Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchThe Caning of Charles Sumner: Preston Brooks' 1856 Attack in the Senate
Episode 12791
In May 1856, with Bleeding Kansas in full swing after the Kansas-Nebraska Act replaced fixed lines with popular sovereignty, Massachusetts Senator Ch…
2 days, 3 hours ago
William H. Seward: Surviving the Lincoln Night Attack and Buying Alaska
Episode 12790
William H. Seward was born in 1801 in rural New York to a slave-owning farmer and was so bookish that he ran away from home to go to school. At 17, a…
2 days, 3 hours ago
Thomas Gore: Oklahoma's Blind Senator and His Lone Vote Against the WPA
Episode 12789
Thomas Pryor Gore was born in Mississippi in 1870 and lost his sight in two separate accidents, one to his left eye at eight and another to his right…
2 days, 3 hours ago
William A. Clark: The Copper King Whose Bribery Fueled the 17th Amendment
Episode 12788
William A. Clark was born in Pennsylvania in 1839, moved to Iowa, taught school and studied some law before heading to Montana in 1862. After a short…
2 days, 3 hours ago
Robert Morris: The Yorktown Financier Who Ended Up in Debtors' Prison
Episode 12787
Robert Morris was born out of wedlock in Liverpool in 1734, raised by his grandmother, and at 13 joined his father in Maryland. His father died after…
2 days, 3 hours ago
William Henry Harrison: Tippecanoe, 51 Million Acres, Log Cabin Politics
Episode 12786
William Henry Harrison, born in Virginia in 1773, was the last president born a British subject and the son of Benjamin Harrison V, a signer of the D…
2 days, 3 hours ago
Elihu Root: Tweed's Lawyer, War Secretary, and Nobel Peace Prize Winner
Episode 12785
Elihu Root was born in 1845 in Clinton, New York, the son of a mathematics professor, and studied law at New York University, staying an extra year f…
2 days, 3 hours ago
Brien McMahon: The Atomic Energy Act Author Who Pushed for the H-Bomb
Episode 12784
Brien McMahon was born James O'Brien McMahon in Norwalk, Connecticut, in 1903, graduated from Fordham in 1924 and Yale Law School in 1927, and change…
2 days, 3 hours ago
James Abourezk: First Arab American Senator and Indian Child Welfare Act
Episode 12783
James Abourezk was born in 1931 in Wood, South Dakota, to Charles and Lena, Lebanese Greek Orthodox immigrants who ran general stores on the Rosebud …
2 days, 3 hours ago
Jefferson Davis: Buena Vista Hero to Confederate President, Never Tried
Episode 12782
Jefferson Davis was born in Kentucky in 1808, the youngest of 10 children, and raised in Mississippi. After his father died in debt, his brother Jose…
2 days, 3 hours ago