ECW’s Big News and Virtual Symposium

Well, the ECW community is supposed to be gathered at Stevenson Ridge this weekend for our annual symposium, sharing the camaraderie among authors, readers, speakers, and friends that has become a defining hallmark of the ECW brand. Alas, COVID-19 had other ideas, and we had to postpone this year’s symposium to next year. If there’s an up-side, the fallen leaders will still remain fallen, so the stories we planned to share this year aren’t apt to change all that much by next year.

Another upside is that we have a virtual symposium that we’re recording this weekend in place of our in-person symposium. Details on that in a second.

One of the big pieces of news we had planned to announce at this year’s symposium is that Emerging Civil War is now officially a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization. We have always run ourselves this way, with a strong focus on our educational mission, so our designation by the IRS really just formalizes the way we’ve done business for the last nine years. (Yes, ECW turns nine years old this month!)

We don’t plan to be a fund-raising organization. That would put us in competition with many of our great partners who rely on donations to keep them going. We don’t want to hurt them by dipping into the same fund-raising pool they rely on.

That said, with no symposium this year, we’re going to have a tight budget because the symposium is our major source of income. So, just this once, we’re hoping our readers might be willing to help us out with a tax-deductible donation to help us get through these lean times. If you’re interested in making a tax-deductible donation, you can do so through PayPal by clicking this link.

In the meantime, as our way of saying “Thank you” to the folks who bought tickets to this year’s symposium, only to have us finally have to postpone, we’re doing a virtual symposium. We have six speakers who’ll be coming to the Riddick House at Stevenson Ridge on Saturday:

• Paige Gibbons Backus: A Fight for Life or Death: Carnage in the Medical Field During Civil War
• Sarah Kay Bierle: “We’re the boys who rode around McClellan” The Chambersburg Raid of 1862
• Mark Maloy: The First Shots of the Civil War in Charleston Harbor
• Derek Maxfield: Hellmira: The Union’s Most Infamous Civil War Prison Camp
• Kevin Pawlak: In the Wake of Antietam: The Loudoun Valley Campaign of 1862
• Dan Welch: “Where all so well did their duty” George Greene’s Brigade at Gettysburg

We’ll record these six presentations and make them available on YouTube on Saturday, August 15 as a special preview to this year’s ticket holders. We’re also going to include a bonus interview with this year’s recipient of the Emerging Civil War Award for Service in Civil War Public History (whose identity remains a secret!).

You want to watch but didn’t get a ticket this year? If you buy a ticket to NEXT year’s symposium, you’ll also get access to our virtual symposium on August 15. You can get a ticket to next year’s symposium, August 6-8, 2021, for the early-bird price of $155 by clicking here.

But have no fear: C-SPAN is coming to record our virtual symposium, as well, so the programs will be available there this fall; we’ll also make them publicly available on YouTube this fall, as well.