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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20270320T093000
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SUMMARY:Announcing CVBT 2027 Spring Seminar
DESCRIPTION:“The Common Soldier in War and Memory” \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSave the Date! \n\n\n\nTickets Will Go Fast! \n\n\n\nCome Join CVBT at our 2027 Spring Seminar! \n\n\n\nGreat Programs and Presenters as Always! \n\n\n\n\nRegister Now!\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nJoin CVBT for Another Exciting Spring Seminar \n\n\n\nOur 2027 event is all set and will be held March 20th\, returning to the Tabernacle United Methodist Church in historic Fredericksburg. \n\n\n\nMorning coffee as well as a sumptuous lunch is again                          included in the event package. \n\n\n\nThis year we have another slate of incredible historians                              and authors presenting. \n\n\n\nInteresting displays\, silent auction\, special prizes and more! \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOur Presenters (More Info on Presenters to Come) \n\n\n\n\nDr. Stephen Berry – University of Georgia  \n\n\n\n“A Haystack of Needles: The Civil War in the Words of Its Least Literate Men” \n\n\n\nThe earliest works on the Civil War soldier privileged the letters of privileged soldiers—men like Sullivan Ballou who wrote in what we might call the war’s “high tongue.” But every archive also holds a few letters from men who wrote “by ear”: soldiers who had never written a letter in their lives and who struggled\, misspelling and all\, to make themselves and their experience understood to the families they’d left behind. Their letters can be harder to read\, but they are often the more startling—rawer and less guarded about fear\, homesickness\, boredom\, and killing than the polished ones we think we know. What happens when we pull each of these needles from the haystack and assemble a haystack of needles? What does an archive of the truly common soldier reveal about the war as most men actually lived it? \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSarah Kay Bierle – Independent Scholar  \n\n\n\n“Chancellorsville: “From the Place of Blood and Wrath His Soul Changed” \n\n\n\nOne lesser-explored aspect of the battle of Chancellorsville is the response of the common soldier. From the “Mud March” through the retreat at Chancellorsville\, Union soldiers weathered leadership changes\, growth in self-confidence\, and steadily burning desire to soundly beat the Confederates on a battlefield in the east. During the same period\, Confederate soldiers experienced winter hardships\, nationalistic and religious revival\, and a tantalizing hope that a crushing battlefield victory could still secure foreign aid to their cause. As the armies clashed in May 1863\, morale was remarkably high\, but how did the common soldier respond during the battle and to the outcomes? This presentation will give a high-level overview of the battle of Chancellorsville and then delve into the writings of common soldiers on both sides\, following their responses to battlefield circumstances and drawing conclusions about the morale shifts that they experienced. The results may be surprising but will lend a deeper understanding into the mindset of the soldiers in the ranks as they turned northward for the summer campaign into Pennsylvania.  \n\n\n\n  \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nDr. James Broomall – University of Richmond \n\n\n\n“The Things They Collected: Battlefield Relics and the Making of Civil War Memory” \n\n\n\nThroughout the American Civil War\, common soldiers gathered what they variously called trophies\, artifacts\, relics\, and souvenirs. Although they often used these terms interchangeably\, they collected deliberately and lent different meanings to the things they took. The hundreds of thousands of commonplace objects gathered had both public and private lives. On the one hand\, objects taken from battlefields were forever linked to a site of conflict\, marking the military career of the gatherer or holding intimate associations with fallen comrades. On the other hand\, many items traveled from the frontlines to the home front\, thereby broadening their meaning. Citizens tried to decipher the face of war through the items soldiers collected. In a conflict fought on an unparalleled scale with new technologies and incomprehensible casualties\, combatants groped for ways to express the experience of armed conflict as non-combatants struggled to understand it. Objects offered tangible expressions. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nRonald Coddington – Military Images magazine  \n\n\n\n“Civil War Portrait Photography: Reflections of a Generation” \n\n\n\nThe first collectors of Civil War photos were those who lived during the four-year struggle. As the years ticked by and they passed from the scene\, their likenesses were handed down through the generations. Some remained with families. Others landed in antique shops. Many were lost to the elements or tossed into trash heaps. During the Civil War’s centennial\, a new generation rediscovered these intimate artifacts. Today\, a vibrant community of collectors are caretakers of these portraits. In this talk\, Ron answers key questions: Why do these images exist? What were the popular formats? Why did they pose this way? How did the war impact portrait photography in the North and South? \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHampton Newsome – Independent scholar \n\n\n\n“George Bernard’s War” \n\n\n\nIn 1892\, George S. Bernard\, a veteran of the 12th Virginia Infantry\, produced a book titled War Talks of Confederate Veterans\, a collection of firsthand accounts focusing on the battles and campaigns in the east. Bernard prepared a second volume but was never able to publish it. After his death in 1912\, his papers became scattered or simply lost. But a series of finds\, culminating with the discovery of a cache of documents in Roanoke\, made it possible to reconstruct the missing second volume\, which was published in 2012 as Civil War Talks: Further Reminiscences of George S. Bernard and His Fellow Veterans. Newsome will speak about the accounts Bernard gathered from both Confederate and Union veterans about famous campaigns\, Bernard’s efforts to gather these stories during a time of reconciliation and political turmoil\, and the discoveries that led to the publication of the missing volume. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPresenters Bios  \n\n\n\nDr. Stephen Berry is the author or editor of eight books on America in the mid-19th century\, including his most recent\, The Original Black Panther: Prince Rivers and the Lost City of Hamburg (UGA Press\, 2026)\, as well as Count the Dead: Coroners\, Quants\, and the Birth of Death as We Know It (UNC Press\, 2022). Berry is Secretary-Treasurer of the Southern Historical Association; co-director\, with Claudio Saunt\, of the Center for Virtual History; and co-editor\, with Amy Murrell Taylor and Fay Yarbrough\, of the UnCivil Wars series at the University of Georgia Press. He helps lead the Digital Humanities Initiative at the University of Georgia’s Willson Center for Humanities and Arts\, and oversees two major web projects: CSI Dixie\, devoted to the coroner’s office in the nineteenth-century South\, and Private Voices\, which collects the letters of Civil War soldiers — North and South\, Black\, white\, and Native — who wrote “by ear.” His work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities\, the Mellon Foundation\, and the American Council of Learned Societies\, among others. \n\n\n\nSarah Kay Bierle graduated from Thomas Edison State University with a BA in History and works in the Education Department at American Battlefield Trust. She has spent years exploring ways to share quality historical research in ways that will inform and inspire modern audiences\, including school presentations\, writing\, battlefield tours\, and speaking engagements. She continues to study the Civil War in the Shenandoah Valley and has published seven books\, including Glorious Courage: John Pelham in the Civil War (Savas Beatie\, 2025) and Decisions at Chancellorsville (University of Tennessee Press\, 2025). \n\n\n\nDr. James Broomall holds the William Binford Vest Chair in the Department of History at the University of Richmond. He is a cultural historian of the Civil War era and has published works in Commonplace\, Ohio Valley History\, Gettysburg Magazine\, Civil War History\, Civil War Monitor\, and Civil War Times. He co-edited with William A. Link Rethinking American Emancipation: Legacies of Slavery and the Quest for Black Freedom (Cambridge University Press\, 2016)\, and the University of North Carolina Press published his book\, Private Confederacies: The Emotional Worlds of Southern Men as Citizens and Soldiers\, in 2019. Dr. Broomall has completed three major historic resource studies for National Park Service sites and frequently conducts guided tours of historic sites and Civil War-era battlefields. He directed the George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War at Shepherd University\, in West Virginia\, for nearly a decade and previously served on the faculty of the University of North Florida and Virginia Tech.  \n\n\n\nRonald Coddington is the author of five books in a series featuring Civil War portrait photography published through Johns Hopkins University Press\, they are: Faces of the Civil War: An Album of Union Soldiers and Their Stories; Faces of the Confederacy: An Album of Southern Soldiers and Their Stories; African American Faces of War: An Album; Faces of the Civil War Navies: An Album of Union and Confederate Sailors; and Faces of Civil War Nurses. Ron’s sixth book\, Gettysburg Faces: Portraits and Personal Accounts was published by Gettysburg Publishing in 2022. Ron also wrote for the New York Times “Disunion” series from 2011-2014. His contributions documented the experiences of the enlisted men and line officers who participated in the Civil War. Ron is also the editor of Military Images\, a position he has held since 2013. A 1985 graduate of the University of Georgia\, he lives in Arlington\, Virginia\, with his wife\, Anne. \n\n\n\nHampton Newsome has written several books on the Civil War including his most recent title\, Victory at Appomattox: Grant and Lee’s Final Campaign to be published by University Press of Kansas in early 2027. He is also editor\, along with John Horn and John Selby\, of Civil War Talks: Further Reminiscences of George S. Bernard and His Fellow Veterans\, which was published by University of Virginia Press and is the subject of his seminar talk. His books on the 1864 operations in North Carolina as well as the Union advance on Richmond during the Gettysburg Campaign in 1863 earned the Emerging Civil War Book Award. Recently retired from a career practicing consumer and environmental law\, Newsome is a regular speaker at Civil War Round Tables\, and has conducted tours of sites around Richmond\, Petersburg\, and Appomattox.  \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPlease Visit our Event Sponsors \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nRegister Now!
URL:https://cvbt.org/event/announcing-cvbt-2027-spring-seminar/
LOCATION:Tabernacle United Methodist Church\, 7310 Old Plank Road\, Fredericksburg\, Virginia\, 22407\, United States
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