Abstract

Interactive Geography for Visualizing Emancipation in the Civil War South
Track: Mapping
Authors: Scott Nesbit, Robert Cheetham

Funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, "Visualizing Emancipation" is part of an ongoing Atlas of American History being developed by the University of Richmond that sheds light on when and where men and women became free in the Civil War South. It tells the complex story of emancipation by mapping documentary evidence of black men and women's activities - using official military correspondence, newspapers, and wartime letters and diaries - alongside movements of Union regiments and the shifting legal boundaries of slavery. An animation feature shows how the geographies of these events and military positions of 3,500 Union regiments changed on a week-by-week basis throughout the war. The Javascript-based web application relies on the ArcGIS Online gray canvas basemap to highlight the data while providing geographic context for end users.

This presentation will demonstrate how GIS creates an interactive environment that engages students with history.