Virginia as Biggest Slaveholder Still Divided Over Civil War
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Edward L. Ayers knew Virginia was changing when more than 2,000 people arrived on a weekday at the University of Richmond’s basketball arena to hear a new perspective on the cause of the Civil War.
One hundred and fifty years after the start of the nation’s bloodiest war, the audience sat rapt as a professor displayed a screen image of a single page in a slaveowner’s account book that showed slavery was today’s equivalent of a $100 million-a-year business.