Norton“The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America” By James Oakes, Special To The Washington Post In 1991 Edward Ayers, one of the most accomplished historians of the 19th century, got the idea for a different kind of history of the Civil War. Rather than paint a grand tableau of the momentous conflict between the North and the South, he would retell the story on a human scale by focusing on two places, Augusta County in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and Franklin County in Pennsylvania, 200 miles to the north.