VMHC Lectures

On November 4, 2010, Scott Reynolds Nelson delivered the banner lecture "Steel Drivin' Man: John Henry, the Untold Story of an American Legend" According to the ballad that made him famous, John Henry did battle with a steam-powered drill, beat the machine, and died. Folklorists have long thought John Henry to be mythical, but historian Scott Nelson has discovered that he was a real pe...

On December 1, 2010, Gregg Kimball, Jackie Frost, and Sheryl Warner delivered the banner lecture "'We Shall Not Be Moved': Virginia Songs of Labor" From the textile mills of Danville to the coal fields of Wise to the tobacco factories of Richmond, workers have rallied to songs of labor. The songs told of heavy work, unjust conditions, and union struggles and were typically performe...

On december 9, 2010, John Peters delivered the banner lecture "Richmond's Hollywood Cemetery" One of America's great rural cemeteries, overlooking the falls of the James River, Hollywood provides a final resting place for Richmond's—indeed, Virginia's—political, business, and creative leaders, as well as 18,000 Confederate dead. Since before the Civil War, the elaborate iro...

On January 13, 2011, Susan Kern discussed her book, Jefferson's at Shadwell. In her book Susan Kern merges archaeology, material culture, and social history to reveal the fascinating story of Shadwell, the birthplace of Thomas Jefferson and home to his parents, Jane and Peter Jefferson, their eight children, and more than sixty slaves. Kern's scholarship offers new views of the family'...

On February 24, 2011, Ed Lengel delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Inventing George Washington: America's Founder in Myth and Memory." In Inventing George Washington, Edward G. Lengel shows how the former president and war hero continued to serve his nation on two distinct levels after his death. The public Washington evolved into an eternal symbol as the "Father of His Country,&...

On November 17, 2010, Gary W. Gallagher delivered a talk on "The Real Lost Cause: The Idea of Union in the Memory of the Civil War" at the Alexander W. Weddell Trustees Lecture. 2011 marks the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War. Only through the bloodiest conflict of our history did Americans resolve long-running disputes over Union and slavery. Ever since then, the signif...

On March 3, 2011, Daniel Crofts delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "The Diary of a Public Man and Abraham Lincoln." "The Diary of a Public Man," published anonymously in several installments in the North American Review in 1879, claimed to offer verbatim accounts of secret conversations with Abraham Lincoln, William H. Seward, and Stephen A. Douglas—among others—in the weeks just...

On March 10, 2011, Gregg Kimball delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "American City, Southern Place: Richmond on the Eve of War." As a city of the upper South intimately connected to northeastern cities, the southern slave trade, and the Virginia countryside, Richmond embodied many of the contradictions of mid-nineteenth-century America. Gregg Kimball depicts the Richmond community as a se...

On March 24, 2011, Douglas R. Egerton delivered a Banner Lecture entitled Year of Meteors: Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and the Election that Brought on the Civil War. In Year of Meteors, Douglas R. Egerton recreates the tumultuous presidential election year of 1860, which upset every conventional expectation and split the American political system beyond repair. At the beginning of the year,...

On April 14, 2011, Nelson D. Lankford delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "The Crooked Road to Civil War." When Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated in March 1861, Virginia remained a loyal state within the Union. In the convention that met in Richmond to consider the commonwealth's relationship to the national government, union men held a strong majority. But as events unfolded, their loya...

On April 21, 2011, Lorena S. Walsh delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Motives of Honor, Pleasure, and Profit: Plantation Management in the Colonial Chesapeake, 1607–1763." In a new account of early English America, Walsh offers an enlightening history of plantation management in the Chesapeake colonies of Virginia and Maryland. Her scope ranges from the founding of Jamestown to the close...

On May 12, 2011, John C. Waugh delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Lincoln and McClellan." There was no more remarkable yoking of personalities in the Civil War than Abraham Lincoln and George McClellan. In Lincoln and McClellan, award-winning author John C. Waugh takes an in-depth look at this fascinating pair, from the early days of the conflict to the 1864 presidential election when Mc...

On june 9, 2011, Barnet Schecter delivered "George Washington's America: A Biography Through His Map" The maps George Washington drew and purchased, from his teens until his death, were always central to his work. Inspired by these remarkable maps, Barnet Schecter has crafted a unique portrait of our first Founding Father, revealing his early career as a surveyor, his dramatic exploits...

On June 30, 2011, Todd Kliman delivered the banner lecture "The Wild Vine: A Forgotten Grape and the Untold Story of American Wine" Vineyards and wine making have become all-American success stories in recent years, especially in Virginia. In his book, The Wild Vine, author Todd Kliman engagingly traces the story of the native grape hybrid, and its nineteenth-century Virginia advocate, tha...

On August 4, 2011, Robert H. Gillette delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "The Virginia Plan: William B. Thalhimer and a Rescue from Nazi Germany." Among the Jews attempting to flee Nazi Germany in the 1930s were students of the Gross Breesen agricultural institute who hoped to secure visas to America. In a bold plan, Richmond department store owner William B. Thalhimer created a safe have...

On September 8, 2011, A. E. Dick Howard delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "The Constitution of Virginia: From Jefferson's Day to Our Own Time." Commentators often refer to Professor A. E. Dick Howard as "The Father of Virginia's Constitution" for good reason. He was executive director of the commission that wrote Virginia’s current constitution and directed the successful...

On September 21, 2011, John V. Quarstein delivered the first annual Hazel and Fulton Chauncey Lecture entitled "The Battle of the Ironclads." (Introduction by Paul Levengood) The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

On July 14, 2011, Brooks Smith and Wayne Dementi delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "Facts & Legends of Sports in Richmond." Basing their presentation on their recent book, Brooks Smith and Wayne Dementi will give an illustrated lecture on the history of sports in Virginia's capital city. Smith and Dementi will present the venues, memorable events, and athletes of Richmond sports....

On October 13, 2011, Graham Woodlief and Barbara Ramos delivered their lecture entitled The First Thanksgiving. Because of what they learned in elementary school, most Americans probably associate Thanksgiving with the Pilgrims in Massachusetts in 1621. Less well know outside Virginia is the fact that more than a year earlier, a hardy band of Englishmen landed at Berkeley Hundred on the James Rive...

Staggering numbers of sick and wounded soldiers placed unprecedented demands on the practice of medicine on both sides during the Civil War. This lecture describes the state of medical science in the 1860s and its application in Virginia during the war, mostly on the Confederate side. It also assess the complicated issue of care on the battlefield, transportation of patients to fixed general hospi...

On November 30, 2011, Adam Goodheart delivered the banner lecture "1861: The Civil War Awakening" With his new book, 1861: The Civil War Awakening, Adam Goodheart revisits the most turbulent and consequential year in American history. In the hands of a master storyteller, we relive a time that witnessed the breakup of the nation and the first bloodletting in what became a four-year catalog...

On November 30, 2011, Adam Goodheart delivered the banner lecture "Virginia's Confederate Monuments" Hundreds of memorials in stone commemorate the Civil War in Virginia at courthouses, cemeteries, town squares, and battlefields. With An Illustrated Guide to Virginia's Confederate Monuments, Timothy S. Sedore presents the first comprehensive handbook of this legacy of America's...

On January 26, 2012, Maurie D. McInnis delivered the banner lecture "Abolitionist Art and the American Slave Trade" In 1853 Eyre Crowe, a young British artist, visited a slave auction in Richmond and captured the scene in sketches that he later developed into a series of illustrations and paintings, including the culminating work, Slaves Waiting for Sale, Richmond, Virginia. In her new boo...

On February 23, 2012, Samuel K. Roberts delivered the banner lecture "When the Sun Stood Still: Reflections on the Rev. John Jasper" Among the larger than life personages in Richmond during the latter years of the nineteenth century is to be counted the pastor of Jackson Ward’s Sixth Mount Zion Baptist Church, the Rev. John Jasper. He was born a slave in the second decade of the century, a...

On march 15, 2012, David O. Stewart delivered the banner lecture "American Emperor: Aaron Burr's Challenge to Jefferson's America" A canny and charismatic politician who rose to become third vice president of the new United States, Aaron Burr seemed to throw it all away in 1805 and 1806 in an extraordinary attempt to lead a secession of the American West. American Emperor by acclai...