Civil War Era Podcasts

An Illinois adjutant hit by a spent bullet at Kennesaw Mountain wrote to his sister that he first thought he felt blood spouting against his clothes, but "it proved to be the violent pulsations of my heart." The Civil War & Reconstruction reads that letter aloud, and it shows what Civil War audio does best. It works at the scale of one soldier, one road or one pontoon train, inside a war whose meaning Americans still argue over in public.

War Yankee - Overland narrows the frame to Grant's 1864 campaign through Virginia, and host Kyle Imbando tells it in a talkier voice. In Overland.05: Plans Within Plans he likens pontoons slotting together to Legos. Overland.18: Invisibles Against Invisibles runs 90 minutes and follows Union brigades coming apart in the Wilderness as rifle fire sets small fires in the dry woods. It suits listeners who want the confusion on the ground more than the map.

Those series build whole campaigns. Stories of the Civil War, hosted by Chris Mowery, tells one story per episode and is willing to judge. In Stuck in the Mud: Burnside, the Generals' Revolt, and the Army of the Potomac's Darkest Winter, Confederates taunt the stalled army with a sign reading "Burnside's Stuck in the Mud." The episode then weighs a long-debated question: were his generals incompetent or deliberately sabotaging the campaign? Its answer: "Evidence points, I think, strongly to the latter." The Christian General: Oliver Otis Howard sets Howard's refusal to supply a guard to force a girl back into bondage beside the Freedmen's Bureau's corruption and his later enforcement of Indian removal.

In its two Sherman episodes, Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War, narrated by historian Fred Kiger, stays dense and careful. 092 - A Man Committed: William Tecumsah Sherman, Part 2 names cotton, whiskey and wind as the probable causes of the fires in Columbia. It lists the many groups who contributed before it gives the figure of 458 buildings burned.

Portraits of Blue & Grey: The Biographical Civil War Podcast, hosted by Christopher Moore, weighs its sources openly. In Union Spies and Intelligence in the U.S. Civil War, Moore accepts the congressional finding that Sarah Edmonds served as Private Franklin Thompson. He treats her spy tales as fiction, though, and calls it "a bad decision to mix the two into a single account."

Chalkboard History: The Official Podcast of the Battle of Franklin Trust is looser, with staff joking before they turn serious. In Tour Guide Talk: The Secession Crisis, the hosts read secession-era demands aloud and remark on how direct they are. In Chalkboard History: Why Don't Young People Care About the Civil War? Pt. 1, a young interpreter calls the war "an example of what happens when you do not listen to each other." Key Battles of the Civil War, with history professors James Early and Scott Rank, gives Episode 22: How the Civil War Lives on Today to the Lost Cause myth and why, for the most part, they don't believe its claims.

Untold Civil War, hosted by Paul, looks for overlooked people. Sunday Sauce Special: Italians and the Civil War covers the Garibaldi Guard of the 39th New York. Gettysburg's Civilians tells of Josephine Miller, who spent the battle baking barrels of flour into bread for hungry soldiers.

Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 (version 2) by Abner Doubleday (1819 - 1893) is a reading of Doubleday's memoir, so it offers testimony rather than finished history. In 11 - The Evacuation he recounts how the salute to the flag misfired and killed the gunner Daniel Howe. Doubleday calls Howe the first man lost on their side. Pair it with a narrative show. For the wider field, turn to the American History guide and the History category guide.