Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
by Fred KigerHistory is, indeed, a story. With his unique voice and engaging delivery, historian and veteran storyteller Fred Kiger will help the compelling stories of the American Civil War come alive in each and every episode. Filled with momentous issues and repercussions that still resonate with us today, this series will feature events and people from that period and will strive to make you feel as if you were there.
Copyright: Copyright Fred Kiger 2022
Episodes
072 - The Dawning Of A New Age: The Fight Between The USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia
1h 9m · PublishedAbout this episode:
For those aboard the fifty-gun USS Congress, it had been a quiet morning. Its crew, as usual, prepared the twenty-year-old vessel for inspection which would be held the next day. Meanwhile, the ship’s quartermaster gazed out over Hampton Roads which glistened under a late winter sun. All seemed normal. And then, at 12:45 p.m., a column of heavy black smoke. Curiosity aroused, the quartermaster turned to a fellow officer, handed him his glass and asked for him to take a look. Their gaze created concern. Indeed, as the quartermaster put it, at last, “that thing is a-comin”. Something no one had ever seen before. Its mission - to change the course of the war. It was Saturday, March 8, 1862, and one vessel, an ironclad, was about to alter centuries of naval warfare. This is the story of technology turning a page. This is the story of the Duel between the Ironclads.
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Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode:
Stephen Mallory
John Mercer Brooke
John L. Porter
Gideon Welles
John Ericsson
John Worden
Additional Resources:
Monitor: The Story of the Legendary Civil War Ironclad and the Man Whose Invention Changed the Course of History by James Tertius De Kay
Duel Between The First Ironclads by William C. Davis
The Blockade: Runners and Raiders (The Civil War Series, Vol. 3) by Time-Life Books
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*Title Image by Ivan Berryman
Producer: Dan Irving
071 - Edwin McMasters Stanton: Lincoln's "Unloved" Secretary Of War
1h 10m · PublishedAbout this episode:
When exercising power, the 16th President’s stocky and sphinxlike Secretary of War could demonstrate a Jekyll and Hyde personality. Personally honest, he could be unforgiving and given to histrionics when he thought them necessary. And again, when required, warm hearted, selfless and patriotic. In charge of the Union’s land-based operations, he made tough decisions and did so with little regard for those affected by those decisions. His mission was to win the war and he pursued that purpose with relentless fury. In doing so, far too many simply remembered him as the “unloved Secretary of War”. In the pantheon that was Abraham Lincoln’s Cabinet, this is the story of his Mars. This is the story of Edwin McMasters Stanton.
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Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode:
Salmon P. Chase
Daniel Sickles
Simon Cameron
William Seward
Lorenzo Thomas
Manton Marble
Additional Resources:
Lincoln's Autocrat: The Life of Edwin Stanton by William Marvel
Stanton: Lincoln's War Secretary by Walter Stahr
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Thank you to our sponsor, The Badge Maker - proudly carrying affordable Civil War Corps Badges and other hand-made historical reproductions for reenactors, living history interpreters, and lovers of history.
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*Title Image by The McMahan Photo Archive/RMP Archive/Mathew Brady / The Brady Studio
Producer: Dan Irving
070 - Combatting The Invisible Enemy: Medicine During The Civil War
1h 0m · PublishedAbout this episode:
For most of us, our mental snapshot of 19th-century battlefield medicine is captured when Union Major General Carl Schurz recorded a ghastly scene at Gettysburg: “There stood the surgeons, their sleeves rolled up to their elbows … [One] surgeon snatched his knife from between his teeth …, wiped it rapidly once or twice across his bloodstained apron, and the cutting began. The operation accomplished, the surgeon would look around with a deep sigh, and then – 'Next!'” Relying on first-hand accounts, meticulous statistics and research, we share a side of the conflict that few who fought wanted to think about and, particularly, experience. For our 70th episode, we tell the story of Civil War Medicine.
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Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode:
William A. Hammond
Jonathan Letterman
Samuel Preston Moore
Sally Tompkins
Dorothea Dix
Clara Barton
Additional Resources:
The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy by Bell Irvin Wiley
The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union by Bell Irvin Wiley
Voices of the Civil War by Richard Wheeler
Civil War Medicine 1861-1865 by C. Keith Wilbur
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Thank you to our sponsor, The Badge Maker - proudly carrying affordable Civil War Corps Badges and other hand-made historical reproductions for reenactors, living history interpreters, and lovers of history.
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*Title Image by Alexander Gardner
Producer: Dan Irving
069 - Fredericksburg Revisited
1h 9m · PublishedAbout this episode:
Back in December of 2018, we told the story of an engagement that took place along the banks of the Rappahannock and detailed events that took place afterwards. Now, five years later, we return to that story but with greater detail, and the addition of first person accounts. Once again, we would like to take you back to November and December 1862, when yet another Federal commander wanted Richmond but, in order to do that, had to take a sleepy little town almost halfway between the Southern capital and Washington City. Once again, we return to stories not only about men in battle but men showing compassion for one another - yes, even for those deemed their enemy. This is story of the Battle of Fredericksburg, revisited.
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Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode:
George B. McClellan
Ambrose Burnside
William B. Franklin
William Barksdale
Richard Kirkland
Additional Resources:
Battle of Fredericksburg Overview
Subscribe to the Threads from the National Tapestry YouTube Channel here
Thank you to our sponsor, The Badge Maker - proudly carrying affordable Civil War Corps Badges and other hand-made historical reproductions for reenactors, living history interpreters, and lovers of history.
Check out The Badge Maker and place your orders here
*Title Image by Mort Kunstler
*Map by Hal Jespersen
Producer: Dan Irving
068 - The Confederacy’s Last Salvo - The Career of the CSS Shenandoah
1h 8m · PublishedAbout this episode:
By 1864, a desperate Confederacy realized it must resort to desperate measures. Measures not only confined to land battles and trying to break the Union blockade, but the procuring and use of commerce raiders which would scour the oceans to wreak havoc on the North’s vast merchant marine. Anything to create economic hardship. Anything to doom Abraham Lincoln’s chances for reelection. This is the story of one such raider. This is the story of the CSS Shenandoah.
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Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode:
James Dunwoody Bulloch
Thomas Dudley
Lord John Russell
James Iredell Waddell
William Conway Whittle
For Further Reading:
Sea of Gray: The Around-the-World Odyssey of the Confederate Raider Shenandoah by Tom Chaffin
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Thank you to our sponsor, The Badge Maker - proudly carrying affordable Civil War Corps Badges and other hand-made historical reproductions for reenactors, living history interpreters, and lovers of history.
Check out The Badge Maker and place your orders here
Producer: Dan Irving
067 - Return to the ”Daughter of the Stars” - The Valley Campaign of 1864
57m · PublishedAbout this episode:
The Native Americans referred to Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley as “Daughter of the Stars.” Yet, both the Federal Union and the Confederacy knew it to be the “Breadbasket of Virginia” - and that made it a theater for military operations. Both sides very aware of “Stonewall” Jackson’s assessment in 1862, “If the Valley is lost, then Virginia is lost.” Played out in 1864, this is the story of the dramatic ebb and flow to control that strategic site. This is the story of the Second Valley Campaign.
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Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode:
John Imboden
Franz Sigel
William E. "Grumble" Jones
Philip Sheridan
Jubal Early
Stephen Dodson Ramseur
Additional Resources:
Map of the Shenandoah Valley Campaigns of 1864
For Further Reading:
The Shenandoah in Flames: The Valley Campaign of 1864 by Thomas A. Lewis
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Thank you to our sponsor, The Badge Maker - proudly carrying affordable Civil War Corps Badges and other hand-made historical reproductions for reenactors, living history interpreters, and lovers of history.
Check out The Badge Maker and place your orders here
Producer: Dan Irving
Waging War: Strategy, Tactics, Arms and Technology in the American Civil War
1h 8m · PublishedAbout this episode:
This time around, a different delivery, a different approach. Rather than anecdotes and stories from a biography, battle or campaign, this time a series of facts, figures, theories and themes that set the stage for waging civil war. This session: Strategy, Tactics, Arms and Technology - a basis for understanding why our civil conflict was so long and so costly.
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Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode:
Antoine-Henri Jomini
Carl von Clausewitz
Winfield Scott
Dennis Hart Mahan
Claude-Étienne Minié
William J. Hardee
For Further Reading:
Battle Tactics of the Civil War by Paddy Griffith
The Civil War Dictionary by Mark M. Boatner III
Get The Guide:
Want to learn more about the Civil War? A great place to start is Fred's guide,The Civil War: A History of the War between the Statesfrom Workman Publishing. The guide is in its 9th printing.
Subscribe to the Threads from the National Tapestry YouTube Channel here
Thank you to our sponsor, The Badge Maker - proudly carrying affordable Civil War Corps Badges and other hand-made historical reproductions for reenactors, living history interpreters, and lovers of history.
Check out The Badge Maker and place your orders here
Producer: Dan Irving
065 - The Soldier’s Friend: Clara Barton
56m · PublishedAbout this episode:
It was over 140 years ago that the American Red Cross was founded. Though most know its founder, few know the details of her lifetime of charity, sacrifice and service. This is an attempt to correct that. This is the story of an American pioneer - an American hero. This is the story of Clara Barton.
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Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode:
Charles Sumner
Frances Gage
Dorence Atwater
Samuel Green
Dorothea Dix
For Further Reading:
A Woman of Valor: Clara Barton and the Civil War by Stephen B. Oates
Get The Guide:
Want to learn more about the Civil War? A great place to start is Fred's guide,The Civil War: A History of the War between the Statesfrom Workman Publishing. The guide is in its 9th printing.
Subscribe to the Threads from the National Tapestry YouTube Channel here
Thank you to our sponsor, The Badge Maker - proudly carrying affordable Civil War Corps Badges and other hand-made historical reproductions for reenactors, living history interpreters, and lovers of history.
Check out The Badge Maker and place your orders here
Producer: Dan Irving
064 - Taking Down The Citadel: The Siege of Vicksburg
56m · PublishedAbout this episode:
In the first days of the American Civil War, Winfield Scott, the then 74-year-old Union General-in-Chief, advised a strategy that he believed was key in putting down the Southern rebellion. Derisively tabbed the “Anaconda” Plan, Scott believed: one, the Border States had to be held and used as avenues for invasion; two, Southern ports should be blockaded and, third, to split the Confederacy, the Mississippi River should become a Union highway. This is the story of the incredible campaign that made Scott’s third element reality. This is the story of Ulysses S. Grant’s campaign and siege of Vicksburg.
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Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode:
David G. Farragut
John Alexander McClernand
John C. Pemberton
Earl Van Dorn
Nathan Bedford Forrest
Stephen D. Lee
Additional Resources:
Assaults on Vicksburg - May 22nd, 1863
Operations against Vicksburg and Grant's Bayou Operations - November 1862 through April 1863
Get The Guide:
Want to learn more about the Civil War? A great place to start is Fred's guide, The Civil War: A History of the War between the States from Workman Publishing. The guide is in its 9th printing.
Subscribe to the Threads from the National Tapestry YouTube Channel here
Thank you to our sponsor, The Badge Maker - proudly carrying affordable Civil War Corps Badges and other hand-made historical reproductions for reenactors, living history interpreters, and lovers of history.
Check out The Badge Maker and place your orders here
Producer: Dan Irving
063 - Then And Now: The Lost Cause
1h 1m · PublishedAbout this episode:
It was January 1872. In Lexington, Virginia and on the campus of recently re-named Washington and Lee College, former Confederate Lieutenant General Jubal Anderson Early was on a mission: a mission to venerate Robert E. Lee, and to give Southerners a positive spin on their defeat - not only to address the recent past, but to arm them and their descendants with, as he and his disciples put it, a “correct” narrative of the war. This is the story of an ideology that simmers even to this day. This is the story of the creation and foundations of the Lost Cause.
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Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode:
Patrick Cleburne
Jubal Anderson Early
James Longstreet
Albert Sidney Johnston
Philip Sheridan
Frederick Douglass
For Further Reading:
The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History by Gary W. Gallagher and Alan T. Nolan
Get The Guide:
Want to learn more about the Civil War? A great place to start is Fred's guide, The Civil War: A History of the War between the States from Workman Publishing. The guide is in its 9th printing.
Subscribe to the Threads from the National Tapestry YouTube Channel here
Thank you to our sponsor, The Badge Maker - proudly carrying affordable Civil War Corps Badges and other hand-made historical reproductions for reenactors, living history interpreters, and lovers of history.
Check out The Badge Maker and place your orders here
Producer: Dan Irving
Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War has 73 episodes in total of non- explicit content. Total playtime is 63:51:26. The language of the podcast is English. This podcast has been added on November 28th 2022. It might contain more episodes than the ones shown here. It was last updated on April 24th, 2024 04:12.