Virginia Historical Society Podcast

On April 17, 2014 Alan Taylor delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832." In 1813, British warships appeared in the Chesapeake Bay to punish Americans for declaring war on the empire. Over many nights, hundreds of slaves paddled out to the vessels seeking protection for their families from the ravages of slavery. The runaways pressured the British into becoming liberators. As guides, pilots, sailors, and marines, the former slaves used their intimate knowledge of the countryside to transform the war. Tidewater masters had long dreaded their slaves as "an internal enemy." By mobilizing that enemy, the war ignited the deepest fears of Chesapeake slaveholders. It also alienated Virginians from a national government that had neglected their defense. Alan Taylor is the Distinguished Professor in History at the University of California, Davis, and the author of The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772–1832.

On March 27, 2014 Brent Tarter delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "The Grandees of Government: The Origins and Persistence of Undemocratic Politics in Virginia." From the formation of the first institutions of representative government and the use of slavery in the seventeenth century through the American Revolution, the Civil War, the civil rights movement, and into the twenty-first century, Virginia’s history has been marked by obstacles to democratic change. In The Grandees of Government, Brent Tarter offers an extended commentary based in primary sources on how these undemocratic institutions and ideas arose and how they were both perpetuated and challenged. With its thorough reevaluation of the interrelationship between the words and actions of Virginia’s political leaders, The Grandees of Government provides an entirely new interpretation of Virginia’s political history. Tarter is a founding editor of the Library of Virginia’s Dictionary of Virginia Biography and a cofounder of the annual Virginia Fo

From before Jamestown to our own new millennium, women have been central figures in the families and communities of the Old Dominion. In recent decades, historians have also shown that Virginia women—as civic leaders and reformers, genteel ladies and embattled laborers—were also significant historical actors. Join us in commemorating Women’s History Month by celebrating the flourishing field of Virginia women’s history, and by exploring how what we’ve learned about women’s historical experiences can transform our understanding of Virginia history generally.

On February 6 at noon, Margaret Edds will delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "The Letters of Oliver and Bernie Hill: The Making of a Legendary Civil Rights Lawyer." Author-journalist Margaret Edds discusses more than 200 letters written during the first years of the Hills’ marriage, while Oliver was struggling to launch a law practice in Roanoke and Bernie was teaching in Washington D.C. The 1934–36 letters illuminate Hill’s early association with the N.A.A.C.P. and the Virginia Teachers Association, work that led in future years to participation in historic court challenges to Jim Crow segregation. Margaret Edds is an author and retired journalist who is researching a book on Oliver Hill and Spottswood Robinson.

On December 5, William C. Wooldridge delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Mapping Virginia: Pictures of a Moving Place, 1587-1783." Drawing from the engaging images in Mapping Virginia: From the Age of Discovery to the Civil War, Bill Wooldridge shows the very different ways that cartographers, and by implication their audiences, conceived of Virginia from generation to generation from the sixteenth century through the Revolutionary War. Until the mid-eighteenth century, these changing visions of Virginia had only a distant connection to changes in the colony's legal boundaries. Instead, they reflected the Old World's evolving understanding of the place, from exotic Eden to much of Eastern North America to the country around Chesapeake Bay to imperial England's greatest province. William C. Wooldridge, a retired attorney and current VHS trustee, is the author of Mapping Virginia and of several articles on cartographic history.

On January 23 at noon, Sheldon Bart delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Race to the Top of the World: Richard Byrd and the First Flight to the North Pole." In the age of adventure, when dirigibles coasted through the air and vast swaths of the earth remained untouched and unseen by man, one pack of relentless explorers competed in the race of a lifetime: to be the first aviator to fly over the North Pole. The main players in this high stakes game were Richard Byrd, a dashing navy officer and early aviation pioneer; and Roald Amundsen, a bitter rival of Byrd’s and a hardened veteran of polar expeditions. Each man was determined to be the first to fly over the North Pole, despite brutal weather conditions, financial disasters, world wars, and their own personal demons. Byrd and Amundsen’s epic struggle for air primacy ended in a Homeric episode, in which one man had to fly to the rescue of his downed nemesis and left behind an enduring mystery: who was the first man to fly over the North Pole? Sheldon Bart, a

On November 14, 2013, Elizabeth O'Leary delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Carillon: The Story of a Richmond Community." An active community nestled near Richmond's Byrd Park, the Carillon neighborhood has a surprisingly rich, complex history. Basing her lecture on her recently published work,The Carillon Neighborhood: A History, Dr. Elizabeth O'Leary will relate the story of the area’s land and people from the colonial frontier to antebellum farmland; Gilded Age streetcar suburb to upscale Jazz Age development; site of a postwar housing boom to hub for civil rights activism. The lecture will provide special focus on the formation of the Carillon Civic Association and its efforts in the turbulent 1960s and '70s in nurturing one of Virginia's first successfully integrated communities.

On May 16, 2013, Stephanie Deutsch delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Booker T. Washington, Julius Rosenwald, and the Building of Schools for the Segregated South." Booker T. Washington, the founder of Tuskegee Institute, and Julius Rosenwald, the president of Sears, Roebuck, and Company, first met in 1911. By charting the lives of these two men both before and after the meeting, Stephanie Deutsch offers a fascinating glimpse into the partnership that would bring thousands of modern schoolhouses to African American communities in the rural South. By the time segregation ended, the "Rosenwald Schools" that sprang from this unlikely partnership were educating one third of the South’s African American children. Deutsch, a writer and critic living in Washington, D.C., is the author of "You Need a Schoolhouse: Booker T. Washington, Julius Rosenwald, and the Building of Schools for the Segregated South." (Introduction by Paul Levengood)

On April 18, 2013, Elizabeth O'Leary delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Winslow Homer's Virginia." When his paintings were exhibited in 1866, artist Winslow Homer gained critical acclaim for picturing "what he has seen and known." Afterward, this reputation for objectivity helped bolster the celebrated artist's long and prosperous career. Focusing on Homer's representations of Virginia during the Civil War and post-Reconstruction era, Elizabeth O'Leary examines the more subjective aspects - political, cultural, and personal - that informed his creation of some of the most enduring images of nineteenth-century America. An art historian who resides in Richmond, O'Leary is the former associate curator of American art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. (Introduction by Paul Levengood)

On March 7, 2013, Jeff Broadwater delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Why Washington Burned and How the President Survived: James Madison and the War of 1812." In his recent biography of the fourth president, Broadwater focuses on James Madison's role in the battle for religious freedom in Virginia, his contributions to the adoption of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, his place in the evolution of the party system, his views on slavery, and his relationship with Dolley Madison. In this lecture, Broadwater will shed light on Madison’s performance as a wartime commander in chief and reveal how the unlikely wartime leader survived repeated setbacks in the War of 1812 with his popularity intact. Jeff Broadwater is a professor of history at Barton College. (Introduction by Paul Levengood) This lecture was cosponsored with the War of 1812 Commission and the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Commission.

On February 7, 2013, Henry Wiencek delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves." Is there anything new to say about Thomas Jefferson and slavery? The answer is a resounding yes. Master of the Mountain, Henry Wiencek's eloquent, persuasive book--based on new information coming from archaeological work at Monticello and on previously overlooked or disregarded evidence in Jefferson's papers--opens up a huge, poorly understood dimension of Jefferson's world. Wiencek's Jefferson is a man of business and public affairs who makes a success of his debt-ridden plantation thanks to what he calls the "silent profits" gained from his slaves--and thanks to a moral universe that he and thousands of others readily inhabited. Henry Weincek, a nationally prominent historian and writer, lives in Charlottesville.(Introduction by Paul Levengood)

On January 31, 2013, Lawrence Jackson delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "My Father's Name: A Black Virginia Family after the Civil War." Part history and part detective story, My Father's Name is a moving narrative full of the mixture of anguish and fulfillment that accompanies any search into the history of slavery. In this intimate study of a black Virginia family and neighborhood, Lawrence Jackson vividly reconstructs moments in the lives of his father's grandfather, Edward Jackson, and great-grandfather, Granville Hundley. In the process the author brings to life stories of the people of Pittsylvania County during and immediately after slavery. Lawrence Jackson teaches in the English department at Emory University. (Introduction by Paul Levengood)

On January 17, 2013, Cynthia A. Kierner delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Martha Jefferson Randolph, Daughter of Monticello." As the oldest and favorite daughter of Thomas Jefferson, Martha "Patsy" Jefferson Randolph was extremely well educated, traveled in the circles of presidents and aristocrats, and was known on two continents for her particular grace and sincerity. Yet, as mistress of a large household, she was not spared the tedium, frustration, and great sorrow that most women of her time faced. Though Patsy's name is familiar because of her famous father, Cynthia Kierner is the first historian to place Patsy at the center of her own story, taking readers into the largely ignored private spaces of the founding era. Kierner is professor of history and director of the Ph.D. program in history and art history at George Mason University. (Introduction by Paul Levengood and Nicole McMullin)

On December 6, 2012, Meredith Henne Baker delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "The 1811 Richmond Theater Fire." On the day after Christmas in 1811, the state of Virginia lost its governor and almost one hundred citizens in a devastating nighttime fire that consumed a Richmond playhouse. The tragic Richmond Theater fire would inspire a national commemoration and become its generation's defining disaster. In "The Richmond Theater Fire," the first book about the event and its aftermath, Meredith Henne Baker explores a forgotten catastrophe and its wide societal impact. The story of transformation comes alive through survivor accounts of slaves, actresses, ministers, and statesmen. Investigating private letters, diaries, and sermons, among other rare or unpublished documents, Baker views the event and its outcomes through the fascinating lenses of early nineteenth-century theater, architecture, and faith and reveals a rich and vital untold story from America's past. Meredith Henne Baker, an independent scholar, l

On November 29, 2012, Alan Wurtzel discussed his book "Good to Great to Gone: The 60 Year Rise and Fall of Circuit City." Not many years ago, Circuit City stood out as perhaps the premier name in the highly competitive sector of consumer electronics and a prominent corporate presence in Virginia. No longer. The author of "Good to Great to Gone" is uniquely placed to relate this story. Alan Wurtzel was the creator and first chief executive officer of the company. His newly published account gives the inside perspective, as only the CEO can provide, on the company's spectacular rise and fall. The book is a complement to the documentary, "A Tale of Two Cities: The Circuit City Story." (Introduction by Paul Levengood and Gregory J. Gilligan)

On November 14, Daniel Okrent delivered the 2012 Alexander W. Weddell Lecture entitled "Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition." The first annual Alexander W. Weddell Lecture took place in 1983 and was named in honor of Alexander Weddell, former president of the VHS. Ambassador Weddell and his wife, Virginia, bequeathed Virginia House and a generous endowment to the VHS. The Weddell Lecture takes place on the evening of the last board of trustees meeting of the year, usually the third Wednesday in November. Past Weddell Lecturers have included Gary W. Gallagher, Edward L. Ayers, Rick Atkinson, and Tony Horwitz. (Introduction by Paul Levengood)

On November 8, 2012, Scott Reynolds Nelson delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "A Nation of Deadbeats: An Uncommon History of America's Financial Disasters." Pundits will argue that the 2008 financial crisis was the first crash in American history driven by consumer debt. But Scott Nelson demonstrates in his new book, "A Nation of Deadbeats: An Uncommon History of America's Financial Disasters," that consumer debt has underpinned almost every major financial panic in the nation’s history. In each case, the chain of banks, brokers, moneylenders, and insurance companies that separated borrowers and lenders made it impossible to distinguish good loans from bad. Bound up in this history are stories of national banks funded by smugglers, fistfights in Congress over the gold standard, America's early dependence on British bankers, and how presidential campaigns were forged in controversies over private debt. Scott Reynolds Nelson is the Leslie and Naomi Legum Professor of History at the College of William and Mary.

On October 25, 2012, David Brown delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Unlocking Menokin’s Secrets: Archaeological and Landscape Research at a Northern Neck Plantation." One of the great houses to survive from colonial Virginia, Menokin was the result of a unique collaboration between John Tayloe II of Mount Airy and Francis Lightfoot Lee, the husband of his daughter Rebecca. Tayloe gave Lee a life interest in 1,000 acres of his vast Richmond County estate and, as a wedding present, built the plantation house and surrounding structures. Though scant written records remain, other clues offer insight into this adaptation of European design to the environment of eastern Virginia. David Brown with DATA Investigations will discuss recent archaeological and landscape research conducted at the site. Brown is a consulting archaeologist for The Menokin Foundation. This lecture is cosponsored by the foundation, which owns and operates the home of Francis Lightfoot Lee, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and hi

On October 4, 2012, John C. Coombs delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Planter Oligarchy on Virginia’s Northern Neck." The rise of a distinct class of affluent families to economic, social, and political dominance in Virginia during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries is without doubt one of the most important developments in the Old Dominion's early history. As a group, however, the “gentry” were far from homogenous. John C. Coombs will draw on research for his forthcoming book "The Rise of Virginia Slavery" to discuss the foundations of power that were common across all ranks of the elite, as well as the circumstances that allowed the Carters, Lees, and Tayloes to achieve distinction as the colony's “first families.” Dr. Coombs is a professor of history at Hampden-Sydney College and coeditor of "Early Modern Virginia: Reconsidering the Old Dominion." This lecture is cosponsored by The Menokin Foundation, which owns and operates the Richmond County plantation home of Francis Lightfoot Lee, a sign

On September 13, 2012, Arthur T. Downey delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Civil War Lawyers: Constitutional Questions and Courtroom Dramas." Lawyers dominated public life during the first third of American history, and many who were prominent during the Civil War era had tried cases with and against each other before the conflict. The key members of Lincoln's cabinet were all lawyers, as were many diplomatic appointees and the five men who tried to end the war at the Hampton Roads Peace Conference in February 1865. "Civil War Lawyers" is a book not just for lawyers. It examines the dramatic issues and courtroom theatrics that played their parts in the story of how the nation divided and went to war against itself. Arthur T. Downey has taught at Georgetown University Law Center and is a member of the bar of the District of Columbia.(Introduction by Paul Levengood)