With Good Reason

The election of Abraham Lincoln as President touched off a secession crisis in the South.  In his new book, Showdown in Virginia, Bill Freehling (Virginia Foundation for the Humanities) focuses on turning points in Virginia’s months-long, bitter battle over whether to secede from the Union.   Also: Historians estimate that of the nearly 5,000 pirates who [...]

The Camino de Santiago, a medieval pilgrimage trail in northern Spain, continues to attract tens of thousands of travelers each year. Among those are George Greenia (William & Mary, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities), who for years has walked the 500-mile route with his students. George studies the relationship between medieval and modern pilgrimages. He [...]

In 1951 a group of African American students at Robert R. Moton High School in Prince Edward County, Virginia, organized a strike to protest the substandard school facilities provided for black students. The walkout, led by 16 year old Barbara Johns, is one of the great stories in the struggle for Civil Rights—a story of courage [...]

Halloween is just around the corner.  Haunted houses, graveyards, and ghost walks – paranormal tourism is more popular than ever.  Teresa O’Bannon (Radford University) is an expert on what she calls “dark side tourism.”  Then, With Good Reason will also do a little ghost-busting of its own. Also featured: The Shenandoah Valley is prehistoric home of mastodons and giant sloths, [...]

Circuses have long been a part of human culture, starting with the Romans, and circuses have been in America almost since the birth of this country. Lavahn Hoh (University of Virginia) teaches the only accredited course in the U.S. on the history of the American circus and is the author of “Step Right Up!  The [...]

25th United States Colored Troops, February 1864 To mark the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, the nation’s finest historians gathered at Norfolk State University to discuss the role of race and slavery in the war that cost hundreds of thousands of American lives. With topics including the myth of black Confederates, the quest for [...]

To experience a virtual tour of Ford’s Theater where John Wilkes Booth (pictured left) shot Lincoln, visit its website.

John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln on Good Friday, April 14, 1865 in Ford’s Theater in Washington.  But Booth had been part of a long standing conspiracy to kidnap Lincoln.  Terry Alford (Northern Virginia Community College), an expert on Booth, investigates who were these conspirators, their motives at the end of the war and whether [...]

The American Civil War has produced a number of mythical characters. Perhaps there are none like the notorious Champ Ferguson, a Confederate guerrilla who claimed to have killed over 100 Union soldiers and sympathizers. Brian McKnight (University of Virginia’s College at Wise) says Ferguson was both a skilled fighter and a ruthless murderer who exploited [...]

The Victorians photographed their dead before burial.  Abraham Lincoln’s death might have popularized embalming.  Some people today have their ashes made into diamonds. Bernard Means (Virginia Commonwealth University) studies how and why we bury our dead – and how that’s changed over the last few centuries.  Plus: a trip to some orphan graveyards – forgotten [...]