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 disease. This is the story of the Confederacy’s long, slow descent into darkness. This the story of the siege of Petersburg. 

----more----

Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode:

George Gordon Meade

Wade Hampton III

Benjamin Butler

Philip Sheridan

John B. Gordon

Gouverneur Warren

Additional Resources:

First Battle Of Deep Bottom - July 27-29, 1864

Siege Of Petersburg - Actions August 18-19, 1864

Siege Of Petersburg - Actions October 27, 1864

Siege Of Petersburg - Actions March 29-31, 1865

Siege Of Petersburg - Actions April 2, 1865

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

Thank you to our sponsor Bob Graesser, Raleigh Civil War Round Table's editor of The Knapsack newsletter and the Round Table's webmaster at http://www.raleighcwrt.org

Thank you to our sponsor John Bailey.

Producer: Dan Irving

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 Science and Technology in the American Civil War.

----more----

Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode:

Joseph Bailey

Henry Pleasants

Richard Gatling

Samuel Morse

Horace Lawson Hunley

For Further Reading:

Trial by Fire: Science, Technology and the Civil War by Charles D. Ross

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

Thank you to our sponsor Bob Graesser, Raleigh Civil War Round Table's editor of The Knapsack newsletter and the Round Table's webmaster at http://www.raleighcwrt.org

Thank you to our sponsor John Bailey.

Producer: Dan Irving

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 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

Thank you to our sponsor Bob Graesser, Raleigh Civil War Round Table's editor of The Knapsack newsletter and the Round Table's webmaster at http://www.raleighcwrt.org

Thank you to our sponsor John Bailey.

Producer: Dan Irving

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 Charleston Harbor. This is the cast and story of Fort Sumter Revisited.  

----more----

Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode:

Robert Anderson

James Buchanan

Winfield Scott

Robert Toombs

Mary Boykin Chesnut

Abner Doubleday

For Further Reading:

The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War by Erik Larson

Days of Defiance: Sumter, Secession, and the Coming of the Civil War by Maury Klein

Mary Chesnut's Civil War by Mary Chesnut

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

Thank you to our sponsor Bob Graesser, Raleigh Civil War Round Table's editor of The Knapsack newsletter and the Round Table's webmaster at http://www.raleighcwrt.org

Producer: Dan Irving

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 Petersburg, Virginia and, subsequently, the surrender of his army at Appomattox. This is Fort Fisher Revisited.

----more----

Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode:

Rose O'Neal Greenhow

William Lamb

William Henry Chase Whiting

Braxton Bragg

Gideon Welles

David Dixon Porter

For Further Reading:

The Wilmington Campaign: Last Rays Of Departing Hope by Chris E. Fonvielle, Jr.

Confederate Goliath: The Battle Of Fort Fisher by Rod Gragg

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

Thank you to our sponsor Bob Graesser, Raleigh Civil War Round Table's editor of The Knapsack newsletter and the Round Table's webmaster at http://www.raleighcwrt.org

Producer: Dan Irving

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 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

Thank you to our sponsor Bob Graesser, Raleigh Civil War Round Table's editor of The Knapsack newsletter and the Round Table's webmaster at http://www.raleighcwrt.org

Producer: Dan Irving

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 Lovejoy

Charles Nalle

Harriet Tubman

William Lloyd Garrison

Frederick Douglass

Henry Box Brown

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

Thank you to our sponsor Bob Graesser, Raleigh Civil War Round Table's editor of The Knapsack newsletter and the Round Table's webmaster at http://www.raleighcwrt.org

Producer: Dan Irving

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 Root

Patrick Gilmore

Henry Clay Work

Stephen Foster

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

Thank you to our sponsor Bob Graesser, Raleigh Civil War Round Table's editor of The Knapsack newsletter and the Round Table's webmaster at http://www.raleighcwrt.org

Special thanks to WCHL for providing the song recordings used in this episode.

Producer: Dan Irving

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. This is the story of a nation’s moment of decision. This is the story of the presidential election of 1864. 

----more----

Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode:

John Tyler

George B. McClellan

William Seward

Salmon P. Chase

Clement L. Vallandigham

Additional Resources:

Electoral Map - Election of 1864

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

Thank you to our sponsor Bob Graesser, Raleigh Civil War Round Table's editor of The Knapsack newsletter and the Round Table's webmaster at http://www.raleighcwrt.org

Producer: Dan Irving

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 plots, characters and consequences drawn from factual trends and themes, we offer three stories from the genre of alternative and counterfactual history. Three stories that address “what if” the South had won the American Civil War.    

----more----

For Further Reading:

If The South Had Won The Civil War by MacKinlay Kantor

The Guns of the South by Harry Turtledove

The Confederate States of America: What Might Have Been by Roger L. Ransom

Gettysburg: A Novel of the Civil War by William Forstchen and Newt Gingrich

Grant Comes East: A Novel of the Civil War (The Gettysburg Trilogy, 2) by William Forstchen and Newt Gingrich

Never Call Retreat: Lee and Grant: The Final Victory: A Novel of the Civil War (The Gettysburg Trilogy, 3) by William Forstchen and Newt Gingrich

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

Thank you to our sponsor Bob Graesser, Raleigh Civil War Round Table's editor of The Knapsack newsletter and the Round Table's webmaster at http://www.raleighcwrt.org

Producer: Dan Irving