By Amy Needham

Virginia Museum of the Civil War works to incorporate other perspectives into education.

May 15, 1864 — the only time in U.S. history that an entire student body was engaged in battle. Two hundred fifty-seven cadets from the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) marched on New Market to defend their homeland for the Confederacy. They were young and smaller in size than the Union Army, but they overcame the challenge.

“They won. This was the last major Confederate victory in the Valley.”

Sarah Hebert speaks of the Battle of New Market with an ardent tone. She’s the supervisor of historical interpretation at the Virginia Museum of the Civil War, which now sits on the site of the battle. But in an ever-changing social climate where Confederate monuments are being removed and buildings are being renamed, Hebert is looking to teach people a different perspective on the war — one focused on personal connection.

Hebert (’12), a James Madison University alumna, has been linked to New Market since her time at JMU, where she studied history. She spent time at the battlefield as an intern and later decided to make that work into a career.

As the overseer of educational programming — a position she’s held for just over five years — Hebert conducts most tours, gives hands-on presentations to school groups, hosts seasonal events and dabbles in the museum’s social media. She also supervises a volunteer corps of about 60 people.

“Our mission is to interpret life in the Shenandoah Valley from about 1840 to 1870,” Hebert said, “which is a pretty long period of time, and then also tell the story of the Battle of New Market.”

But as Hebert’s made a career out of immersing visitors in a piece of Confederate history nestled in the Shenandoah Valley, Virginians have been trying to make sure the full story is told.

Relocations and removals

The murder of George Floyd in May 2020 sparked a nationwide movement to dismantle statues commemorating Confederate figures — a movement that placed the former capital of the Confederacy, Richmond, Virginia, at the epicenter.

Following demonstrations, four Confederate monuments were removed from Richmond’s Monument Avenue in the summer of 2020, including one depicting Gen. Stonewall Jackson. Perhaps the most prominent statue along the avenue, a 21-foot bronze sculpture of Gen. Robert E. Lee erected in 1890, was removed in Sep. 2021 following an order from former Gov. Ralph Northam. Hebert said staff at the museum watched the situation in Virginia’s capital and in surrounding areas “very intently.”

“We got a fair amount of phone calls because of it,” Hebert said. “It seems like a lot of folks, at least from our experience, were hoping that if these monuments were going to be taken down, a lot of people wanted context put to them.”

Hebert said it seems museums are the best place to house monuments that have been removed. But, she said, space and money play into whether these large pieces of history can be preserved.

The Virginia Museum of the Civil War did agree to install one piece of history: A statue of Jackson was relocated from the front of VMI’s barracks to New Market in January 2021, Hebert said. 

Jackson was a physics professor at VMI and became known as Confederate leader “Stonewall” Jackson after leaving the institute. Bill Wyatt, VMI director of communications and marketing, said the statue honors his role as a Confederate general rather than his true connection to the institute as a professor. 

“[The] Civil War General never came back to VMI, had no association with VMI except as a young professional who taught at VMI,” Wyatt said.

Therefore, he said, the Board of Visitors believed it would be better suited at the Virginia Museum of the Civil War.

Jackson didn’t fight in the Battle of New Market, but he used a gap between the mountains nearby — the New Market Gap — to win earlier wars in the Valley. His statue now faces that gap.

Though VMI is connected to the Civil War through battles like New Market and figures like Jackson, Wyatt said it doesn’t make up the institution’s entire history. As VMI is a nationally recognized liberal arts institution, Wyatt said it’s important for administrators to have a broader view of the world and honor other figures from the institution who progressed history in different ways.

“It’s true that our cadets as a corps went to New Market and fought on the side of the Confederacy. We had 10 cadets who gave their life for the Confederacy during the Battle of New Market, and nobody’s trying to erase that history,” Wyatt said. “Our history is much, much greater than just what happened between 1861 and 1865.”

New perspectives

Hebert recognizes that Civil War education, especially with an emphasis on Confederate education, is a “difficult topic to navigate.” She emphasized that Confederates like Jackson and Lee were committing treason, but she still believes there are ways to learn about them without revering them.

“They were fighting against the U.S. government at that time, and it really isn’t something we should celebrate,” Hebert said. “[However], there’s two sides to every argument, and I do think even you should learn about the wrong side.”

A main goal of Hebert’s is to bring personal connection into her teaching of the Civil War and the Confederacy. She believes parallels can be drawn between people today and soldiers from the war.

“These people who lived 160 years ago — we shouldn’t reduce them to a number,” Hebert said. “They had lives, families, hobbies, careers, before they were soldiers.”

Hebert wants her younger students, particularly those around the age of the soldiers who fought at New Market, to relate to their historical counterparts. She acknowledges that the cadets, most of whom were minors, “fought to prolong slavery” — but Hebert wants her students to see this fact as a lesson not to blindly follow orders and an opportunity for self-awareness.

“At what point, as a 17-year-old, do you stand up for authority?” Hebert said. “I’m trying to get younger people to kind of question, you know, how they’ve gotten to this point in their lives and how they can relate to those folks.”

Jim Stevenson, a volunteer at the museum, performs black powder rifle demonstrations and equips students in traditional soldiers’ uniforms. He said he takes an “apolitical” and “non-judgmental” approach to education to give students “a little bit more appreciation of the way things were back then.”

“They’re basically people just like us today; they were just 150 years in the past,” Stevenson said. “What I hope they get away with it is the commonality between the soldiers of the North and the South … They were the same that they were all Americans, you know, fighting this war, and it’s so tragic that we had to pit American against American.”

Despite some negative connotations associated with the war expressed by the national movement, Hebert wants to present information so people can leave with a better understanding than when they arrived. She said visitors come to museums looking for answers and can feel comfortable asking them without fear of judgment or politics getting involved.

Stevenson said some visitors often can’t distinguish the Civil War from the Revolutionary War — he’s had some children ask him if the Confederates wore red and the Union wore blue. This is why he said education is important.

Instead of focusing on the bad parts of the war, Hebert likes to acknowledge that society is moving toward recognizing a larger population and “all of the people” in history who’ve progressed society. She said Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears, who visited New Market in the spring, is a perfect example of that progress.

“She made a note of that; like, good and bad, everything has progressed us to where we are today,” Hebert said, “to the point that she is a Black woman who is our lieutenant governor in Virginia, the former capital of the Confederacy.”

As much as society has progressed, the war is not far removed for some. Stevenson said the South is still “really passionate” about their history, and “they’ll let you know that passion.” Many of the Virginia Museum of the Civil War’s visitors have ancestors who fought on both sides, he said.

“It’s something that completely changed the country,” Stevenson said. “And we’re still feeling the effects of it today — still with all the racial tension and injustice that we have.”

Hebert understands why people aren’t keen on Civil War education and said she gets the “occasional angry person” who will walk through the door. But historians like her aren’t looking for a fight, she said. And given the current social climate, she believes it’s vital to learn about the war and have tough conversations.

“It is more important than ever to study that and to make yourself uncomfortable,” Hebert said. “That’s what’s going to make you grow. That’s what’s going to push us forward as a society.”