PODCAST: HISTORY UNPLUGGED
J. Edgar Hoover’s 50-Year Career of Blackmail, Entrapment, and Taking Down Communist Spies
Articles on the American Civil War and the principle figures involved. Includes timelines and detailed descriptions.
Articles on the American Civil War and the principle figures involved. Includes timelines and detailed descriptions.
“My family is American, and has been for generations, in all its branches, direct and collateral.” So begin Ulysses S. Grant’s memoirs, and from that beginning, one already gets a good impression of the man, a man who is a prototypical American type: direct, unassuming, sturdy, independent, and practical. There…
George H. Thomas was fifteen years old when the blood-stained, drunken followers of Nat Turner raided his family’s farm. His mother, a widow, had heard they were coming and fled with her two daughters. The renegade slaves left a trail of murder behind them, and it scarred the memories of…
Welcome to the second part in our episodes on the Battle of Vicksburg, one of the most consequential Civil War battles in the Western theatre and what many historians consider to be the turning point of the war. Grant's Vicksburg campaign is considered one of the most brilliant of the…
The Background of Vicksburg Campaign: In Vicksburg Campaign, Vicksburg, sitting on the Mississippi River, was the “Gibraltar of the Confederacy.” Lose it, and the Confederacy was cut in twain. Hold it, and the South had access to the grain and men of the lower South and the West. Or, in…
The Background of Battle of Chancellorsville Background of Battle of Chancellorsville - After the Union disaster at Fredericksburg, President Lincoln replaced Ambrose Burnside as commander of the Army of the Potomac with “Fighting Joe” Hooker. Hooker had a reputation as a hard-drinker. Charles Adams, a Union cavalry officer (and Henry…
The Background of Battle of Fredericksburg: History of Battle of Fredericksburg -President Lincoln, frustrated at this litany of defeat in the Eastern theater, now took a more active role in directing Union strategy, along with his Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. With General Ambrose Burnside they plotted a straight course…
The entire point of the Civil War was to end slavery, right? Not exactly, and definitely not at the beginning of the War. The North went to war strictly to save the Union and had little interest in abolishing slavery in the South. The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 only came…
The Background of Battle of Antietam Battle of Antietam-Having liberated most of the Old Dominion, Lee took his troopers on a campaign into Maryland, with his eyes on Pennsylvania, hoping to draw out another Union army and defeat it. This was an election year, and if Lee could bring Confederate…
The Background of Seven Days Battle: The history of Seven Days Battle is that Richmond remained the prize that captured the Federals’ imagination. With McClellan’s enormous army, surely it could be taken, and the war swiftly won. True, McClellan’s 150,000 men had been whittled down to 100,000, with troops diverted…
The Peninsula Campaign-In early 1862 the Union Army launched a major operation in southeastern Virginia, the first large-scale offensive in the Eastern Theater. Lincoln replaced McDowell with George B. McClellan as commander. He reorganized the army, whipped it into shape, and also renamed it the Army of the Potomac. The…
