The Longwood University of today is not your mother’s Longwood College of yesterday. Today’s Longwood University is a bustling college community on a campus that Longwood College graduates of 20 years ago would not recognize.

A group of historians will explore the state of the country on the eve of the Civil War in a conference April 29 at the University of Richmond. Sponsored by the Virginia Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War Commission, the conference will be the first event commemorating the 150th anniversary of the war. UR President Edward L. Ayers will moderate as Civil War historians discuss events of 1859 that foreshadowed the war that would begin two years later.