Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War Fred Kiger

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 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

About 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

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 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
 
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.
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*Title Image by Alexander Gardner
 
Producer: Dan Irving

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 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.
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*Title Image by Mort Kunstler
*Map by Hal Jespersen
 
Producer: Dan Irving

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 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

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 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
 
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