Shows / Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
History 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.
Episodes
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
103 - Historian With A Camera: Matthew Brady
About this episode: The American Civil War was the first major conflict extensively recorded by the camera. Its lens gave a nation a realistic view of war…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
102 - Vilified: Braxton Bragg
About this episode: Back in 1969, Columbia University Press published Volume I of a biography written by historian Grady McWhiney. The work chronicled the life…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
101 - Political Chess Across the Sea: Civil War Diplomacy
About this episode: The October 1777 victory at Saratoga opened the door for an alliance with France, and that nation's aid was crucial for American…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
100 - The Nation at 100: 1876
About this episode: In this, the 250th year of American independence, we look back over time’s shoulder to revisit the nation only eleven years after its great…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
099 - First Blood: Big Bethel
About this episode: Shots had been fired and mobilization in both North and South began. Many believed it would be over in six months. Only a few anticipated a…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
098 - The Early Players
About this episode: In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5, the title character states that, “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
097 - "Driving Ol' Dixie Down": Stoneman's Raid
About this episode: In 1969 - 104 years after the fact - Canadian Robbie Robertson wrote a song for his group The Band. It was a first-person narrative…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
096 - Grant's Lieutenants
About this episode: In March of 1864, Ulysses S. Grant was promoted to military heights only attained by one other - George Washington. On the 2nd day of that…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
095 - After The Sound Of Bugles Faded: The Last Years of Robert E. Lee - Part 2
About this episode: We begin Part II of our post-war story of R. E. Lee. It is early 1867 and, we remind you that in March of that year, there was to be a…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
094 - After The Sound Of Bugles Faded: The Last Years of Robert E. Lee - Part 1
About this episode: We begin a two part presentation that tells the story of a man who never truly sought fame and never wanted to be controversial, and yet…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
093 - Fighting On The Frontier: The American Civil War West Of The Mississippi
About this episode: For this episode, we’ll take the American Civil War to places that far too many dismiss - west of the Mississippi. Sites and confrontations…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
092 - A Man Committed: William Tecumseh Sherman, Part 2
About this episode: In the aftermath of the great and bloody battle of Shiloh, we pick up with the life and career of William Tecumseh Sherman. His personal…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
091 - Finding Himself: William Tecumseh Sherman, Part 1
About this episode: It was a Wednesday, August 11, 1880 and some 5000 Union veterans gathered at the Ohio State Fair. President Rutherford B. Hayes had just…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
090 - Rich In "Guns And Butter": The North In 1860
About this episode: The year was 1859 and future Confederate Secretary of the Navy, Florida Senator Stephen R. Mallory, trumpeted, “It is no more for this…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
089 - Colonial Status: The World Of The Antebellum South
About this episode: Sometime in 1861, the young Georgia poet Sidney Lanier, a recent Confederate Army enlistee, attended a mock medieval tournament in Kinston…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
088 - Death In The Trenches: The Siege Of Petersburg
About this episode: From June 18, 1864 until April 2, 1865, the Union Armies of the James and Potomac laid siege to Petersburg, Virginia - the all-important…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
087 - Modernizing War: Science And Technology In The American Civil War
About this episode: GPS, drones, laser-guidance—all modern marvels that have served mankind in both peace and war. Nothing new, for there were creations and…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
086 - Sowers Of Dissent: Fire-Eaters Louis T. Wigfall And Edmund Ruffin
About this episode: Revolution and civil war require explosive issues and impassioned men more than willing to make change and, if necessary, to do so…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
085 - And The War Began...: Fort Sumter Revisited
About this episode: It takes a cast to put on a play and our story this day is filled with characters that emoted passions raging from reasoned deliberation to…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
084 - Return To The Confederacy's Gibraltar: Fort Fisher Revisited
About this episode: Some six years ago, we chronicled the Confederacy’s Gibraltar that allowed Wilmington, NC to be the last major Confederate port open to the…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
083 - A Modern-Day Moses: The Life Of Harriet Tubman
About this episode: She stood only about 5’, yet, in terms of achievement and historical significance, she remains a giant. This is the story of not only a…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
082 - Resistance By Liberation: The Underground Railroad
About this episode: Its mission and those who willingly took part in it dared to defy the highest law in the land. And in their desire to do what was right…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
081 - Salve For The Soul: Music During The American Civil War
About this episode: This is an episode about a phenomenon as old as time itself. Something that, throughout the ages, has brought laughter, reflection, made…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
080 - Moment Of Decision: The Election of 1864
About this episode: Presidential elections essentially boil down to a popular mandate, either supporting an incumbent’s administration or repudiating it. Never…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
079 - What If The Confederacy Won The American Civil War?
About this episode: For millennia humans have reflected on historical events. Quite often, one poses the timeless question: what if - had a life been spared or…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
078 - Drive on the Heart of the Confederacy: The Atlanta Campaign
About this episode: Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant understood numbers. And, in the spring of 1864, he intended to use the North’s advantage in men and…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
077 - "Stirring Violent Passions" - Civil War Prisons and Prisoners of War
About this episode: Too often, we think only of wild assaults, the terrible collision of armed men, the desperate fighting of soldiers - often, hand to hand -…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
076 - Prelude To 1860: The Lincoln-Douglas Debates
About this episode: As we’ve seen in the one presidential debate this election year, a performance has consequences. Although it was not for the office of…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
075 - "It Was Not War; It Was Murder" - North Anna and Cold Harbor
About this episode: Washington City was buzzing with anxiety. It was the middle of May 1864 and no news had arrived from Virginia for days. Then, finally, in…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
074 - Confederate Cavalier: J.E.B. Stuart
About this episode: With gray cape lined with red satin and ostrich plume in hat, he was the beau ideal of the cavalier South. He rode and campaigned with Sam…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
073 - The Confederacy's Last First Lady: Varina Howell Davis
About this episode: She was witty, intelligent and a great conversationalist: everything that raised the eyebrows of proper Southern women in the mid-19th…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
072 - The Dawning Of A New Age: The Fight Between The USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia
About 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…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
071 - Edwin McMasters Stanton: Lincoln's "Unloved" Secretary Of War
About this episode: When exercising power, the 16th President’s stocky and sphinxlike Secretary of War could demonstrate a Jekyll and Hyde personality…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
070 - Combatting The Invisible Enemy: Medicine During The Civil War
About this episode: For most of us, our mental snapshot of 19th-century battlefield medicine is captured when Union Major General Carl Schurz recorded a…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
069 - Fredericksburg Revisited
About 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…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
068 - The Confederacy’s Last Salvo - The Career of the CSS Shenandoah
About this episode: By 1864, a desperate Confederacy realized it must resort to desperate measures. Measures not only confined to land battles and trying to…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
067 - Return to the ”Daughter of the Stars” - The Valley Campaign of 1864
About this episode: The Native Americans referred to Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley as “Daughter of the Stars.” Yet, both the Federal Union and the Confederacy…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
066 - Waging War: Strategy, Tactics, Arms and Technology in the American Civil War
About this episode: This time around, a different delivery, a different approach. Rather than anecdotes and stories from a biography, battle or campaign, this…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
065 - The Soldier’s Friend: Clara Barton
About 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…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
064 - Taking Down The Citadel: The Siege of Vicksburg
About 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…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
063 - Then And Now: The Lost Cause
About this episode: It was January 1872. In Lexington, Virginia and on the campus of recently re-named Washington and Lee College, former Confederate…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
062 - ”...Hell Can’t Beat That Terrible Scene”: Spotsylvania Court House
About this episode: It was May 1864 and Ulysses S. Grant’s Overland Campaign was underway. After two days of violence in the Wilderness and a swing to the…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
061 - Duty, Honor, Countries: The West Point Class of 1846
About this episode: The United States Military Academy has a long and distinguished history. Established in 1802, its stated mission continues to be “to…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
060 - Desperate Times, Desperate Battle: The Battle Of Bentonville
About this episode: It was March of 1865 and the men under William Tecumseh Sherman had punched their way into North Carolina. In this, the Carolinas Campaign…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
059 - Connecting The Coasts: The Building Of The Transcontinental Railroad
About this episode: It was early 1863 and in the very midst of a civil war that challenged the continued existence of the Union, an event that looked to its…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
058 - Breaking The Chains: The Passage Of The 13th Amendment
About this episode: Shockingly brief given the lives lost, cost, and national trauma, but the American Civil War’s two greatest significances are that the…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
057 - Jefferson Davis: First and Final Confederate President
About this episode: There are some sixteen accounts about the life of the President of the Confederacy. Unlike his counterpart, Abraham Lincoln, this…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
056 - Abraham Lincoln: Commander-In-Chief
About this episode: It was a Thursday, March 10, 1864, when the brand-spanking new General-in-Chief of all US forces arrived at Brandy Station, Virginia where…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
055 - Bound To Duty: The Post-War Life Of Robert E. Lee
About this episode: The former Confederate general entered the ruined city of Richmond from the south and in the midst of a heavy April shower. His route took…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
054 - ”The River of Death”: The Battle Of Chickamauga
About this episode: Just some fifteen miles south of Chattanooga - there in the northwest corner of Georgia - there runs a creek with a harsh name. Indeed, its…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
053 - The Hero And The Humorist: The Friendship of U.S. Grant and Mark Twain
About this episode: The two were quite famous. One went to war with weapons and men, and the other could do the same with words and wit - yet their separate…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
052 - ”Let Us Have Peace”: The Post-War Life Of U.S. Grant
About this episode: Since its creation, this nation has so embraced several of its victorious generals that it elected them as presidents. Up until the…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
051 - ”Beat To Quarters!”: The C.S.S Alabama
About this episode: It was a Sunday, January 11, 1863 when the incredible tedium of blockade duty suddenly lurched into frenzied electricity. Five Federal Navy…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
050 - Lee’s Finest Hour: Chancellorsville
About this episode: In mid-April of 1863, Major General Joseph Hooker oozed with confidence. So assured was he about his offensive preparations to defeat and…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
049 - Concealed Stories: Sex in the American Civil War
*Listener discretion advised* About this episode: There have been more works written on the American Civil War than there have been days since it ended, and…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
048 - The Trent Affair
About this episode: James Murray Mason was a Virginian. As a former member of the U.S. Senate, he once served as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
047 - ”Into the Belly of the Beast” - Sherman’s Carolinas Campaign
About this episode: In July of 1863, Major General Henry Halleck posed a question to a fellow Major General, one who was encamped along the Big Black River…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
046 - Reaping the Whirlwind: Sherman’s March to the Sea - Part 2
About this episode: On Wednesday, November 16, 1864, Major General William Tecumseh Sherman initiated a campaign that, as one military publication would put…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
045 - Reaping the Whirlwind: Sherman‘s March to the Sea - Part 1
About this episode: In the same month that Abraham Lincoln was re-elected, Major-General William Tecumseh Sherman began a campaign that cut a swath through the…
- Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
044 - Five Fateful Hours: The Battle of Franklin
About this episode: Major-General Patrick Ronayne Cleburne was a native of the green jewel that is Ireland and commanded a division in the Confederate Army of…