Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchLittle Round Top Beyond Chamberlain: Strong Vincent's Ten-Minute Race
Episode 13030
On July 2, 1863, the hill now called Little Round Top had no settled name; soldiers called it Rock Hill or Sugarloaf. This episode starts with its ge…
1 day, 20 hours ago
Allan Pinkerton: Chartist Exile, John Brown's Backer and the Baltimore Plot
Episode 13029
Allan Pinkerton was born in 1819 in the Gorbals slum of Glasgow, left school at 10 after his policeman father died, and became a cooper and a member …
1 day, 20 hours ago
Fort Donelson 1862: Pillow's Halted Breakout and Grant's Knapsack Clue
Episode 13028
In February 1862, after Fort Henry fell, Fort Donelson sat on a 100-foot bluff above the Cumberland River as the key to Confederate Tennessee. Albert…
1 day, 20 hours ago
Mathew Brady: The Presidents' Photographer Bankrupted by His War Archive
Episode 13027
Mathew Brady gave conflicting accounts of his birth, in Warren County, New York, or in Ireland. As a teenager in Saratoga he studied under portrait p…
1 day, 20 hours ago
Arlington National Cemetery: A $92.07 Tax, Freedman's Village, Lost Graves
Episode 13026
George Washington Parke Custis, Washington's step-grandson, began building Arlington House in 1802 as a memorial to the first president. His daughter…
1 day, 20 hours ago
Jennie Wade: Gettysburg's Only Civilian Killed, Shot While Kneading Dough
Episode 13025
Mary Virginia Wade, known as Jenny though her signatures show she preferred Ginnie, was 20 in July 1863 and lived on Breckenridge Street in Gettysbur…
1 day, 20 hours ago
Philip Kearny: One-Armed Millionaire, Solferino Hero, Killed at Chantilly
Episode 13024
Philip Kearny was born in New York City in 1815 into great wealth: his grandfather John Watts was the last royal recorder of New York and his father …
1 day, 20 hours ago
Andrew Johnson's Impeachment: Swing Around the Circle and a 35 to 19 Vote
Episode 13023
Andrew Johnson, a self-taught former tailor from Tennessee, was the only Southern senator to stay loyal to the Union, served as military governor of …
1 day, 20 hours ago
Copperheads: Liberty-Head Penny Pins, Secret Orders and Ex parte Milligan
Episode 13022
In April 1861 two live copperhead snakes tumbled out of a mailbag at a Washington post office, and Republicans soon used the name as a slur for North…
1 day, 20 hours ago
Siege of Petersburg: Baldy Smith's Pause, the Crater and the Beefsteak Raid
Episode 13021
After about 50,000 Union casualties in the Overland Campaign, Ulysses S. Grant crossed the James River on a 2,000-foot pontoon bridge in mid-June 186…
1 day, 20 hours ago