The organization meets on the fourth Tuesday of each month September through May. Meetings are held in the Williamsburg Regional Library Theatre located at 515 Scotland St in Williamsburg, VA, unless otherwise posted. The meetings begin at 6:30 PM. Membership is open to the general public.
Next Scheduled Meeting September 23, 2025
May's Speaker
MONTHLY NEWSLETTER
May 27, 2025 at 6:30 PM
Jonathan S. Jones
“Opium Slavery”
Join us on Tuesday, May 27th, for the meeting of the Williamsburg
Civil War Roundtable, commencing at 6:30 PM in the Williamsburg Regional
Library Theatre. The library is located at 515 Scotland Street in
Williamsburg.
The program will also be presented online via a Zoom link for our
members and friends near and far. The details for the Zoom link will be
provided in a follow-up announcement several days prior to the meeting
date.
On Tuesday, May 27th, Jonathan Jones will present "Opium Slavery". In
the wake of the Civil War, many veterans struggled with lingering pain,
disabling illnesses, and mental illness. To cope, former soldiers often
turned to opioids, which were ubiquitous in the Civil War era. Thousands
of veterans became addicted. Jonathan S. Jones, Assistant Professor of
History at James Madison University and author of Opium Slavery: Civil
War Veterans and America’s First Opioid Crisis (UNC Press, forthcoming
October 2025) will discuss how the Civil War era’s opioid crisis began,
how the addiction epidemic affected veterans’ lives, and what this
crisis can teach us about the war’s traumatic aftershocks.
Jonathan S. Jones is an assistant professor of history at James Madison
University. His first book, Opium Slavery: Civil War Veterans and
America’s First Opioid Crisis, is forthcoming from UNC Press in October
2025. Jones’s research has appeared in The Journal of the Civil War Era,
North Carolina Historical Review, the Washington Post, Vice, NPR, BBC,
History, and other outlets. Jones received his PhD from Binghamton
University in 2020. In 2020-21, he was a Postdoctoral Scholar at Penn
State’s George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center and from 2021-23 he
was an assistant professor of history at Virginia Military Institute. Williamsburg Battlefield Association hosts Park Day 2025
details