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A Beardless Boy of Seventeen Years
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Even before Aristophanes wrote of Lysistrata’s plan to end the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE) by convincing the women...
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A Connected Legacy: John Marshall and George Washington
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Both the first object acquired by the Virginia Historical Society and arguably one of the best objects in the VMHC...
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A Ninety Day War?
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The small United States Army could be enlarged quickly only by appealing to the states to activate local militia troops...
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Arming the Commonwealth
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From providing protection from enemy combatants to finding dinner for a family, weapons have played a significant role...
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Camp Greble: A Union encampment near Norfolk, Virginia
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This poignant, detailed plan was drafted in February 1862 by Private Frank Maynicke of the 99th New York State...
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Confederate Imprints
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Before secession, most of the established publishers of booking, broadsides, and sheet music were located in such large...
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Confederate Love Poems
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The most prominent Civil War poetry is poetry of the battlefield.
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Convict Leasing
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For much of the twentieth century, convicts worked on Virginia’s roads. This practice grew out of the convict lease...
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Diary of William Gwathmey, 1859
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On October 16, 1859, John Brown led eighteen followers in a raid on the federal arsenal and armory at Harpers Ferry...
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Dolley Madison
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Dolley (Payne) Todd Madison (1768–1849) lived through three wars, knew eleven presidents, and was a gracious and...
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Elizabeth I
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Elizabeth I (1533–1603), queen of England, never married and was known as the virgin queen. The first English attempts...
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Fore-edge Painting
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Rarely are books prized as objects of art; often the content of the text, or the plates accompanying the text, are...
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Freedmen's Schools
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In the antebellum South, African Americans were generally prevented from receiving education. After Appomattox...
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How Did Civilians Suffer?
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White women and children were left to fend for themselves, and many became widows and orphans when one in five...
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How Did Enslaved People Support the Confederacy?
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Enslaved and free black people provided even more labor than usual for Virginia farms when 89 percent of eligible white...
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James Jones Archive (1870s-1960s)
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With a coat of faded red paint and a crude hand-forged hasp to secure its lid, the simple pine chest – once used to...
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Jefferson’s Desk
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There are many reproductions of the desk on which Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. Some have even...
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John Marshall Speculates on America’s Second Bank
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A question on the minds of politicians and voters in 1832 America was whether the Second Bank of the United States, the...
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John Marshall's Robe
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The only surviving judicial robe from John Marshall’s 34 years of service as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court...
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John Randolph Dueling Pistols (c. 1820)
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The death of former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton — resulting from his famous 1804 duel with Vice President...