Landmark Events is excited to announce our fall tour of Washington, D.C., offered exclusively to members of Classical Conversations! This tour perfectly correlates with the Cycle 3 kickoff and is geared towards Challenge kids, but all of you are welcome to come along and explore God’s providence in our nation’s capital. For your convenience, two identical tours are being offered. If you can’t attend this tour, consider joining us for the September 25-29 Tour.

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Event Summary

Talk about a tour with purpose! We and our kids learned so many things about Washington, D.C. that we would have missed if we went on our own. The tour guides are great! We had the time of our lives and this tour will be a cherished lifetime memory.” —Pat M.

Definitely worth more than a month of book lessons and to be remembered for so much longer! Best of all, the tour was Christ-centered in every aspect. Thank you Landmark Events for precious homeschool memories for our family!” —Rena B.

Tour Highlights

I can’t give this tour high enough praise: the number of places that you see, the connection to our country that you feel, and the solid Biblical worldview that you hear all make for a truly unforgettable experience!” —Katrin H.

The Antietam National Battlefield is the scene of the bloodiest single-day battle in American history. General Lee’s controversial first invasion of the North brought what many considered an undefeatable army fresh off a drubbing of the Yankees at Manassas, to Maryland and to bring the war to a conclusion in favor of the Confederacy. Providence intervened dramatically and the desperate battle that followed broke all boundaries for savagery in a hard war. From it issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

The most revered cemetery in the United States lies just across the Potomac River from the capitol, in Arlington, Virginia. It is the final resting place of 400,000 soldiers, including the Tomb of the Unknown representatives of America’s military dead and the graves of 367 Medal of Honor recipients. This site will elicit a patriotic sigh and thankful acknowledgement to God for his Grace in giving our nation a sacrificial spirit to defend the Republic.

We will honor and remember several founders of our nation at Mt. Vernon — George Washington’s incredible plantation — and at the magnificent Thomas Jefferson Memorial. Both historic sites will remind us that God installs unique men to lead nations and accomplish his purposes at specific times in history. Singular in their character and attainments, both Washington and Jefferson changed history and guided the United States to conform to their view of the Constitutional founders.

We will visit the new World War II Memorial the simple yet sobering Viet Nam War Memorial, and the lifelike Korean War Veterans Memorial, all located on the Mall. We will discuss the biblical appropriateness of honoring war veterans and the nature of architectural memorial iconography in America.

The greatest treasure troves of American material culture and historic remembrance are found in the Smithsonian Institution. We conclude our tour on the mall where you will have opportunity to visit the Air and Space Museum where the Spirit of St. Louis, Apollo Space Capsules and many other artifacts reside — machines flown by men who moved the history of the entire world in new directions. Other Smithsonian Museums on the mall include Natural History, American History, African American Museum, and American Indian Museum. We will marvel at some of the 137 million historic and natural artifacts collected since the 1840s and analyze, in the light of Scripture, the evolutionary and humanistic presuppositions of their interpretative framework.

At the National Archives and the Library of Congress we will view documents of our national heritage and tell stories of the providential ways in which God has preserved our country. We will explore the galleries and learning center to see how our civil government in Washington interprets itself.

Espionage began in biblical times and has continued unabated till today. The subject of television programs, movies, thousands of books, and spectacular court cases, spying captures everyone’s imagination. Spies have brought down governments, gotten secret agents arrested or killed and have helped steer the foreign policy of the nations of every continent. The Spy Museum shows espionage in all its aspects both comical and deadly serious. This is a visit to an unusual and unforgettable history museum where, from the first room to the gift shop, it will prove one of the most interesting places you will ever encounter.

No visit to Washington is complete without a visit to the looming giant of the Lincoln Memorial. Few men of history have generated so many admirers; the constitutional and war policies of the 16th President have been cited as precedent by Presidents Woodrow Wilson, FDR, George Bush and others. So many myths have developed over the years that Old Abe could give the ancient Greek deities a run. Not every historian admires the man from Illinois; should prove to be an interesting visit.

Scripture, biblical characters, and allusions to the Christian faith abound throughout Washington, D.C. on public buildings. We will be calling attention to the faith of the Founders and many of the men who served in government through the centuries as they left their worldviews carved in stone. The antithesis between God’s Law and secular humanism, Christianity and paganism, the Sovereign Lord and wannabe-sovereign man are everywhere apparent if you know where to look. We will visit the Supreme Court Building and discuss the origins of law and the syncretism that has characterized our legal system.

Event Speakers

Event Schedule

Note: Schedule days and venues subject to change.

Accommodations

Study Prep

If you want to understand the link between Scottish and U.S. history that you never learned in school, if you want to see the Scottish countryside, climb the castles, hear the stories of old, meet like-minded friends, and be inspired to stand for your faith like those who have gone before, this trip is for you!” —D. Daniel

Bibliography/Recommended Reading

The historic works connected with the subjects we will teach and discuss is vast and impossible to cover in a few or even short books. Nonetheless, there are some books that will be helpful in both the short and long run for study of the historical artifacts of our tour, both intellectual and material. As usual, there is much on the internet that is very helpful for learning about the actual monuments and memorials we will visit, but their meaning, purpose, and relevance is at the real heart of our tour.

God and Government, by Gary DeMar
The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States, by Benjamin F. Morris
The Theme is Freedom: Religion, Politics, and the American Tradition, by M. Stanton Evans
George Washington’s Sacred Fire, by Peter Lillback
George Washington, Indispensable Man, by Thomas Flexner
George Washington, Founding Father, by Richard Brookhiser
Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam, by Stephen Sears
The Real Lincoln, by Thomas DiLorenzo
Abraham Lincoln, by David Donald
The Jefferson Image in the American Mind, by Merrill Peterson
Presence of the Past: A History of the Preservation Movement in the United States before Williamsburg, by Charles B. Hosmer
The Enola Gay, by Paul Tibbets
Lindbergh, by A. Scott Berg
Spying in America: From the Revolutionary War to the Beginning of the Cold War, by Michael J. Sulick
Encyclopedia of Cold War Espionage, Spies and Secret Operations, by Trahair and Miller
Constitutional Chaos by Andrew Napolitano
history.com/topics/william-randolph-hearst
pbs.org/crucible/frames/_journalism.html

Frequently Asked Questions