Introduction

The book’s introduction stresses that while a handful of historians have examined various aspects of the African American experience in the Shenandoah Valley during the Civil War era, the topic has been largely ignored or inaccurately portrayed. The introduction’s cornerstone is a historiographical discussion of how authors such as Joseph Waddell, John Walter Wayland, and Julia Davis—who minimized slavery’s role in the Valley, promulgated the myth that slavery was not important to the Valley’s agrarian economy, and wrote that enslaved people in the Shenandoah Valley were treated better than in other parts of the slaveholding South—influenced various authors. Finally, the introduction highlights the various primary source material, including freedom narratives, never before utilized by historians who investigated any aspect of the Shenandoah Valley’s African American story.