Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchTrent Affair 1861: Charles Wilkes, Mason and Slidell, Prince Albert's Edit
Episode 13050
In the autumn of 1861 the Confederacy was counting on King Cotton to pull Britain and France into the war, while William H. Seward worked to keep Eur…
1 day, 22 hours ago
Battle of the Crater 1864: Pleasants's Tunnel and Ledlie's Drawn Lots
Episode 13049
During the Siege of Petersburg in 1864, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Pleasants, a Pennsylvania mining engineer leading the 48th Pennsylvania and its form…
1 day, 22 hours ago
13th Amendment: The Punishment for Crime Clause and Jones v. Mayer 1968
Episode 13048
In 1968 Joseph and Barbara Jones were refused a home in St. Louis County by the Alfred H. Mayer Company because they were Black, and since the 14th A…
1 day, 22 hours ago
Fugitive Slave Act of 1850: The $10 Commissioner Fee and Northern Backlash
Episode 13047
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, drafted by Senator James M. Mason of Virginia, was written to close the gap left by the 1793 law after Prigg v. Penns…
1 day, 22 hours ago
Henry Wirz: Swiss Exile, Andersonville Commandant and a Fake Noble Witness
Episode 13046
Henry Wirz was born Hartmann Heinrich Wirz in Zurich in 1823, the son of a master tailor, and was convicted of fraud and embezzlement in 1847, a sent…
1 day, 22 hours ago
Spencer Repeating Rifle: Lincoln's White House Test and Booth's Carbine
Episode 13045
Christopher Spencer patented his lever-action rifle in 1860, the first military metallic cartridge repeater, built around a falling breech block and …
1 day, 22 hours ago
George H. Thomas: The Virginian Whose Family Turned His Portrait Away
Episode 13044
George Henry Thomas was born in 1816 in Southampton County, Virginia, to a wealthy plantation family of Welsh and French Huguenot ancestry, and as a …
1 day, 22 hours ago
Abner Doubleday: Fort Sumter's First Shot, Gettysburg and the Baseball Myth
Episode 13043
Abner Doubleday was born in Ballston Spa, New York, in 1819 into a family of soldiers: both grandfathers fought in the Revolution and his father in t…
1 day, 22 hours ago
Siege of Vicksburg 1863: Cave Dwellers, McClernand's False Report, July 4
Episode 13042
Vicksburg sat on 200-foot bluffs above a hairpin bend of the Mississippi, the last major obstacle to Union control of the river under the Anaconda Pl…
1 day, 22 hours ago
Spotsylvania 1864: Emory Upton's Column and the Oak Felled by Bullets
Episode 13041
A 22-inch oak stump in the Smithsonian was cut down by rifle fire at Spotsylvania Court House in May 1864. After the Wilderness, Ulysses S. Grant, tr…
1 day, 22 hours ago