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VHC Promotes Research on
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“Sharing Our Past — Shaping Our Future” Since 1974 |
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Vermont Civil War Sites |
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Office in Montpelier
11 Loomis Street, Montpelier, Vermont 05602 802.262.2626 Fax: 802.262.2620 E-mail: info@vermonthumanities.org |
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“The breadth of the Vermont initiative, and its clever interweaving of a wide array of cultural threads, makes it uncommonly attractive. . . . Vermont seems well-suited to this effort, which might serve as a model for others to emulate.” – Robert Krick, Civil War author and historian |
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VHC is promoting a statewide search for Vermont's Civil War sites: the public and private places where people mobilized, worked, argued, worried, and mourned. The Civil War affected all Vermonters—not only those who went to war—and home front history can be found in the churches where abolitionists lectured, the factories that made guns and uniforms, the farms run by women and children in the absence of men, and the monuments, GAR halls, and cemeteries throughout the state.
With undiscovered Civil War sites in every town, the VHC invites Vermonters to locate them, research their history, and share their stories. You don’t need to be a trained historian to discover Civil War sites, and the VHC has created a free research kit to help you search. Among the sites already found are a church in Braintree where William Lloyd Garrison spoke, the Constitution House in Windsor where Vermont’s state constitution outlawed slavery in 1777, a cave in Barnard where a man hid to avoid the draft, a home where women met to sew necessities for soldiers, and the house of the last surviving Civil War veteran in Jay.
Share your findings through a brochure or essay, a walking or driving tour, or an exhibit or event. With support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, VHC has created walking tour and brochure templates, and sample projects, such as our Civil War walking tour of Burlington. Be sure to use our Civil War Places logo to mark your projects as part of this exciting, statewide effort. Download the resources below and join the search.
VHC has undertaken the project in anticipation of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, which begins in 2011. So far as is known, no state in which major fighting did not occur has ever undertaken such a comprehensive inventory of its Civil War sites.
“Vermont is a treasure trove of Civil War sites, though it takes some digging to find them,” said Vermont historian and author Howard Coffin, who has traveled the state seeking out sites of significance large and small. “With this grant, we can discover them in every one of our towns and cities.”
Coffin is researching and writing a comprehensive guidebook on sites in Vermont related to the Civil War. Building on this effort, VHC is undertaking this broader and multi-faceted effort, of which his book would be a key part. The project seeks to both deepen people’s historical understanding and broaden interest in the Civil War period, local history, and history in general to more Vermonters and visitors.
Announcement of the project generated strong enthusiasm throughout the state and beyond. Governor Jim Douglas, in a letter to the NEH endorsing the project, wrote, “This project. . . affords Vermont a wonderful opportunity to strengthen tourism, communities, and education by presenting to a variety of public audiences the best of what Vermont really is—a state blessed with a beautiful landscape that is rich in heritage and vital communities.”
Kevin Graffagnino, former executive director of the Vermont Historical Society, wrote, “This is a creative and distinctive project. . . . It has wonderful possibilities for scholarship, for collaboration and coordination among cultural heritage organizations, and for community involvement throughout the state.”
Robert Krick, an author of 15 books on the Civil War and for 31 years Chief Historian of Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park in Virginia, one of the largest preserves of its kind in the world, considered the Vermont project innovative. “The breadth of the Vermont initiative, and its clever interweaving of a wide array of cultural threads, makes it uncommonly attractive,” Krick wrote. “Vermont seems well-suited to this effort, which might serve as a model for others to emulate.”
It is clear that Vermont contains a rich collection of such sites. Some relate to important events or entire towns, others capture the eccentricity of history and humanity. Examples include soldiers’ homes, Underground Railroad stops, drill fields, monuments, hospitals, factories that made war materials, cemeteries, and halls where war meetings were held and abolitionists spoke. Information about such sites and assistance in identifying and researching them is needed.
Vermont is an ideal state to undertake such a project for a number of reasons, including its manageable size, rich Civil War history, well-preserved natural and man-made landscape, and excellent archival resources. The project will spur myriad community projects related to specific sites and to the Civil War generally.
Civil War Project Memo – Overview (PDF) Participate using VHC’s Civil War Site Research Kit (PDF) Civil War walking tour of Burlington (PDF) Civil War research in Richmond (PDF) Create your own Civil War Walking tour Create a Civil War history brochure for your town Howard Coffin Essay: “Vermont in the Civil War” (PDF) VHC 2007 Fall Conference: The Northern Civil War Home Front
Civil War Logo
High resolution (1.8 MB) Low resolution (467 KB) PDF – SMALL PDF – LARGE
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