Framing the Civil War

With Good Reason · Jun 18, 2026 · 51m

For nearly a century the National Park Service would tell you all about the civil war battles and tactics, but meticulously avoided the most explosive word in the American lexicon: Slavery. Former National Park Service Chief Historian Dwight Picaithley says that all changed in 1998, triggering thousands of protest letters and political threats. Later in the show: At the start of the Civil War, Frederick Douglass wrote and spoke harshly about Abraham Lincoln for not moving more quickly on emancipation. But in his new book Jonathan White reveals how Douglass came to become one of Lincoln’s…