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

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
 
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

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

About 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 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

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 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 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

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 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

About 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