VMHC Lectures

On November 2, 2017, Brian Burns delivered a Banner Lecture at the Virginia Historical Society entitled “Richmond’s Gilded Age: The Grit Behind the Glitz.”

In the aftermath of the Civil War, Richmond entered the Gilded Age seeking bright prospects while struggling with its own past. During a labor convention in conservative Richmond, white supremacists prepared to enforce segregation at gunpoint. Progressives attempted to gain political power by unveiling a wondrous new marvel: Richmond’s first electric streetcar. Handsome lawyer Thomas J. Cluverius was accused of murdering a pregnant woman and dumping her body in the city reservoir, sparking Richmond’s trial of the century. And after Jefferson Davis’s death in 1889, elites launched an arduous monument-building campaign. Author Brian Burns takes us on a romp through the River City as it headed toward a new century.

Brian Burns recently published his third book, Gilded Age Richmond: Gaiety, Greed and Lost Cause Mania. His previous titles include Lewis Ginter: Richmond’s Gilded Age Icon and Curiosities of the Confederate Capital: Untold Richmond Stories of the Spectacular, Tragic, and Bizarre.

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 September 14, 2017, Sharon B. Smith delivered a Banner Lecture entitled “Stonewall Jackson's Little Sorrel.”

During the Civil War and throughout the rest of the nineteenth century there was no star that shone brighter than that of a small red horse who was known as Stonewall Jackson’s Little Sorrel. Robert E. Lee’s Traveller eventually became more familiar but was mostly famous for his looks. Not so with Little Sorrel. Early in the war he became known as a horse of great personality and charm, an eccentric animal with an intriguing background. Like Traveller, his enduring fame was due initially to the prominence of his owner and the uncanny similarities between the two of them. The little red horse long survived Jackson and developed a following of his own. In fact, he lived longer than almost all horses who survived the Civil War as well as many thousands of human veterans. His death in 1886 drew attention worthy of a deceased general, his mounted remains have been admired by hundreds of thousands of people since 1887, and the final burial of his bones in 1997 was the occasion for an event that could only be described as a funeral, and a well-attended one at that. Stonewall Jackson’s Little Sorrel is the story of that horse.

Sharon B. Smith was a reporter, interviewer, and anchor of televised horse sports on ESPN, NBC, and Sportschannel Los Angeles during the 1980s and 1990s. She wrote, produced, and anchored ESPN’s “Down the Stretch,” a weekly half hour racing news program. She is the author of seven books including, Pocket Guide to Betting on Horses (1999), Connecticut’s Civil War (2009), The Best There Ever Was: Dan Patch and the Dawn of the American Century (2012), and Stonewall Jackson’s Little Sorrel: An Unlikely Hero of the Civil War (2016).

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 August 24,2017, Jon Kukla delivered a Banner Lecture at the Virginia Historical Society entitled “Patrick Henry: Champion of Liberty.”

Patrick Henry is remembered today mostly for one line from one speech that he made: “Give me liberty or give me death.” This is a shame because he was one of the leading patriots of the Revolutionary era, Virginia’s first governor after independence, a powerful voice in the early republic, and a great orator and statesman who played such a crucial role in shaping the course of Revolutionary Virginia’s history. In Patrick Henry: Champion of Liberty, Jon Kukla, who has been studying Henry for years and has even lived on one of his former plantations, restores Patrick Henry to the front rank of American Revolutionary patriots.

Jon Kukla has served as director of historical research and publishing at the Library of Virginia, curator and then director of the Historic New Orleans Collection, and as director of Red Hill, The Patrick Henry National Memorial in Charlotte County. He is the author of A Wilderness So Immense: The Louisiana Purchase and the Destiny of America, Mr. Jefferson’s Women, and Patrick Henry: Champion of Liberty.

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 August 3, 2017, at noon, August Wallmeyer delivered a Banner Lecture entitled “The Extremes of Virginia: Two Commonwealths, Separated and Unequal.” August Wallmeyer brings his unique perspectives on public policy issues in Virginia to bear on three “rural, poor, and largely unknown” areas of Virginia: Southwest, Southside, and the Eastern Shore. With his forty plus years involvement with the Virginia General Assembly, Wallmeyer dissects conditions in the “extremes of Virginia” and offers his thoughts on practical steps to improve economic, social, and cultural conditions for the 10 percent of Virginians living there. He will graphically assemble a portrait of a Virginia largely unknown to those living in the commonwealth’s wealthier and more prosperous urban corridor.August Wallmeyer is a former radio and television news reporter, government speechwriter, and energy trade association lobbyist. He is the author of The Extremes of Virginia. The father of three, he now lives in Goochland County with his wife of thirty-three years, Kathy.

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 19, 2018, at 5:30 p.m., Dr. William M. Kelso delivered the Hazel and Fulton Chauncey Lecture entitled “Jamestown, the Truth Revealed.”

What was life really like for the band of adventurers who first set foot on the banks of the James River in 1607? Important as the accomplishments of these men and women were, the written records pertaining to them are scarce, ambiguous, and often conflicting. And those curious about the birthplace of the United States have had little to turn to except dramatic and often highly fictionalized reports. In Jamestown, the Truth Revealed, William Kelso takes us literally to the soil where the Jamestown colony began, unearthing footprints of a series of structures, beginning with the James Fort, to reveal fascinating evidence of the lives and deaths of the first settlers, of their endeavors and struggles, and new insight into their relationships with the Virginia Indians. He offers up a lively account, framed around a narrative of the archaeological team's exciting discoveries.

William M. Kelso is the Director of Archaeology for Jamestown Rediscovery at Historic Jamestowne. He holds a Masters Degree in Early American History from the College of William and Mary, a Ph.D. from Emory University, and he has been awarded an honorary degree of chivalry from Queen Elizabeth II: Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). He is the author and coauthor of several books, including Jamestown, the Buried Truth; Jamestown Rediscovery, 1994–2004; Kingsmill Plantation, 1619–1800: Archaeology of Country Life in Colonial Virginia; Archaeology at Monticello; and Jamestown, the Truth Revealed.

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 13, 2017, Mary Lynn Bayliss will delivered a Banner Lecture entitled “The Dooleys of Richmond: Two Generations of an Irish Immigrant Family in the Old and New South.”

Two weeks after their wedding in Alexandria, Virginia, Irish Immigrants John and Sarah Dooley were at home in Richmond when John’s first advertisement for his hat manufacturing business appeared in a Richmond newspaper. Five years later, when John had become one of Richmond’s prominent residents, their second son, James Henry Dooley, destined to become a lawyer and one of the city’s great philanthropists, was born. The story of his family and their devotion to the city and the South, The Dooleys of Richmond sheds new light on the experience of Irish immigrants in the urban South before, during and after the Civil War. James Henry Dooley served three terms in the Virginia House of Delegates before becoming a key figure in the development of the industries and infrastructure of the New South. Maymont, the Gilded Age estate he and his wife created and left to the city of Richmond as a museum and park, is only one of their many gifts to the city.

Dr. Mary Lynn Bayliss has published articles in Virginia Cavalcade, The Richmond Quarterly, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Dictionary of Virginia Biography, and Encyclopedia Virginia. She is the author of The Dooleys of Richmond: Two Generations of an Irish Immigrant Family in the Old and New South.

This lecture is cosponsored with Friends of Hollywood Cemetery.

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 June 1, 2017, at noon, David Cox delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "The Paradox of Robert Edward Lee."

Robert E. Lee remains as controversial today as he was in his own era, in part because of the contradictions he embodied. A critic of slavery and secession, he fought for the cause that embodied each. He was the only man ever offered the command of armies that opposed each other. Deemed one of the greatest of military minds, his side still lost. Then, he became one of the chief proponents of reconciliation, yet he held serious reservations pertaining to race and reconstruction. In his book, The Religious Life of Robert E. Lee (March 2017), David Cox explores how Lee’s faith influenced his views and his actions. In this lecture, he will examine how Lee’s religious convictions guided two of his most important, if paradoxical, decisions: to resign his commission and side with Virginia in 1861, then to accept the presidency of Washington College in Lexington as a means of promoting the reconciliation he hoped to foster after the war. This latter decision in particular seemed to frame his sometimes paradoxical approach to controversies that arose in his later years.

David Cox, a visiting professor of history at Southern Virginia University, teaches American and religious history. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Lexington, where, from 1987 to 2000, he was rector of R. E. Lee Memorial Church.

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 May 11, 2017, at noon, Paul Aron delivered a Banner Lecture entitled “Feuding Founders: Battling and Backstabbing in Early America.”

“Thirteen clocks were made to strike together,” John Adams wrote in 1818, recalling how the thirteen colonies united to seize their independence. Adams knew this had been a tentative and tenuous unity. During and after the Revolution, the founders were not only debating but also smearing, screaming, spitting, and occasionally shooting at each other—their politics every bit as polarized as our own. Yet despite these feuds—and even to some extent because of them—the founders (in contrast to today’s politicians) managed to find ways to build a nation.

Paul Aron is director of publications for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. He is the author of Founding Feuds: The Rivalries, Clashes, and Conflicts that Forged a Nation, Why the Turkey Didn’t Fly, and We Hold These Truths . . . and Other Words That Made America.

This lecture is cosponsored with the Society of Colonial Wars in the State of Virginia.

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 April 27, 2017, Jonathan W. White delivered a Banner Lecture entitled “Dreams of War and Peace: How Americans Experienced the Civil War in their Sleep.” The Civil War placed new and unique strains on nineteenth-century Americans, and their nightly visions reflected those hardships. Sometimes the war intruded on people’s slumber, vividly bringing to life the horrors of the conflict. For others, nighttime was an escape from the hard realities of life and death in wartime. In this talk, Jonathan W. White will explore what dreams meant to Civil War-era Americans, and how their dreams reveal that generation’s deepest longings—their hopes and fears, desires and struggles, and guilt and shame. When Americans recorded their dreams in their diaries, letters and memoirs, they sought to make sense of the changing world around them, and to cope with the confusion, despair, and loneliness of life amid the turmoil of a war the likes of which they had never imagined.

Dr. Jonathan W. White is associate professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University. He is the author of several books, including Midnight in America: Darkness, Sleep, and Dreams during the Civil War (2017).

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 April 7, 2017 at noon, Gary W. Gallagher delivered a Banner Lecture entitled “The Best Rebel Reminiscence: Edward Porter Alexander's Fighting for the Confederacy.”

Edward Porter Alexander’s Military Memoirs of a Confederate: A Critical Narrative (1907) and Fighting for the Confederacy: The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander (1989) stand unchallenged as the most analytical, dispassionate, and influential books of their genre. Alexander wrote from a singular perspective as one who had served on the staffs of Robert E. Lee, Joseph E. Johnston, and P. G. T. Beauregard before beginning a career in the artillery that soon revealed him to be the most gifted gunner in the Confederacy. Literally present from Manassas to Appomattox, Alexander participated in all the great battles of the Western Theater as well as fighting in Tennessee in late 1863. This lecture will assess Alexander’s two books, highlighting the process by which he crafted them and the degree to which they influenced subsequent generations of historians and other writers.

Dr. Gary W. Gallagher is the John L. Nau III Professor in the History of the American Civil War at the University of Virginia and the author and editor of many books and articles, including Cold Harbor to the Crater: The End of the Overland Campaign and Fighting for the Confederacy: The Personal Recollections of General Edward Porter Alexander.

This lecture is cosponsored with The Virginia Antiquarian Book Fair and the Virginia Antiquarian Booksellers Association (VABA).

The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.