Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchFredericksburg 1862: Late Pontoon Bridges and the Wall at Marye's Heights
Episode 12918
In November 1862 Lincoln replaced George McClellan with Ambrose Burnside, who openly said he felt unqualified and accepted partly to keep the command…
1 day ago
Election of 1860: Fake Wigwam Tickets, 57 Ballots and No Southern Votes
Episode 12917
The 1860 presidential election began with a Republican convention in Chicago where every front-runner carried baggage. William Seward had predicted a…
1 day ago
Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858: The Freeport Trap and a Shorthand Relay
Episode 12916
In 1858 Abraham Lincoln was a former one-term congressman practicing law in Springfield when he challenged Senator Stephen A. Douglas, the Little Gia…
1 day ago
Lee at Gettysburg: Absent Cavalry, Ewell's Hesitation and the Fishhook
Episode 12915
In the summer of 1863 Robert E. Lee invaded Pennsylvania without his cavalry chief, J.E.B. Stuart, who was off riding around the Union army, leaving …
1 day ago
Juneteenth: General Order No. 3, Emancipation Park and Opal Lee's Walk
Episode 12914
Exactly 900 days passed between the Emancipation Proclamation taking effect on January 1, 1863, and June 19, 1865, when Major General Gordon Granger …
1 day ago
Jubal Early: Unionist Delegate Turned Architect of the Lost Cause Myth
Episode 12913
Jubal Early was born in Virginia in 1816 to a well-connected slaveholding family and lost his mother as a teenager. At West Point he was so argumenta…
1 day ago
John Brown at Harpers Ferry: 1,000 Pikes, a Freed Train and a Bent Sword
Episode 12912
In the summer of 1859, John Brown hid at the Kennedy Farmhouse in Maryland under the alias Isaac Smith, a few miles from the federal armory at Harper…
1 day ago
Ironclad Era: Hampton Roads, the Ram Craze and 110-Ton Naval Guns
Episode 12911
When the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia traded fire at Hampton Roads in 1862 and neither could pierce the other, centuries of wooden naval warfare ende…
1 day ago
William T. Sherman: Bank Collapse, Breakdown and the Making of Hard War
Episode 12910
William Tecumseh Sherman spent much of his first 40 years by his own account as a failure. Born in Ohio in 1820 and left destitute when his father di…
1 day ago
Dred Scott's 11-Year Fight: Free Soil, Roger Taney and a Quiet Manumission
Episode 12909
Dred Scott was born enslaved in Virginia around 1799, taken to Alabama and then St. Louis by Peter Blow, and sold to Army surgeon John Emerson. Emers…
1 day ago