May 13, 2021
Virginia was home to many of the most famous rebels like George Washington during the American Revolution, but it was also a den of Tories who remained loyal to the British king. Loyalists in all the colonies rejected what t…
April 15, 2021
In the early years of the nineteenth century, former Virginia schoolteacher James Ogilvie embarked on a lecture tour that took the United States by storm. Born Scotland, Ogilvie became a renowned orator, packing rooms in urb…
April 2, 2021
The South Carolina State House Grounds is a landscape of monuments and memory. Since the capital moved from Charleston to Columbia in the 1780s, South Carolinians have been erecting, moving, and contesting monuments on the c…
Dec. 3, 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 const…
Nov. 19, 2020
The Great Dismal Swamp is a remarkable feature of the southern coastal plain. Spanning from Norfolk, Virginia to Elizabeth City, North Carolina, the Swamp is now a National Wildlife Refuge home to Bald cypress, black bears, …
Nov. 12, 2020
In 1783, the United States and Great Britain signed the Treaty of Paris, which confirmed American independence. As part of the treaty negotiations, American and British diplomats had to determine the new nation’s borders. Th…
Aug. 6, 2020
Season 5 of the podcast drops in a few weeks. In the meantime, we're pleased to offer you Library Executive Director Kevin Butterfield’s recent live stream conversation with Edward J. Larson. Larson is the author of many boo…
July 23, 2020
While work continues on the podcast's upcoming Season 5, we’re pleased to offer you another summer interlude. For today’s show, we bring you the audio version of Jim Ambuske's recent live stream chat with Professors Zara Ani…
June 4, 2020
Note: This episode originally aired on January 30, 2020. In May 1796, Ona Judge , Martha Washington’s enslaved maidservant, freed herself by walking out of the Washington’s Philadelphia home. She had learned that Martha inte…
May 21, 2020
In 1812, Pennsylvania state legislators contemplated something that most Americans would now find completely unimaginable: demolishing Independence Hall in Philadelphia, converting the site to a series of building lots, and …
April 30, 2020
In December 1799, George Washington died after a short illness. His body and his legacy quickly became fodder for nineteenth century Americans – free and enslaved – who were struggling to make sense of what it meant to be an…
April 2, 2020
There are many things that we take for granted in the modern United States. The president’s cabinet is one of them. Although the cabinet is a prominent fixture of the federal government, and a powerful and essential one at t…
March 5, 2020
On the morning of November 1, 1755, a devastating earthquake struck the Portuguese capital of Lisbon. The quake leveled buildings, triggered fires, and caused a tsunami that laid waste to the urban landscape. When it was all…
Feb. 27, 2020
In 1784, Revolutionary War veteran Samuel Shaw set sail on the Empress of China destined for the city of Canton, or Guangzhou, in southern China. Shaw was a Boston native who served under Major General Henry Knox during the …
Jan. 16, 2020
When George Washington died in December 1799, it changed Martha Washington’s legal status. Just as she did when she was widowed for the first time in 1757, Martha once again became an independent person in the eyes of the la…