Surrender at Appomattox: First-hand Accounts of Robert E. Lee's Surrender to Ulysses S. Grant

Audiobook

Chancellorsville and Gettysburg

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"Lee is Trapped, and Must be Taken": Eleven Fateful Days after Gettysburg: July 4 - 14, 1863

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Controversies and Commanders: Dispatches from the Army of the Potomac

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With Grant at Fort Donelson, Shiloh and Vicksburg

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The Heart of Hell: The Soldiers' Struggle for Spotsylvania's Bloody Angle

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Reminiscences of a Rebel: The True Adventures of a Confederate Soldier

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Braxton Bragg: The Most Hated Man of the Confederacy

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The Great Partnership: Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and the Fate of the Confederacy

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Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee

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Their Last Full Measure: The Final Days of the Civil War

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Through Blood and Fire at Gettysburg: General Joshua L. Chamberlain and the 20th Main

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Lost Soul: A Confederate Soldier In New England

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Chancellorsville and Gettysburg: Booktrack Edition

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The Confederacy's Last Hurrah: Spring Hill, Franklin, and Nashville

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Living Hell: The Dark Side of the Civil War

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Service With the Sixth Wisconsin Volunteers Four Years with the Iron Brigade

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Gettysburg Voices from the Front

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The Battle of Gettysburg

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General Sherman's Christmas: Savannah, 1864

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Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam

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Shiloh, 1862

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The Lion of Round Top: The Life and Military Service of Brigadier General Strong Vincent in the American Civil War

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Cavalryman of the Lost Cause: A Biography of J. E. B. Stuart

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On to Petersburg: Grant and Lee, June 4-15, 1864

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A Stillness at Appomattox

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Sherman's March: The First Full-Length Narrative of General William T. Sherman's Devastating March through Georgia and the Carolinas

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The Road to Appomattox

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The Battle of Gettysburg

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Terrible Swift Sword

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Shiloh: A Novel

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Killing the Guys Who Killed the Guy Who Killed Lincoln: A Nutty Story About Edwin Booth and Boston Corbett

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Sins of the Founding Father: George Washington, the Indigenous Tribes, and the Decisions that Shaped America’s Future

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Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

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Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

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Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune

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Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History

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Killing the Witches: The Horror of Salem, Massachusetts

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The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of September 11, 2001

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Land of Delusion: Out on the edge with the crackpots and conspiracy-mongers remaking our shared reality

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The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women

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1776

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Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom

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How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States

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John Adams

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The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party

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The Book of Charlie

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Dragonfire: Four Days That (Almost) Changed America

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Valiant Women: The Extraordinary American Servicewomen Who Helped Win World War II

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Ghosts of Honolulu: A Japanese Spy, A Japanese American Spy Hunter, and the Untold Story of Pearl Harbor

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UFO: The Inside Story of the US Government's Search for Alien Life Here—and Out There

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Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present

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Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis Thomas Jefferson And The Opening Of The American West

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South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation

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Necessary Trouble: Growing Up at Midcentury

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The Untold History of the United States

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The House of Hidden Meanings: A Memoir

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Lies My Teacher Told Me: 2nd Edition

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Up From Slavery

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The Wright Brothers

Podcast episode

Lecture 23 - Black Reconstruction in the South: The Freedpeople and the Economics of Land and Labor: Professor Blight begins this lecture in Washington, where the passage of the first Reconstruction Act by Congressional Republicans radically altered the direction of Reconstruction. The Act invalidated the reconstituted Southern legislatures, establishing five military districts in the South and insisting upon black suffrage as a condition to readmission. The eventful year 1868 saw the impeachment of one president (Andrew Johnson) and the election of another (Ulysses S. Grant). Meanwhile, southern African Americans struggle to reap the promises of freedom in the face of economic disempowerment and a committed campaign of white supremacist violence. Transcript Lecture Page

Podcast episode

Lecture 25 - The "End" of Reconstruction: Disputed Election of 1876, and the "Compromise of 1877": This lecture focuses on the role of white southern terrorist violence in brining about the end of Reconstruction. Professor Blight begins with an account the Colfax Massacre. Colfax, Louisiana was the sight of the largest mass murder in U.S. history, when a white mob killed dozens of African Americans in the April of 1873. Two Supreme Court decisions would do in the judicial realm what the Colfax Massacre had done in the political. On the same day as the Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court offered a narrow reading of the 14th Amendment in the Slaughterhouse cases, signaling a judicial retreat from the radicalism of the early Reconstruction years. The Cruikshank case, two years later, would overturn the convictions of the only three men sentenced for their involvement in Colfax, and marked another step away from reconstruction. Professor Blight concludes with the Panic of 1873 and the seemi

Podcast episode

Lecture 14 - Never Call Retreat: Military and Political Turning Points in 1863: Professor Blight lectures on the military history of the early part of the war. Beginning with events in the West, Blight describes the Union victories at Fort Donelson and Fort Henry, introduces Union General Ulysses S. Grant, and narrates the horrific battle of Shiloh, fought in April of 1862. Moving back East, the lecture describes the Union General George McClellan's abortive 1862 Peninsula campaign, which introduced the world to Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. The lecture concludes with Confederate General Robert E. Lee's decision to take the battle to the North. Transcript Lecture Page

Podcast episode

128 Alan Taylor, American Revolutions: A Continental History: Historians often portray the American Revolution as an orderly, if violent, event that moved from British colonists’ high-minded ideas about freedom to American independence from Great Britain and the ratification of the Constitution of 1787. But...

Podcast episode

10: Dueling, Life Sucks at Valley Forge, von Steuben's Cool & the Battle of Monmouth

Podcast episode

Lincoln on Infrastructure: Known in history for his role in ending slavery and prosecuting the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln's most important issue in his time as an elected official was infrastructure. And in that, he was little different than his pioneer constituents. In this episode, we talk about Lincoln's roots, his arguments countering objections to improvement projects (that have relevance today), and how it shaped slavery and other political issues of his time.

Podcast episode

Gallipoli: James and Sean discuss the 1981 Australian film Gallipoli, which tells the story of a group of Australian young men who are introduced to the horrors of war at the 1915 Battle of Gallipoli.

Podcast episode

#299 GETTYSBURG (Part the Third): In which we look at Robert E Lee's reasons for launching an offensive strike north into Pennsylvania in the summer of 1863. 

Podcast episode

#32 LINCOLN'S INAUGURATION: In which we look at Abraham Lincoln's inaugural journey from Illinois to Washington, D.C. and then his inauguration as the sixteenth President of the United States on March 4, 1861. 

Podcast episode

#51 GONE FOR A SOLDIER: In which we look at why Northern & Southern men signed up to fight at the beginning of the Civil War.

Podcast episode

#317- BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG (Part the Third): "the devil's to pay"

Podcast episode

#50 CONTRABANDS / BIG BETHEL: In which we discuss the decision to declare runaway slaves "contraband of war," and then we look at the Battle of Big Bethel which took place on June 10, 1861.

Podcast episode

147 Don Hagist, British Soldiers, American War: What about the British Redcoats? When we discuss the military history of the American War for Independence, we tend to focus on specific battles or details about the men who served in George Washington’s Continental Army. Rarely do we take the...

Podcast episode

Lecture 17 - Homefronts and Battlefronts: "Hard War" and the Social Impact of the Civil War: Professor Blight begins his lecture with a description of the sea change in Civil War scholarship heralded by the Social History revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. Along with a focus on the experience of the common solider, women, and African Americans, a central component of this shift in scholarly emphasis was an increased interest in the effects of the war on the Union and Confederate home fronts. After suggesting some of the ways in which individual Americans experienced the war, Professor Blight moves to a discussion of the war's effect on industry and economics, North and South. The lecture concludes with a description of the increased activism of the federal government during the war, an activism that found expression in finance, agriculture, taxation, building railroads, and, most importantly, in emancipation. Transcript Lecture Page

Podcast episode

#291- VICKSBURG (Part the Fifteenth): In which we look at the decisive clash of the Vicksburg Campaign- the Battle of Champion Hill, which took place on May 16, 1863.

Podcast episode

Lecture 22 - Constitutional Crisis and Impeachment of a President: Professor Blight continues his discussion of the political history of Reconstruction. The central figure in the early phase of Reconstruction was President Andrew Johnson. Under Johnson's stewardship, southern whites held constitutional conventions throughout 1865, drafting new constitutions that outlawed slavery but changed little else. When the Republican-dominated U.S. Congress reassembled late in 1865, they put a stop to Johnson's leniency and inaugurated Radical (or Congressional) Reconstruction, a process that resulted in the immediate passage of the Civil Rights bill and the Fourteenth Amendment, and the eventual passage of four Reconstruction Acts. The Congressional elections in 1866 and Johnson's disastrous "Swing Around the Circle" speaking tour strengthened Radical control over Congress. Each step of the way, Johnson did everything he could to obstruct Congressional Reconstruction, setting the stage for his i

Podcast episode

#320- BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG (Part the Sixth): "hearing that a supply of shoes was to be obtained in gettysburg"

Podcast episode

#89 FORTS HENRY & DONELSON (Part the First): In which we give the background to Ulysses S. Grant's February, 1862 campaign to capture Forts Henry & Donelson in northern Tennessee.

Podcast episode

#319- BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG (Part the Fifth): "the enemy are advancing in strong force"

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#49 ARTILLERY: In which we cover the third Civil War combat arm: the artillery.

Podcast episode

#91 FORTS HENRY & DONELSON (Part the Third): In which we look at the Federal timberclads' dramatic raid up the Tennessee River, and Albert Sidney Johnston's controversial decision to reinforce- but not to fully commit to the defense of- Fort Donelson.

Podcast episode

#80 ULYSSES S GRANT (Part the Second): In which we continue with our look at Ulysses S. Grant's life story, bringing him up to speed with the podcast timeline.

Podcast episode

#04 NULLIFICATION CRISIS: In which we discuss the Tariff of Abominations, the Nullification Crisis of 1832/33, and we wonder who had the pre-Civil War era's most impressive head of hair: John C Calhoun or Andrew Jackson. Plus, Manifest Destiny beckons & we set the stage...

Podcast episode

Lecture 27 - Legacies of the Civil War: Professor Blight finishes his lecture series with a discussion of the legacies of the Civil War. Since the nineteenth century, Blight suggests, there have been three predominant strains of Civil War memory, which Blight defines as reconciliationist, white supremacist, and emancipationist. The war has retained a political currency throughout the years, and the ability to control the memory of the Civil War has been, and continues to be, hotly contested. Transcript Lecture Page

Podcast episode

#68 "BATTLE OF THE HEMP BALES": In which we discuss the successful siege of Lexington by Sterling Price's Missouri State Guard in September, 1861.

Podcast episode

#321- BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG (Part the Seventh): "the action had now commenced in real earnest"

Podcast episode

#323- BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG (Part the Ninth): "in retreat, double-quick, run!"

Podcast episode

#316- BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG (Part the Second): "my god- you are not going to fire here, are you?"

Podcast episode

#37 SIEGE OF WASHINGTON (Part the First): In which we relate the events in the dark days of April 1861, when Washington DC was cut off from the loyal states of the North.

Podcast episode

All Quiet on the Western Front: In this episode, James and special guest Sean McIver discuss the classic 1930 anti-war film All Quiet on the Western Front. Based on the novel of the same name, All Quiet on the Western Front set the standard for all future war movies, especially...