The American Civil War, it is frequently noted, has spawned more books than nay other topic in U.S. history. The same may now be said of the Civil War and internet websites. A search on Google reveals 3,640,000 different internet sites devoted to the era of the Civil War. As in the print medium, some of these offering are extraordinary in their scope and content while many offer little to the serious student of America’s greatest conflict. Fortunately, The Valley of the Shadow is in the former category.

The site is essentially an archive of primary sources from and about two American communities, Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania, during the Civil War period. Originally conceived as a traditional book by Edward L. Ayers of the University of Virginia, The Valley of the Shadow premiered as a website in 1993 and has since grown to its present status as one of the most widely used sites related to the conflict between the Union and the Confederacy. The Valley of the Shadow gives voice to ordinary Americans of these two communities through its digital collection of letters, diaries, newspapers, speeches, census records, church records and maps.

Navigating the site is largely intuitive, aided by a graphic representation of the site as a three story museum with each floor representing a distinct phase of the Civil War era – The Eve of War, The War Years, and The Aftermath. Each of these museum floors has “rooms” devoted to such topics as letters and diaries, newspapers, church records and maps. At the center of each is a Reference Center with links to each searchable database for that area as well as timelines and a Bibliography. Hence, one can easily navigate to the Reference Center for The War Years and easily search numerous individual databases for records and primary sources. These include collections grouped under four major categories: Daily Life Categories, Census Categories, Wartime Categories, and Postwar Categories. A researcher, then, could go to the Reference Center, click on “Search the Valley Newspapers,” and search for all newspaper articles related to Abraham Lincoln in anyone of five newspapers published in the two counties during the war period, allowing the user to discern changing attitudes towards Lincoln in the North and the South over an extended period of time. The value of such a research tool for both students and serious scholars can hardly be overstated. This is precisely the type of research that cannot be conducted as effectively in any other media. As the collection continues to grow (and it has been recently updated and expanded) its value as a source for serious research will grow as well.

Despite the numerous awards it has received, including the first eLincoln Prize awarded by the Lincoln and Soldiers Institute at Gettysburg College and the 2002 Robinson prize awarded by the American Historical Association, The Valley of the Shadow is not without its critics. Professional archivists have complained that the collection is not really archival in the true sense for several reasons. First, its contents were assembled by the Valley Project and did not emerge from a single collection or source of materials. Second, the “provenance” of the material may, at least in some circumstances, be questioned. Many of the letters, diaries, and other materials were submitted by local residents and others and the authenticity of such materials must always be questioned by serious historians.

Those concerns aside, The Valley of the Shadow achieves its primary mission: to detail “life in two American communities, one northern and one Southern, from the time of John Brown’s Raid through the era of Reconstruction.” It does so with a design that is clear, concise and uncluttered. The presence of additional materials on “using the Valley Project,” including helpful teaching materials for use in the classroom serve to make the site even more user-friendly. Designers for the emerging History Web would do well to study this site as a model for future archival web resources.

Ron Maggiano
George Mason University