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…
Season 5 of Conversations at the Washington Library is just around the corner. Until then, we're happy to bring you Jim Ambuske's recent live stream chat with Dr. Jessica Lowe of the University of Virginia School of Law. Lon…
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…
Week 3 of our summer hiatus is another opportunity to bring you a fascinating look at early America courtesy of some of our recent live stream programming. On today’s show, we bring you Library Executive Director Kevin Butte…
We're excited to bring you Season 5 of Conversations at the Washington Library in a few short weeks. But in the meantime we’ll keep you entertained as promised. Today, we bring you the audio version of Executive Director Kev…
Summer has arrived and with it the end of Season 4 of Conversations at the Washington Library . But don't despair! While we're busy recording new episodes for Season 5, we'll keep the conversation going by bringing you the a…
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 f…
This Friday marks the anniversary of Juneteenth, the holiday that commemorates the moment on June 19, 1865 when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas learned they were freed by Emancipation Proclamation and the Confederacy’s d…
In March 1797, newly-inaugurated president John Adams thought he detected a glint of joy in George Washington’s eyes as the aging Virginian stepped off the world stage. Adams told his wife Abigail it was as if Washington was…
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…
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 cen…
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 …
In November 1800, President John Adams composed a letter to his wife, Abigail, just after he moved into the new White House. He concluded his letter to his “dearest friend” this way: “I pray Heaven to bestow the best of Bles…
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 fa…
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…
In 1757, Martha Dandridge Custis paid the artist John Wollaston the handsome sum of 56 pistoles for portraits of her, her husband Daniel Parke Custis , and their children , John and Martha. A pistole was a Spanish gold coin …
In 1793, the dreaded Yellow Fever swept through Philadelphia. The deadly virus raced through the nation’s capital between August and November, killing at least 5,000 of the city’s inhabitants. Among the multi-racial group of…
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 …
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…
Three hundred years ago, timber and turtles were key commodities for English settlers on Barbados and Jamaica . Barbadians sailed northwest to the island of St. Lucia where they harvested timber while Jamaicans headed to the…
It's mid-March 2020 and chances are you're listening to this episode from the comfort of your home as you practice social distancing. Over the past few weeks many schools and businesses has suspended public operations and tr…
Dr. Ron Grim has been a geographer for over 40 years. After receiving his PhD from the University of Maryland, Ron embarked on a career that included stops at the National Archives of the United States , the Library of Congr…
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…
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 …