About this episode: From June 18, 1864 until April 2, 1865, the Union Armies of the James and Potomac laid siege to Peterburg, Virginia - the all-important supply and communication center for Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and Richmond itself. After 45 days of constant bloodletting in the Overland Campaign, the contesting forces began what would mirror warfare five decades later - miles and miles of trenches, denuded landmarks and death not so much by rifled muskets and artillery but ...
Jul 31, 2025•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 108
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 adaptations for a conflict contested in the 1860s; enough so that that confrontation has been called, by many, the first “modern war.” This is the story of enterprising inventors and engineers and their ideas and machines—their taking theory and making it practical. The ongoing marriage between innovation and war, this is the story of Scienc...
Jun 26, 2025•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 107
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 violently. This is the story of two such Southern men. This is the story of fire eaters Louis T. Wigfall and Edmund Ruffin. ----more---- Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode: Nathaniel Macon Roger A. Pryor John Brown Sam Houston P. G. T. Beauregard James H. Hammond Subscribe to the Threads from the National Tapestry YouTube Channel here Thank...
May 29, 2025•1 hr 21 min•Ep. 106
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 knee-jerk and violent. And not only for the chain of events that led to the first confrontation of the American Civil War but throughout and even beyond the four-year long conflict. Men and women caught in the cross-hairs of history or those that created them. This is the story of the characters and events that led to momentous drama in C...
Apr 30, 2025•1 hr 31 min•Ep. 105
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 outside world. 72 episodes later and in the 160th year of its capture, we, again, turn our attention to the massive earthen fort and those that took part in the campaign to either storm or defend the Confederate Goliath. This is the expanded story of the fort whose fall in January of 1865 hastened, in many respects, Lee’s retreat from Pet...
Mar 28, 2025•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 104
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 remarkable woman, but human being. This is the story of Harriet Tubman. ----more---- Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode: Charles Nalle Frederick Douglass Thomas Garrett William Seward John Brown Subscribe to the Threads from the National Tapestry YouTube Channel here Thank you to our sponsor, The Badge Maker - proudly carrying affordab...
Feb 26, 2025•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 103
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, they wrote, spoke and acted out against a hateful institution that remains to this day, a cross this country must bear. This is the story of brave crusaders who risked much and an organization that sought to right a moral evil. This is the story of the Underground Railroad. ----more---- Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode: Elijah Lovej...
Jan 30, 2025•47 min•Ep. 102
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 and rekindled memories and even moved men and women to tears. From stirring airs to ballads and everything in between, this is the story of that which has been described as a salve for the soul. This is the story of Music during the American Civil War. ----more---- Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode: Julia Ward Howe George Frederick R...
Dec 27, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 101
About this episode: Presidential elections essentially boil down to a popular mandate, either supporting an incumbent’s administration or repudiating it. Never was that clearer than in 1864 when some four million people went to the polls to either re-elect Abraham Lincoln or oust him. At the election’s core: to stay the course and finish the war or admit it a failure and call for a cessation of hostilities. Such were the weighty consequences surrounding Abraham Lincoln’s quest for a second term....
Nov 26, 2024•46 min•Ep. 100
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 taken, had a candidate won rather than lost and, as it relates to this episode, what if a battle or war ended differently? So, with a degree of trepidation, we address that last question and will do so through the works of a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and two university professors. With writing fueled by incredible imagination and plot...
Oct 29, 2024•57 min•Ep. 99
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 materiel to pressure, stretch and snap the Confederacy at multiple points. And so, he ordered simultaneous campaigns. As Abraham Lincoln put it, “those not skinning can hold a leg.” Three were to begin in Virginia: at Bermuda Hundred, into the Shenandoah Valley and across the Rapidan into the Wilderness. One was to be launched on the Red Rive...
Sep 26, 2024•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 98
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 - and the killed and wounded but, in the American Civil War, we tend to overlook what happened to another element that comprised battle casualties: Those captured. This is the story about the American Civil War’s prisoners of war. This is also the story of the prisons that contained them. ----more---- Some Characters Mentioned In This Episod...
Aug 26, 2024•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 97
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 chief executive, we turn over time’s shoulder to speak of another storied debate - in 1858 and for the office of U.S. senator. This is the story of a series of face-to-face confrontations that may not have had immediate ramifications but most certainly resonated two years later when, on the eve of civil war, the two both pursued the office of ...
Jul 31, 2024•55 min•Ep. 96
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 flurries, it came - word from the front and it was most welcome. Grant was posed to strike a mortal blow. Readers clutched papers that, in bold print, screamed “Extra.” Unable to concentrate, Congress adjourned for three days. At 10 pm on the evening of May 11th, the President moved out onto the Executive Mansion portico where, before him, ...
Jul 01, 2024•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 95
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 Sweeney on banjo and Mulatto Bob on the bones. At times, one wondered was it war or just a lark. Despite all the showy display, he was Robert E. Lee’s “eyes and ears” and his reconnaissance set the table for battles and campaigns. And, in doing so, he came across as a knight in shining armor on a holy quest - a happy warrior in the middle ...
May 31, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 94
About this episode: She was witty, intelligent and a great conversationalist: everything that raised the eyebrows of proper Southern women in the mid-19th century. And then, she married the man who became the first and only President of the Confederacy. Wedded to her fate with him and a doomed nation, her life was filled with trying times. She was, if you will, locked in a personal civil war as she struggled to reconcile her societal duties with strong individual beliefs. This is the story of a ...
Apr 26, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 93
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....
Mar 28, 2024•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 92
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 pursu...
Feb 23, 2024•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 91
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 o...
Jan 26, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 90
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 betwe...
Dec 26, 2023•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 89
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 . ----more---- ...
Nov 30, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 88
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 Secon...
Oct 30, 2023•58 min•Ep. 87
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. ----more---- Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode: Antoine-Henri Jomini Carl von Clausewitz Winfield Scott Denn...
Sep 25, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 86
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. ----more---- 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 a...
Aug 25, 2023•56 min•Ep. 85
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 incredi...
Jul 28, 2023•57 min•Ep. 84
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...
Jun 30, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 83
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 southeast, weary men from the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac found themselves eyeball to eyeball yet again. The fighting to come: savage, up close, personal, hand to hand. The consequences: bloody, even ghastly. This is the story of the most vicious episode of sustained combat ever to occur on the North American continen...
May 26, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 82
About this episode: The United States Military Academy has a long and distinguished history. Established in 1802, its stated mission continues to be “to educate, train, and inspire the Corps of Cadets so that each graduate is a commissioned leader of character committed to the values of Duty, Honor, Country and prepared for a career of professional excellence and service to the Nation as an officer in the United States Army.” Six decades after its creation, that mission took on new and unusual i...
Apr 27, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 81
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, over 60,000 battle-hardened veterans marched, as they had since they left Atlanta, in two columns. To confront the blue surge, Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston boldly planned to throw some 21,000 men upon one of the isolated Federal wings. And so would be fought, on low-lying, marshy ground near a small hamlet in southeastern North ...
Mar 31, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 80
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 future. Indeed, a daunting enterprise – the breaking of ground for the Central Pacific Railroad. This is the story of a great undertaking. This is the story of the building of the transcontinental railroad. ----more---- Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode: Grenville M. Dodge Theodore D. Judah Leland Stanford Thomas "Doc" Durant Lewis C...
Feb 24, 2023•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 79
