For the first time, Shenandoah University students have collaborated on an essay for the Journal of the Shenandoah Valley During the Civil War Era — Shenandoah University’s only academic peer-reviewed journal.
Volume III of the 154-page journal contains six main essays and 11 book reviews. Eleven authors and 22 contributors worked on the publication, which highlights untold stories of the Civil War era in the Shenandoah Valley.
“Even though events or people discussed in the journal might not seem flashy or significant, they’re still an important part of the story of the Civil War,” said Jonathan Noyalas, ’01, M.A., director of the McCormick Civil War Institute. “History would not have happened the same without these less-significant events taking place.”
The first essay in the journal, “The Shenandoah Chanting Its Endless Requiem: A Roster of Cool Spring’s Union Dead” was written by Noyalas and four students: Jake Gabriele ’19; Victor Hererra ’20; Sarah Powell ’19; and Shelby R. Shrader ’17.
The essay took the students two years to complete and chronicles the lives of all 72 Union soldiers killed at the Battle of Cool Spring in 1864. The students spent hours poring over records—including pension records and regimental histories—in both local archives and the National Archives.
“Students used documents and evidence to reconstruct the lives of these soldiers who have otherwise been forgotten,” Noyalas said. “It’s a unique essay because it’s bringing the average soldier’s experience to life in the way a traditional book can’t. It’s looking at them as individuals. It’s taking people who are a statistic, in essence, and making them real again.”
The journal includes three essays that in some way deal with the Battle of Cool Spring and its aftermath; one essay about African-American children serving as apprentices in the Shenandoah Valley after the Civil War; an essay on Judge Richard Parker from Winchester (who tried abolitionist John Brown in 1859); and an essay about Unionist refugees during the Burning Raid, which was a Union military raid conducted in the Loudoun Valley in 1864.
The journal is available at the end of this week at the Winchester Book Gallery, Shenandoah University’s campus bookstore, Cedar Creek and Belle Grove National Historic Park, Belle Grove Plantation, Harpers Ferry National Historical Park and the Harrisonburg-Rockingham Historical Society.
The cost is $10, and all proceeds benefit the McCormick Civil War Institute and its efforts at Cool Spring Battlefield.
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