Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchSullivan Ballou: The Unmailed Letter to Sarah and a Grave at Sudley Church
Episode 12958
Sullivan Ballou was born in March 1829 in Smithfield, Rhode Island, into a Huguenot family, and lost his father as a young boy. He went on to Phillip…
23 hours ago
Stonewall Jackson's 1862 Valley Campaign: 646 Miles and Hotchkiss's Maps
Episode 12957
In the spring of 1862, with George B. McClellan's army moving up the Virginia Peninsula toward Richmond, Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson commanded the Va…
23 hours ago
Cedar Creek 1864: Gordon's Silent Night March and Sheridan's Ride on Rienzi
Episode 12956
Before dawn on October 19, 1864, Union soldiers camped along Cedar Creek in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley were asleep in heavy fog, believing the camp…
23 hours ago
George Pickett: The Pig War, New Bern Hangings and a Five Forks Shad Bake
Episode 12955
George Edward Pickett was born in 1825 into a Richmond planting family whose Turkey Island estate relied on enslaved labor. A popular story says Abra…
23 hours ago
Robert Smalls and the CSS Planter: A Straw Hat Disguise Past Fort Sumter
Episode 12954
Robert Smalls was born into slavery in Beaufort, South Carolina, in 1839, enslaved by Henry McKee and raised by his mother Lydia Polite, who asked th…
23 hours ago
Richard Ewell: Boiled Wheat, a Wooden Leg and the Cemetery Hill Order
Episode 12953
Richard Stoddert Ewell was a bald, bird-like, profane general who lived on hulled wheat boiled in milk and slept curled around a camp stool. Born in …
23 hours ago
Reconstruction: Port Royal, Vagrancy Laws and an Interrupted Revolution
Episode 12952
This episode argues that Reconstruction began well before Appomattox, with the Port Royal experiment of 1861, when Union forces took the Sea Islands …
23 hours ago
The Word Tap: Spinal Taps, Vampire Taps, Prison Tap Code and Life's Origins
Episode 12951
This episode follows a single three-letter word, tap, across medicine, engineering, espionage, gaming and science. It starts with the two physical me…
23 hours ago
First Bull Run 1861: Picnicking Spectators and the Great Skedaddle
Episode 12950
In July 1861, congressmen and Washington socialites rode out in carriages with picnic baskets to watch what they expected to be a quick Union victory…
23 hours ago
Chickamauga 1863: Rosecrans's Phantom Gap and Thomas on Horseshoe Ridge
Episode 12949
The Battle of Chickamauga in north Georgia, fought on September 19 and 20, 1863, followed one of the most efficient Union campaigns of the war. Gener…
23 hours ago