Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
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.
- Update frequency
- every 29 days
- Average duration
- 55 minutes
- Episodes
- 90
- Years Active
- 2018 - 2025
089 - Colonial Status: The World Of The Antebellum South
About this episode:
Sometime in 1861, the young Georgia poet Sidney Lanier, a recent Confederate Army enlistee, attended a mock medieval tournament in Kinston, NC. Watching mounted Confedera…
088 - Death In The Trenches: The Siege Of Petersburg
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 …
087 - Modernizing War: Science And Technology In The American Civil War
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 …
086 - Sowers Of Dissent: Fire-Eaters Louis T. Wigfall And Edmund Ruffin
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 S…
085 - And The War Began...: Fort Sumter Revisited
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 f…
084 - Return To The Confederacy's Gibraltar: Fort Fisher Revisited
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 an…
083 - A Modern-Day Moses: The Life Of Harriet Tubman
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…
082 - Resistance By Liberation: The Underground Railroad
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 agains…
081 - Salve For The Soul: Music During The American Civil War
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 m…
080 - Moment Of Decision: The Election of 1864
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 so…
079 - What If The Confederacy Won The American Civil War?
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 tha…
078 - Drive on the Heart of the Confederacy: The Atlanta Campaign
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 t…
077 - "Stirring Violent Passions" - Civil War Prisons and Prisoners of War
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…
076 - Prelude To 1860: The Lincoln-Douglas Debates
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 shou…
075 - "It Was Not War; It Was Murder" - North Anna and Cold Harbor
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…
074 - Confederate Cavalier: J.E.B. Stuart
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 th…
073 - The Confederacy's Last First Lady: Varina Howell Davis
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…
072 - The Dawning Of A New Age: The Fight Between The USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia
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…
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 an…
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 th…