Virginia’s Civil War Battlefields: Stories from Living Landscapes

Brandy Station Battlefield - site of a large Freedman community after the Civil War.

American Battlefield Trust.

Recipient: American Battlefield Trust

Amount: $94,000.00

Virginia’s fields, forests, and farms were not frozen by brutal scenes of fighting between opposing armies during the Civil War. For the indigenous peoples and enslaved inhabitants of the state, lifeways and experiences preceded the sound of cannons, and their stories continued after the soldiers had left. Native homes and trading paths, some that predated the 19th century, marked the countryside. Some self-liberated Black Americans, escaping enslavement in Virginia, returned as soldiers in the Union Army. After the war, Freedman settlements formed across the state and included shops for commerce, homes for their residents, and graveyards for the dead. Battlefield stories often define histories of armed conflict; these lesser-known narratives of the Civil War, both on and off the battlefield, paint a more complete portrait of the war that tore us asunder and the contributions of diverse communities in protecting and realizing our most cherished ideals.

A 2022 Preservation Planning Grant awarded by the National Park Service’s American Battlefield Protection Program will support the American Battlefield Trust’s development of a strategy for documenting the material culture of Native tribes Black Americans at Virginia’s Civil War battlefields. Selecting three battlefields as case studies, the Trust will conduct primary source research, oral history interviews, and non-invasive field surveys to fill in gaps in the historical record. The Trust will apply lessons learned from these case studies to explore and document Virginia’s layered Civil War history, including indigenous landscapes and settlements, sites of enslaved agricultural and industrial labor, and settlements of freed people after the war.

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Preservation Planning Grants are the American Battlefield Protection Program's broadest and most inclusive grant program, promoting the stewardship of battlefields and sites of armed conflict on American soil. In addition, the program administers three other grants: Battlefield Land Acquisition Grants, the newly authorized Battlefield Restoration and Battlefield Interpretation grant programs. This financial assistance generates community-driven stewardship of historic resources at the state, tribal and local levels.

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Check out the American Battlefield Protection Program's website for more information about various grant offerings and eligibility.

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