2025 Richard W. Smith Lecture in Civil War History: 

Save the Date!  Please join the history department on September 29, 2025 at 7 pm in Benes Room AB in the Hamilton Williams Campus Center for a lecture by Dr. Brooks Simpson (Arizona State University) titled: "Thunder in the Valley: Grant, Sheridan, and Hayes Triumph in the Shenandoah Valley, 1864." 

Richard W. Smith Lecture in Civil War History

Dr. Smith has actively promoted the importance of learning history from the first time he stepped onto Ohio Wesleyan's campus as a professor in 1950 to his current role as an emeritus professor. Dr. Smith's remarkable legacy includes no fewer than 18 of his former students having continued their education through the doctoral level. For all of his students, Dr. Smith succeeded in instilling in them a life long love of learning and history. He remains a role model having published his book: Bishop McIlvaine, Slavery, Britain & the Civil War in 2014. His former students created The Richard W. Smith Lecture in Civil War History in Dr. Smith's honor to educate students and the public about the Civil War.

Past Lectures

• 2024 – A Tale of Two Slave Traders: Lincoln and the Destruction of the Transatlantic Slave Trade – Jonathan W. White, Ph.D.
  Stream OWU Video | Press Release
• 2023 – The Howling Storm: Weather, Climate, and the American Civil War – Kenneth W. Noe, Ph.D.
  Stream OWU Video | Press Release
• 2022 – An End or Beginning: Lee's Army After Appomattox – Caroline E. Janney, Ph.D.
  Stream OWU Video | Press Release
• 2021 – General William S. Rosecrans and the Pitfalls of Command – Mark Grimsley, Ph.D.
  Stream OWU Video | Press Release
• 2020 – No Lecture due to COVID-19
• 2019 – Generalship and Army Culture: A Study of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia and the Union Army of the Potomac – Joseph T. Glatthaar, Ph.D.
  Press Release
• 2018 – The Transformative Fourteenth Amendment: The Constitutional Amendment That Reshaped America – Michael Les Benedict, Ph.D.
  Stream OWU Video | Press Release
• 2017 – U.S. Grant: Soldier and Stateman – Joan Waugh, Ph.D.
  Stream OWU Video | Press Release
• 2016 – "Every Man Looked like a Soldier:" The U.S. Colored Troops and the Civil War – John David Smith, Ph.D.
  Press Release
• 2015 – The Final Battles of 1865 and the Ongoing Civil War – Peter Carmichael, Ph.D.
  Press Release
• 2013 – Gettysburg: The Waterloo of the Rebellion – Allen C. Guelzo, Ph.D.
  Press Release
• 2012 – The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery – Eric Foner, Ph.D.
  Press Release
• 2011 – Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief – James McPherson, Ph.D.
• 2010 – The Many Lives of Mary Todd Lincoln – Jean H. Baker, Ph.D.
• 2008 – 'The Judgements of the Lord Are True and Righteous Altogether.' Abraham Lincoln, God and the American Civil War – Richard J. Carwardine, Ph.D.
• 2006 – Rich Man's War, a Poor Man's Fight?  Soldiers in General Robert E. Lee's Army – Joseph T. Glatthaar, Ph.D.
• 2005 – Ulysses S. Grant's Legacy: Yesterday and Today – John Y. Simon, Ph.D.
• 2004 – The Problem of Slavery and the Civil War in American Memory – David W. Blight, Ph.D.
• 2003 – A Contested Historical Landscape: Understanding and Interpreting the Civil War – Gary W. Gallagher, Ph.D.
• 2002 – The Global Impact of the American Civil War – James M. McPherson, Ph.D.

Historical Interview with Dr. Smith

(shown at the October 26, 2023 Smith Lecture)