invasion) through the post-war years of reconstruction and beyond.

This volume, more than any other I have read, places the terrible cost of the war on display, in terms of human carnage, social dislocation, family decimation, a southern economy on the brink, and the plight of the slave-now-set-free, little better for the cost of war. Ayers factual record of these war years in Franklin County Pennsylvania and Augusta County Virginia exudes with empathy for both the high cost and the relatively low return of the war, especially when one considers the plight of the freedmen who became free but not equal. One cannot but empathize with the plight of the former slaves and the continuing tyranny of their masters even in the post-war South.

Ayers is a master storyteller who does not get in the way of the narrative. Ayers provides ample facts without bogging down in useless details. The narrative keeps apace with the events as they unfolded and as viewed by the citizens of Pennsylvania and Virginia. This much-awaited second volume takes no second place to the first volume penned by Ayers. Rather, this book is a worthy addition to Ayers’ fantastically conceived Valley of the Shadow project.

Read this book. It will strengthen your understanding of the Civil War in particular while serving as a cautionary tale regarding the grizzly high cost of war in general. This book will have you empathize with those who fought and suffered in this terrible period of our National history. And although the light of freedom for the slaves was thin indeed, one will rejoice in that freedom even while coming to a deeper understanding of the cost to buy that freedom and the cost of those who for so long before the war and sadly after the war lived without real freedom. This is an important book. Happy reading!

[Fred Svoboda · Rating 4 out of 5]

The real plus factor for this history of the valley from mid-war into Reconstruction is its access to a digital archive of letters, diaries and the like that allows Ayers to track and illustrate the attitudes of those in two representative counties, one Union and one Confederate. These make clear why the two sides could not understand each other and compromise--and why southern attitudes against African Americans were so virulently negative once these people tried to act in their own self interest rather than serving as sentimentalized "faithful servants."

[Ted Hunt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is the second volume of a two book set about the Civil War that was based on the research that Edward Ayres did to put together the website "Valley of the Shadow" when he was teaching at the University of Virginia three decades ago. The website contains a treasure trove of primary source materials- newspapers, letters, government records, etc. from two counties 100 miles apart- Augusta Country, Virginia, and Franklin County, Pennsylvania. The first book, "In the Presence of Mine Enemies" takes a very close look at the events from the lead up to the Civil War to the eve of the battle of Gettysburg through the lens of these two communities. This second volume (published thirteen years later, as Ayres' stint at president of the University of Richmond took up a lot of his time) picks the story up at the time of Gettysburg and examines the course of the last two years of the war and the period of Reconstruction. The book does exactly what it sets out to do, which is to bring the reader deeply into the lives of two communities in order to gain an understanding of the nature of the Civil War at the "ground level." The 1864 campaigns that saw destruction brought to both Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and Staunton, Virginia, are described in great detail, as the events in the Shenandoah Valley in 1864 played an essential role in shaping the outcome of the war. However, as illustrative as the book's sections about the war were, what I really appreciated reading about was how the people of Augusta County conducted themselves during Reconstruction. Despite the interest among some of the people of this part of Virginia to bring about some type of racial reconciliation, the shape of the community's/state's/nation's history yet to come was very clear when one looks at how the first decade after the war unfolded. Indeed, a quick Google search of modern Staunton reveals that just this past fall (2018) the town was wrestling with the question of whether to change the name of Robert E. Lee High School (they did). The final chapter of the book is called "The Past Is Not Dead," and reading this book makes clear that so many of the issues that modern Americans wrestle with were set in motion 150 years ago. I did not give the book five stars simply because the map and images of Chambersburg in the middle of the book are mislabeled as "1863". The events that were pictured were not part of the Gettysburg campaign, so those images are a little confusing. (And I cannot believe that no one caught these mistakes before the book was published.) In any event, the book is very much a worthwhile reading endeavor.

[Francis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a sequel to another written by Edward Ayers about the same region of the nation, the Shenandoah Valley and southwestern Pennsylvania, set in the 1850s-1862. I did not read the former book and it was not necessary to read (especially since my interests were more inclined to this period of the Civil War and Reconstruction than the former). I recommend this book to anyone who wants to really explore what living during the Civil War in small-town America was really like since it is a dual community study of WV/VA and PA.

First, one of the most illuminating realities that Ayers reveals about the Civil War South is just how much slavery undergirded the Confederate war effort and the ways that Southern secessionists resented the Confederate government's decision to impress enslaved people to support the military. Add to that the ways the Union army recruited Black men (and women) into its organizational structure as soldiers and workers and it becomes clear how the Civil War brought about societal sea changes for everyone who lived in this region. Caveat: enslaved people were not Confederate soldiers; they were taken from their owners to work for the Confederate military at times as laborers or porters, etc. The myth of Black Confederates is a myth.

Second, Ayers detailed account of life in the Shenandoah after the Civil War explores the limits of Reconstruction and freedom for many of the freed people who lived among their former enslavers. If all politics is local politics (as the maxim goes), Ayers evidences time and again how the defeated Confederates of the Shenandoah remembered and reestablished their control over the region's Black citizens even with the presence of the Union army, Freedmen's Bureau agents, and other Unionists in the region. He demonstrates at the local level how resistance to the Reconstruction revolution developed and ultimately succeeding in segregating society despite the legal protections of the XIII, XIV, and XV Amendments.

I think reading this and then reading a book such as Eric Foner's A Short History of Reconstruction lays a solid foundation for anyone seeking to understand more about the ways that the Civil War and Reconstruction did and did not change American society.

[Erica · Rating 5 out of 5]

This well-written narrative focuses on the counties of Augusta, Virginia and Franklin, Pennsylvania (both in the Shenandoah Valley but divided by the Mason-Dixon Line) from July 1863 through 1902. The historical record that is the basis for the book is from Dr. Ayers' Valley of the Shadow Digital Archive that he created at UVA. In the last chapter of the book, Ayers tells about the conclusion of the life of a man who we followed through the war, Joseph Waddell (because of the diary he kept and his publication of the Annals of Augusta County). He quotes Waddell as writing the following in 1902, "I have been someone criticized on the score that I have devoted more space to persons comparatively obscure than to prominent men. I have done this purposely, my object being to give an account of the people. Distinguished or prominent men have other historians or biographers." This really resonated with me because Ayers masterfully does the same thing in this book. While he provides the necessary historical context as a backdrop to better understand the lives of people in these counties, his book focuses on how the war and reconstruction affected the "average" people of a Union-sympathizing county and of a Confederate-sympathizing county and how they affected the war and reconstruction. Of course, there is nothing "average" about people who were able to withstand so much struggle and sacrifice. This is why I love history. Ayers' so vividly paints the picture of these counties that I felt transported back in time. He is a gifted writer. Being a teacher, I really enjoyed his research on the schools that were established for freedpeople in Augusta. This may be my favorite historic narrative.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Describing my feelings about “The Thin Light of Freedom” is daunting. The book is the second in a series of a 20+ year project coming to fruition by the historian Edward L. Ayers. The source of the book is the initial result of the project collecting and organizing thousands of personal accounts from two communities (one in Pennsylvania and the other in Virginia) from before the civil war through reconstruction. These letters, diaries, and other communications are publicly available and searchable. “The Thin Light of Freedom” is Ayers attempt to condense these documents into a civil war narrative that is limited in scope to how the war and reconstruction was felt moment by moment in these communities. The wonderful rhythm of this book is to focus on a set cast of characters throughout the war going big picture to give context where necessary but immediately shrinking the scope back down to give the events as people saw them in that moment describing their perspective with words of the time and lacking the benefit of hindsight. One of the most beautiful and difficult things Ayers does is include the perspective of black civilians and enslaved peoples throughout the war. Something that, were the authors truly unbiased, the majority of civil war histories would have already made common practice. Instead this book is almost unique in its inclusion and is all the more accurate and impactful for it. Imminently quotable, I can recommend “The Thin Light of Freedom” as an essential to anyone who is interested in any understanding of the times deeper than battle tactics and maps.

[Ms211 · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Thin Line of Freedom is a stunning culmination of social, military, and political history of the Civil War era set in the Valley of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Ayers achieves this by his research about Staunton, Augusta County, and Chambersburg, Franklin County. Ayers' argument is that slavery had been protected in the Constitution and would have continued had the slaveholding states not gone to war against the United States. In response, the Republicans achieve the final radical blows to this "peculiar institution." Ayers' method of using diaries, letters, newspapers, and his voice in italics illustrates how the two counties can represent the larger South and North. In 1865 towards the final battles of the war, Ayers conveys the horrific continuance of the Confederacy. "The soldiers of the North and South continued to kill each other even when the killing and dying seemed to have little meaning except to those who love them. " He did not use italics here, which could have been powerful. Ayers' description of the attack at Chaffin’s bluff and the letters from black soldiers is some of the most compelling work in his book. Ayers' excellent prose allows the reader to be in their 19th-century world.

[Emily Purcell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an exceeding well documented look at two counties, separated by the border between the Union and the Confederacy during the civil war -- from the beginning of the war through reconstruction. There is a wealth of first hand and contemporary second hand detail here from letters, diaries, newspaper and government records. Amazing and eye opening. It shows that the very things that are still contested about this conflict today were moving targets even then. The wealth of detail about the lives of black Americans in these two counties alone is worth reading this book for.

[Ginny · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fine book to provide another layer of understanding about the Civil War. The premise was micro-focused on two towns (one North and the other South) in a specific area in the Great Valley that lead up to Gettysburg. The author found diaries, letters, and newspaper articles from people who lived in this area and constructed a detailed personal account of what their days were like during the Civil War and thereafter. It might not sound unique, but given the detail and focus, it really was.

Very very well done!

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has two parts. The first deals with battles in the Civil War, focusing on Virginia and Pennsylvania. That part is not unlike other Civil War books. The second part is the interesting one. It deals with reconstruction after the war and is enlightening for those who don't know what was done to try to reunite the country and to figure out how slaves were to live their lives now that they were free for the first time.

[Ddoddmccue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two communities at the ends of the Shenandoah Valley, in Virginia and Pennsylvania, represent rich sources for two diverse perspectives of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Mining an impressive number of primary sources, Ayers highlights the deep rooted differences and conflicts that shaped not only the future course of the United States but foreshadow the tribalism currently shaping our nation.

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not your typical book about emancipation. The author does a good job chronicling the lives of residents in two towns on the Mason-Dixon line border. He uses many anecdotes and quotes to show the war's impact on the population. I found the narrative to be very compelling. When I got to the end of the book, I felt I had actually added to my Civil War knowledge. Definitely a worthy effort and worthwhile contribution to Civil War literature.

[Roberto Chavez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Depressing book. Behavior that took place 150 years ago still happens today. The South refused to admit it was wrong on anything and enablers took advantage of these feelings for elections. Nothing really changes, even after 150 years.

[John Whitaker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as historical as I thought it would be, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. The book focuses a lot on individual stories from both sides that are microcosms of the war. Some post-war information was included that show how Reconstruction played out.

[Bsldavio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nonfiction-history

[Straw · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmm, this book had some great trivia and was pretty engaging. However, the attempts to weave it into a grand narrative often felt a bit forced.

[Bonnie Hoover · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting topic, expertly researched and very well composed prose. Towards the end, I did tire of the highly personal stories. Overall, a great read.

[Drew Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating window into the lives of civilians as well as soldiers during the Civil War in the Shenandoah Valley.

[Drew · Rating 4 out of 5]

A remarkable approach to the Civil Way in the Shenandoah that brings out the humanity of ordinary people.

[william a. mcmanus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting local perspective on the civil war. Really draws out the pro slavery democrats and the anti slavery republicans. The reconstruction
fiasco was very enlightening.

[Mindy Greiling · Rating 4 out of 5]

Through diaries, diligent, balanced research and superior writing, Ayers brings the Civil War and Reconstruction to life. People seeking to understand politics today would do well to read this book.

[Sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really informative even though inevitably hurtful. Gives incredible insight to the lesser known narratives of such a costly war

[Gavin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of detail on the cost of slavery for America. Wide-ranging and deep, perhaps obvious to most, but Ayers gets into what it really meant.

[Sally]

Gilder Lehrman Book Breaks title

[Jim Swike · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought I would have turned based on the title. Learned some, not as much as I expected. Maybe you will feel differently. Enjoy!

[Charles Hirschy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written, insightful, and enjoyable to read!