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December 03, 2020
In the eighteenth century, Benjamin Franklin and other early Americans likened themselves to a rising people who were creating something new under the sun. It’s fair to say that historians have a similar mindset: we’re consta...
Women Early America George Washington Military History Land SpeculationSeptember 03, 2020
This episode originally aired in September 2019. You may know him as Robert E. Lee’s father, but Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee was so much more. Born into a Virginia dynasty, the man who would become one of George Washington ...
American Revolution George Washington Military History Government BooksJune 25, 2020
During the American Revolution, the Chesapeake Bay was a pirate’s nest. The men who plied the Bay’s waters had shifting loyalties, competing interests, and a keen sense of how to use the law to legitimize their actions. In fa...
Pirates Military History Law Books EconomyMay 28, 2020
Virginia is a landscape shaped by slavery and the enslaved communities who labored in bondage on plantations like Mount Vernon, Monticello, and the smaller farms that surrounded these large estates. But in the eighteenth cent...
Slavery Eighteenth Century Atlantic World Military History JamaicaMay 07, 2020
On the evening of March 5, 1770, Captain Thomas Preston and a small contingent of British Redcoats under his command fired into a crowd of civilians massing on King Street in Boston, killing several people. Many of us are fam...
Military History Women Family American Revolution LawApril 09, 2020
In May 1865, Union forces captured Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Irwinville, Georgia as the Civil War neared its end. Davis had led the Confederate States of America since 1861. He was taken to Fortress Monroe in V...
Books Law Military History Civil War ConstitutionJune 29, 2018
In this episode, Dr. Joseph Stoltz sits down with Washington Library research fellow Dr. Charlene Boyer Lewis to discuss her topic, The Traitor’s Wife: Peggy Arnold and Revolutionary America. For more information check out ou...
American Revolution Military History Women