The Calculus of Violence: How Americans Fought the Civil War by Dr. Aaron Sheehan-Dean (UVA PhD 2003), published by Harvard University Press, is the recipient of the 2018 Jefferson Davis Award for outstanding narrative works. Sheehan-Dean’s book “gives a deeply researched account of the nature of wartime violence, and its comparative approach is most welcome,” observed one of the award jurors. “He looks at a staggering range of actors from the average American – black, white, Native – to policy makers and generals,” wrote another juror. “He explains how the two sides diverged in their conceptions of just war (U.S. residents considered the Confederate toleration of guerrillas to be illegitimate, while Confederates considered the U.S. use of emancipation to be). But the war was not a total war, Sheehan-Dean convincingly contends.”
Dr. Sheehan-Dean is Fred C. Frey Professor and chair of the History Department at Louisiana State University; he earned his M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Virginia. He is also author of Why Confederates Fought: Family and Nation in Civil War Virginia (2007), co-author of the textbook, American Horizons: U.S. History in a Global Context (2103), and editor of The View from the Ground: Experiences of the Civil War Soldiers (2007), and a half-dozen other books on the American Civil War.
The two-volume Correspondence of Major General Emory Upton, edited by Dr. Salvatore G. Cilella, Jr., and published by the University of Tennessee Press, is the recipient of the 2017-2018 Founders Award for outstanding editing of primary source materials. Noting that “Emory Upton was one of the Civil War’s luminaries” who influenced the U.S. Army before, during, and after the War, the award jurors praised the Correspondence for the importance of the subject and the quality of the documents. They also praised Dr. Cilella for his work in assembling and weaving together a variety of documents from multiple sources and for the impeccable scholarship evidenced in his valuable introduction and annotations. “In short,” observed one of the award jurors, “I think this two-volume series does everything right.”
Dr. Cilella worked 43 years as a museum professional and retired as the president and CEO of the Atlanta History Center. In addition to the Correspondence of Major General Emory Upton, Dr, Cilella is author of Upton’s Regulars: The 121st New York Infantry in the Civil War (2009) and Fundraising for Small Museums (2011).
The Founders Award jury also named as finalists for the award The Legion’s Fighting Bulldog: The Civil War Correspondence of William Gaston Delony Lieutenant Colonel of Cobb’s Legion Cavalry and Rosa Delony, 1853-1863, edited By Vincent Joseph Dooley and Samuel Norman Thomas, Jr., published by Mercer University Press; and The War Outside My Window: The Civil War Diary of LeRoy Wiley Gresham, 1860-1865, edited by Janet Elizabeth Croon and published by Savas Beatie.
Established in 1970 by The Museum of the Confederacy, the Jefferson Davis and Founders Awards are presented by the American Civil War Museum, but the recipients are chosen by independent panels of scholars. The jurors for the 2018 Jefferson Davis Award are Dr. Kathryn J. Shively of Virginia Commonwealth University (chair), Dr. Stephen Rockenbach of Virginia State University, and Dr. William J. Cooper, Jr., Louisiana State University (emeritus). The jurors for the 2017-2018 Founders Award are Dr. Carl Moneyhon of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (chair), historian and documentary editor Dr. Peter C. Luebke, and Dr. Timothy J. Orr of Old Dominion University.