Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War Fred Kiger
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- History
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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.
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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. 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
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 The McMahan Photo Archive/RMP Archive/Mathew Brady / The Brady Studio
Producer: Dan Irving -
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 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.
Check out The Badge Maker and place your orders here
*Title Image by Alexander Gardner
Producer: Dan Irving -
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 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
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 -
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 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 -
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 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
Customer Reviews
Quickly became one of my favorite podcasts
Found you on YouTube. I love the storytelling. Keep up the good work.
An excellent Civil swat Podcast
Great passion. Details unmatched. So glad I found this podcast.
It’s in the details
If you’ve already listened to many fine podcasts about American history, this will be the podcast that can explain those lingering questions of the how and why.
The details and nuances discussed here are fascinating. Well worth a listen!