15th Biennial Stonewall Jackson Symposium - Speakers
John W. Knapp, Lieutenant General (VA)
John W. Knapp is Superintendent Emeritus of the Virginia Military Institute. He was a 1954 graduate of VMI who returned to serve on the faculty in 1959 after a period of active duty in the U.S. Army, earned masters and doctoral degrees from the Johns Hopkins University, and rose through the academic ranks until his appointment as superintendent in 1989. At that time he retired after a 35-year career in the U.S. Army Reserves with the rank of Major General. Since his retirement from VMI in 1995, he has been active in civic and professional capacities, including 10 years of service on Lexington City Council, the last eight of which were as mayor of the city. In 2008, he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General in the Virginia Militia.
Robert K. Krick
Robert K. Krick is the author of sixteen books on Confederate topics, including several with Jackson as a central theme. The most recent are Janie Corbin, Stonewall Jackson, and the Famous Gold Braid (which is not available in any stores); and The Smoothbore Volley that Doomed the Confederacy: The Death of Stonewall Jackson and Other Chapters on the Army of Northern Virginia. He is an historian who was responsible for Civil War battlefields in Virginia for more than thirty years.
John W. Mountcastle, Brigadier General, U.S. Army (Retired)
John W. (Jack) Mountcastle graduated from VMI in 1965 and began an Army career that took him to Vietnam, Europe, and all over the United States. During the 1970s, Jack earned an MA and PhD from Duke University and taught military history at West Point. Promoted to Brigadier General in 1994, he assumed the duties of the Army Chief of Military History in Washington, D.C. He returned to his hometown of Richmond upon retiring from the Army in 1998. He teaches Civil War history courses at the University of Richmond and lectures at the Virginia Historical Society. Jack maintains his interest in leadership studies and leads professional development programs for military and corporate groups at selected battle areas in the United States and in Europe.
Stephen Lee Ritchie
Stephen Lee Ritchie holds degrees in both U.S. History and U.S. Government from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. He is a staff historian for the Civil War Education Association and for the past 15 years has been the Historian of the Civil War Institute at Shenandoah University in Winchester, Virginia. Steve is a founding member of the Kernstown Battlefield Association, and has also served on its Advisory Board. In 2013 he was named the recipient of the Dr. William Woods Hassler Award for Civil War Studies.
James I. Robertson, Jr.
James I. Robertson, Jr. is Alumni Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Virginia Tech. He is the author of two dozen books, including Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend, Stonewall Jackson’s Book of Maxims and National Geographic’s bestselling The Untold Civil War. The University Press of Kentucky issued his annotated edition of Judith Brockenbrough McGuire's Diary of a Southern Refugee in 2013. Bud recently completed annotations (2,700 footnotes) and introduction for a new printing of A Rebel War Clerk's Diary by J.B. Jones..
Jeffry D. Wert
Jeffry D. Wert is a retired Pennsylvania high school history teacher and an award-winning Civil War historian. He is the author of nine books on aspects of the conflict, including biographies of James Longstreet, George Armstrong Custer, and Jeb Stuart, and studies of the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac. His book Gettysburg--Day Three was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award.
