Carol Sheriff received her B.A. from Wesleyan University and her Ph.D. from Yale University. She has taught at the College of William and Mary since 1993, where she has won the Thomas Jefferson Teaching Award, the Alumni Teaching Fellowship Award, and the University Professorship for Teaching Excellence. Carol teaches the U.S. history survey as well as classes on the Early Republic, the Civil War Era, and the American West. Her publications include THE ARTIFICIAL RIVER: THE ERIE CANAL AND THE PARADOX OF PROGRESS (1996), which won the Dixon Ryan Fox Award from the New York State Historical Association and the Award for Excellence in Research from the New York State Archives, and A PEOPLE AT… WAR: CIVILIANS AND SOLDIERS IN AMERICA'S CIVIL WAR, 1854-1877 (with Scott Reynolds Nelson, 2007). Carol has written sections of a teaching manual for the New York State history curriculum, given presentations at Teaching American History grant projects, appeared in the History Channel's Modern Marvels show on the Erie Canal, and is engaged in several public history projects marking the sesquicentennial of the Civil War.
David W. Blight is professor of American history and director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University.