Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchUSS Monitor's 11 Months: The Cheese Box From Hampton Roads to Hatteras
Episode 13040
The USS Monitor existed for less than 11 months. Its story starts with Mary Louvestre, a freed woman working for a Confederate engineer in Norfolk, w…
4 days, 5 hours ago
John Burns of Gettysburg: A 70-Year-Old Civilian in a Silk Top Hat
Episode 13039
John Lawrence Burns was born in Burlington, New Jersey, in 1793, fought at Lundy's Lane in the War of 1812, and volunteered again for the Mexican War…
4 days, 5 hours ago
Ely S. Parker: The Seneca Engineer Who Drafted Lee's Surrender Terms
Episode 13038
Ely S. Parker, born Hasanoanda on the Tonawanda Reservation in New York in 1828, grew up translating between the Seneca and the white scholars who vi…
4 days, 5 hours ago
Joseph Hooker: California Hay, Army Reforms and a Cannonball Concussion
Episode 13037
Joseph Hooker, born in Massachusetts in 1814, graduated 29th of 50 at West Point and won three brevets in the Mexican War, then alienated Winfield Sc…
4 days, 5 hours ago
Julia Ward Howe: The Battle Hymn's Author and Her Mother's Day for Peace
Episode 13036
Julia Ward was born in New York City in 1819 to a wealthy Wall Street banker and strict Calvinist; her poet mother died when she was five. Books her …
4 days, 5 hours ago
Lew Wallace After Shiloh: The Shunpike Road, Billy the Kid and Ben-Hur
Episode 13035
Lew Wallace was born in Indiana in 1827, the son of a West Point graduate who became governor and cut him off at 16 for neglecting school. Fascinated…
4 days, 5 hours ago
Stones River 1862: Dueling Bands, the Slaughter Pen and 57 Massed Guns
Episode 13034
On the night of December 30, 1862, two armies camped about 700 yards apart near Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and their bands traded Yankee Doodle and Dix…
4 days, 5 hours ago
Ex parte Merryman: Burned Bridges, Roger Taney and Lincoln's Habeas Fight
Episode 13033
In April 1861 Maryland's legislature voted 53 to 13 against secession but refused to reopen rail links to the North, and on April 19 a Baltimore mob …
4 days, 5 hours ago
Elizabeth Van Lew: Richmond Spymaster, Mary Bowser and Ciphers in Eggshells
Episode 13032
Elizabeth Van Lew was born in 1818 to a wealthy Richmond hardware merchant and educated at a Quaker school in Philadelphia, where she absorbed abolit…
4 days, 5 hours ago
George A. Custer: Last at West Point, Belknap Hearings, Little Bighorn
Episode 13031
George Armstrong Custer grew up in Ohio under a Jacksonian Democrat father who prized toughness, then compiled 726 demerits at West Point and graduat…
4 days, 5 hours ago