ISSUED: 6 April 2021
MEDIA CONTACT: Valerie Owens
SHEPHERDSTOWN, WV — Shepherd University’s George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War (GTMC) is postponing a Facebook live panel discussion that was scheduled to take place on Wednesday, April 14, at 6:30 p.m. titled “A Grinding Curse—Race and Slavery in the Shenandoah Valley.”
Dr. James Broomall, GTMC director, will moderate the discussion, which is free and open to the public. The panel will include Kristen Laise, executive director, Belle Grove Plantation; Matthew Greer, Syracuse University Ph.D. candidate; and Jonathan Noyalas, director, McCormick Civil War Institute at Shenandoah University.
In 1832, during a debate on the future of slavery in Virginia, Jefferson County delegate Henry Berry, himself a slaveholder, took to the floor calling for the gradual end to slavery in Virginia, describing it as “a grinding curse upon this state.” Citizen petitions from across Virginia also called for the gradual or outright abolition of slavery. Despite those efforts, slavery continued in Virginia for another 33 years. By the time the Civil War started, Virginia has the largest slave population in the country, numbering nearly 500,000.
The panel discussion will focus on how slavery was viewed in the Shenandoah Valley given the large population of slaves and whether those views were different from the rest of Virginia. Panelists will also explore whether the enslaved lives were vastly different from those living east of the Blue Ridge Mountains, how they interacted with Union soldiers during the Civil War, and how their lives changed during Reconstruction and beyond. Audience participation and questions will be encouraged.
For more information, contact Tim Ware, GTMC administrative assistant.
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