Congratulations to the Winner of the 2019 George and Ann Richards Prize

Caroline E. Janney has won the $1,000 George and Ann Richards Prize for the best article published in The Journal of the Civil War Era in 2019. The article, “Free to Go Where We Liked: The Army of Northern Virginia After Appomattox,” appeared in the March issue.

Janney’s essay examines the period immediately following the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. It shows that the actions of these soldiers while being disbanded presaged the violent opposition to the social and political changes wrought by emancipation in the postwar South.

In the words of the prize committee, Janney’s “systematic interpretation of the disbanding of the Army of Northern Virginia reveals at once the dynamism of military history to explain broader social and cultural issues.” Furthermore, “her measured nuance helps the reader to understand that ‘surrender’ at Appomattox and general emancipation were not just a ‘finish’ or a ‘start,’ but rather both a panoply of contested beginnings, endings, and turning points in regional, national and racial identities. To that end, Janney encourages readers to center contingency and context when investigating the past.”

Janney is the John L. Nau III Professor of the American Civil War and Director of the John L. Nau Center for Civil War History at the University of Virginia. She is the author of Burying the Dead but Not the Past: Ladies’ Memorial Associations and the Lost Cause (UNC Press, 2008) and Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation (UNC Press, 2013). She co-edited with Gary W. Gallagher Cold Harbor to the Crater: The End of the Overland Campaign (UNC Press, 2015) and edited Petersburg to Appomattox: The End of the War in Virginia (UNC Press, 2018). She serves as a co-editor of the University of North Carolina Press’s Civil War America Series and is the past president of the Society of Civil War Historians.

Awarded annually, the Richards Prize celebrates the generosity of George and Ann Richards, who were instrumental in the growth of the Richards Civil War Era Center and in the founding of The Journal of the Civil War Era.

For more information, visit https://www.journalofthecivilwarera.org/.