Caroline Janney's blog

Over the course of the winter of 1860–61, a cohort of self-described conservatives waged a prolonged campaign to avert civil war in the aftermath of the election of Abraham Lincoln and the subsequent secession of seven Southern states. Among the leaders of this movement for peace was Lincoln’s longtime rival and defeated presidential candidate Stephen A. Douglas. Douglas’s Democratic Party had foundered on the shoals of sectionalism in the 1860 campaign, leading to rival Northern and Southern Democratic tickets and a decisive Republican victory in the electoral college.

            “This Park, together with its many sisters which are coming to completion in every part of our land, is in the largest sense a work of conservation. Through all of them we are preserving the beauty and the wealth of the hills and the mountains and the plains and the trees and the streams."

            - President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Address at the Dedication of Shenandoah National Park, July 3, 1936

My name is Nicholas Cutchins, and I am a fourth-year history major at UVA with a concentration in War, Violence, and Society. After a successful Nau Center internship at Antietam National Battlefield last year, I knew that my Civil War history journey was just getting started. When I applied for summer internships this year, Manassas National Battlefield Park was easily top of my list, and I am very grateful that the staff there were willing to give me this opportunity.

My name is Nick Love, and I am a fourth-year student pursuing a degree in history and a minor in political science. I had the honor and the privilege of spending my summer interning at Appomattox Court House National Historic Park in their Cultural Resources department. I will treasure the experiences I had, the knowledge I gained, and the people that I had the opportunity to meet. My time at the park just fueled my love of history, which I did not think was possible, and it provided me with a passion for protecting and preserving historical objects.

Every historical project worth its salt includes at least a handful of genuine archival surprises. One that shaped my book, An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South, took place in the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library in the winter of 2019 (a visit made possible by the support of a Nau Center Library Fellowship).