On April 27, writer Christopher Graham, delivered a lecture about his book Faith, Race, and the Lost Cause: Confessions of a Southern Church. When a young man enamored with Confederate iconography murdered worshipers at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston in 2015, the rector at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Richmond called his congregation to examine its own racial history and former identity as the “Church of the Confederacy.” St. Paul’s, in downtown Richmond, had been the home to wealthy and influential Virginians, and during the Civil War had hosted Confederate leaders, including Robert E. Le ..read more

On April 6, historian David O. Stewart delivered a lecture on the history behind his novel, The Burning Land, the second volume of his Overstreet saga. Writing a Civil War novel inspired by an ancestor’s long and tragic service in the Twentieth Maine Infantry meant considering how war changes soldiers, those closest to them, and communities. The impact on soldiers in combat has been called “soldier’s heart” and “shell shock,” “battle fatigue” and “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.” Each term reflects an effort to understand the impacts of facing death, and of performing acts that most have been ..read more

On March 16, historian Connor Williams discussed his role as lead historian for the U.S. Congress’ Naming Commission, with particular emphasis on the process of recommending new names for the three Virginia forts—Fort Lee, Fort A.P. Hill, and Fort Pickett. Though the Civil War’s battles were settled on the fields of our nation more than a century and half ago, the fields of our collective memories continue to be rife with conflict. This has especially proved the case over the last few years, as some Civil War monuments come down and other interpretations go up, sparking important questions. Wh ..read more

On March 1, 2023, bestselling author Douglas Brinkley delivered a lecture about his newest book, "Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening". New York Times bestselling author and acclaimed historian Douglas Brinkley chronicles the rise of environmental activism during the Long Sixties, telling a highly charged story of an indomitable generation that quite literally saved the natural world under the leadership of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon. JFK had been jolted by Rachel Carson’s book Si ..read more

On February 16, historian Brent Morris gave a lecture examining the lives of the maroons living in the Great Dismal Swamp and their struggles for liberation. The massive and foreboding Great Dismal Swamp sprawls more than 2,000 square miles and spills over parts of Virginia and North Carolina. From the early seventeenth century, the nearly impassable Dismal frustrated settlement. However, what may have been an impediment to the expansion of slave society became an essential sanctuary for many of those who sought to escape it. In the depths of the Dismal, thousands of maroons—people who had ema ..read more

On February 2, 2023, writer William Paul Lazarus gave a virtual lecture about his book, Virginia’s Civil Rights Hero: The Rev. Curtis W. Harris Sr. Just three months before Curtis Harris was born, the Virginia State Legislature passed the Racial Integrity Act, which banned interracial marriage down to “a single drop” of African blood. Harris was the sixth child of an impoverished sharecropper and his wife, living in a desolate outpost of the commonwealth while the sweeping regulation was passed by the most prominent men in the state. In time, however, Harris would lead the fight against this l ..read more

On January 19, 2023, author and journalist Michael Lee Pope traced the history of Harry Byrd’s conservative political organization, which ran Virginia politics for more than half a century. The story of the Byrd Machine is one that begins after the Civil War when Senator William Mahone created the first political machine with support from Black voters and Black elected officials. That was followed by a second political machine created by Senator Thomas Staples Martin to crush the progressive movement and implement Jim Crow racism. That was the environment when a young state senator named Harry ..read more

On December 8, 2022, historian Jeffry D. Wert delivered a lecture on the bloody attack and defense of the “Mule Shoe” at Spotsylvania Court House on May 12, 1864. The Union assault on the Confederate Mule Shoe at Spotsylvania on May 12, 1864, ignited a struggle unlike any other during the four-year conflict. A Massachusetts soldier described the fighting as “the death-grapple of the war” as the foes killed and maimed each other often at the length of a rifle barrel for more than twenty hours. A Mississippi private said of the day, “I don't expect to go to hell, but if I do, I am sure Hell can ..read more

On November 3, 2022, author Jack Shaum lectured on the subject of his newest book, 122 Years on the Old Bay Line. Old Bay Line is the name by which the Baltimore Steam Packet Company was best known over most of its 122-year history of nightly carrying passengers and freight on the Chesapeake Bay between Baltimore and Norfolk. These steamers are often mistakenly referred to as ferry boats, but they most certainly were not. They were large, sturdy vessels that operated year-round in all kinds of weather. They provided reliable on-time service for the traveling public and shippers alike, and were ..read more

On October 19, 2022, award-winning Civil War historian Gary W. Gallagher delivered the 2022 Hazel and Fulton Chauncey Lecture. Lt. Gen. Jubal A. Early’s 1864 Valley Campaign in the summer and autumn of 1864 reached a decisive climax in the battle of Cedar Creek on October 19. Far less famous than "Stonewall" Jackson’s more limited operations in the Valley during May–June 1862, Early’s featured a series of significant battles against a powerful Union army under Maj. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan. This lecture will examine Early and Sheridan as commanders, explore the military, economic, and political ..read more