Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchBattle of Glorieta Pass 1862: 80 Burned Wagons End the Confederate West
Episode 12969
In early 1862, Confederate Brigadier General Henry Hopkins Sibley persuaded Jefferson Davis to back an invasion up the Rio Grande from the Confederat…
5 days, 22 hours ago
John Brown Before Harpers Ferry: Bankrupt Tanner, Hidden Room, Kansas
Episode 12968
John Brown was born in Connecticut in 1800 and raised in Hudson, Ohio, where his father Owen ran a tannery, sheltered escaped slaves, and employed Je…
5 days, 22 hours ago
Fitz John Porter: Runaway Balloon, Second Bull Run and a Cleared Name
Episode 12967
Fitz John Porter was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1822 into a naval family that included David Farragut and David Dixon Porter, but chose We…
5 days, 22 hours ago
Pauline Cushman: The Actress Who Spied for the Union and Faked Illness
Episode 12966
Pauline Cushman was born Harriet Wood in New Orleans in 1833 to a Spanish merchant father and a French mother, and grew up at a family trading post i…
5 days, 22 hours ago
Five Forks 1865: The Acoustic Shadow, Willie Pegram and Warren's Firing
Episode 12965
On April 1, 1865, after nearly 10 months of siege at Petersburg, the dirt crossroads of Five Forks guarded the South Side Railroad, Robert E. Lee's l…
5 days, 22 hours ago
54th Massachusetts Pay Boycott: $7 a Month, a Quaker Oath and Olustee
Episode 12964
The 54th Massachusetts Infantry was raised in early 1863 under the shadow of Jefferson Davis's December 1862 proclamation that captured Black soldier…
5 days, 22 hours ago
Grand Review of the Armies 1865: Meade's Parade, Sherman's Cattle Herd
Episode 12963
In May 1865, one month after Abraham Lincoln's assassination, Washington was still draped in black bunting when President Andrew Johnson declared on …
5 days, 22 hours ago
Lawrence Massacre 1863: Quantrill's Raid and the Kansas City Jail Collapse
Episode 12962
Before dawn on Friday, August 21, 1863, about 450 Missouri guerrillas under William Quantrill, many of them teenagers lashed to their saddles after a…
5 days, 22 hours ago
Crittenden Compromise of 1860: An Unamendable Amendment to Protect Slavery
Episode 12961
On December 18, 1860, after Abraham Lincoln's election and as Southern states threatened secession, Kentucky Senator John J. Crittenden, a Constituti…
5 days, 22 hours ago
Union Army Balloon Corps: Lowe's Rivals, Hydrogen Wagons and a $3 Pay Cut
Episode 12960
On June 16, 1861, meteorologist Thaddeus Lowe floated 500 feet above the Columbian Armory in Washington and sent the first telegraph message from an …
5 days, 22 hours ago