22 episodes listed below
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Abner Doubleday was a busy man. He rose to be a major general during the American Civil War, started the first cable car company in San Francisco, and is credited (though perhaps erroneously) with inventing the game of baseball. In 1861, he had the distinction as a captain to be second-in-command of Ft. Moultrie, one of the harbor defenses of Charleston, SC.. When that state seceded from the Union, Doubleday and the garrison of artillerists manning the fort were cut off from supplies and reinforcements. Through a tumultuous period, during which the command transferred to Ft. Sumter and soon found the Secessionists building batteries all around it, Doubleday had an additional target painted o…
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A restrained account of Fort Sumter under fire, balancing the first-shot dispute with the failed relief effort.
The Bombardment frames Fort Sumter under fire as both immediate combat and contested memory. It places the question of the first shot alongside the record, preserving the claim for Edmund Ruffin while also keeping the account that the opening fire came from Fort Johnson.
A measured soldier's remembrance of the first conflict of the rebellion, steady on fact and procedure.
Abner Doubleday treats the rebellion's first conflict as something to be sorted out carefully, not dramatized. The account leans on letters, memoranda, and documents, and that method gives it weight.
A blunt evacuation account where gunfire, rumor, and memory compete to settle the record.
A wooden hotel on Sullivan's Island becomes a hard, unsentimental war scene: a summer resort turned barracks, then struck after the flag came down even though men were still inside. The writing does not soften the violence.
A tense, archival account of Fort Sumter as diplomacy narrows into inevitability.
Fort Sumter is handled as a narrowing field of politics, logistics, and public performance: Southern senators press for provisions, Governor Pickens grows more accommodating, Charleston trade falters, and the Fort Sumter question moves to the new Southern Confederacy.
Outnumbered units, remembered under fire.
Battle maps, war films, and patient context.
War news, tested against military reality.
Antique European history, read aloud.
Abner Doubleday’s “The Crisis at Hand” recounts Fort Sumter’s deteriorating position from March through April 1861, including shortages, surveillance, and preparations for attack.
Charleston is waiting for war.
A summer hotel on Sullivan's Island becomes a target.
The bombardment opens at once.
Abner Doubleday presents his account as a record of the rebellion's first conflict, written while memory is still fresh and surviving witnesses are still around.