The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil Warhttp://valley.vcdh.virginia.edu/ Created by Edward L. Ayers in cooperation with the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (IATH). Maintained by the Virginia Center for Digital History staff. Reviewed September 19, 2004.
The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War is a comparative site covering two communities, one northern and one southern, Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania, before, during and immediately after the American Civil War.
This site is extremely unique on the web. It is part archive, part an attempt to create an electronic exhibit and also includes valuable teaching resources, and thus can reach an audience of not only historical researchers but also genealogical researchers, as well as k-12 teachers and school children.
The site is divided into four extremely useful parts. The first three parts are divided by a timeline, “The Eve of War: Fall 1859 to Spring 1861”; “The War Years: Spring 1861 to Spring 1865” and “The Aftermath: Spring 1865 to Fall 1870.” The fourth section, “Using the Valley Project” includes valuable resources for those visiting the site, as well as teaching resources and links to articles that have “spun off” the Valley Project such as, in conjunction with the American Historical Review, the recently electronically published article, The Differences Slavery Made, which has also spun off a web site of its own. Also in this fourth section, there is a “Guide to the Valley” page designed to help visitors navigate and use the site to gain a fuller understanding of the Civil War experience in these two communities.
Each of the first three “main” sections of the site is further divided into sub sections, each directed at a different audience. For those historians and students who are looking for specific factual data on both communities before the outbreak of the war, there is a section entitled “1860 Statistics” which provide not only raw statistics, but also historical comparative analysis and well grounded conclusions based on this data. For example, based on a comparison chart of the land values in both Augusta County, VA and Franklin County, PA, it is concluded that, “Franklin farms were more intensely cultivated, and held a much higher average value per acre of improved and unimproved land across all soil types. In Augusta the larger the farm size the lower the average value by acre.” Therefore, avoiding the pitfalls discussed by Dr. Vernon Takeshita in his article Tangled Web: The Limits of Historical Analysis on the Internet. Specifically, that “The raw materials of history are wonderfully at home on the net, but historical analysis is surprisingly absent.”
Another of Takeshita’s complaints about historical analysis on the net is satisfied by the “Reference Center” sub-section in each of the three main sections of the site. In each section, the “Reference Center” includes a massive bibliography of both primary and secondary sources that interested web surfers can read for further information on the specific time period discussed.
For genealogists, this site is also a wonderful archival resource due to its inclusion of specific records. For example, in “The Eve of War: Fall 1859 to Spring 1861” section, interested web surfers can search the census records for both counties during this period in order to find information on a specific person or family. The tax records search for Augusta County, VA is very user friendly and can be done by either first or last name or by using tax data that the surfer may already know.
In addition to this research data, each section includes a sub section of letters and diaries as well as newspaper articles and images. All of these sub sections are also searchable, making them also useful for historical researchers. However, the main bonus of these materials is that the letters and images have the ability to make these two communities “come alive” for web surfers. They’re not just a bunch of tax and other data; real people lived here and experienced the war from each side.
Unfortunately, the presentation of these letters and diaries leaves much to be desired in terms of drawing in web surfers to read and view them. Digitized letters and diaries, as well as images, are simply presented as hyperlinks with brief descriptions of what each hyperlink leads to. This is profoundly uninspiring and really dampens the site’s ability to present the story of the real people who lived in these communities. These sections seem to be presented as an attempt to create a digital exhibit but due to their boring and highly textual presentation only serve to create a further archival feel to the site.
While it does do a good job of providing some historical analysis and conclusions based upon individual census or other data, the site does fall prey in one respect to Takeshita’s criticisms of digital history. There is no place on the site that provides an overall comparison of these two communities, such as a comparative journal article would do. It is up to the individual web surfer to use the data and images presented on the site to “follow” the story of one individual through the war and draw their own conclusions based on this story. Unfortunately, due to the design and presentation, following that “story” is not very interesting and will likely cause visitors to be driven away rather than press on through the myriad of textual links and lists.