Threads From The National Tapestry: Stories From The American Civil War
Fred Kiger
Monthly episodes highlighting the most engaging stories from the American Civil War.
- 55 minutes 18 seconds096 - Grant's Lieutenants
About this episode:
In March of 1864, Ulysses S. Grant was promoted to military heights only attained by one other - George Washington. On the 2nd day of that month, the US Senate confirmed Grant’s promotion to Lieutenant General. On the 9th, President Abraham Lincoln officially commissioned him and the next day he was given official authority to take command of the Armies of the United States. Though in overall command of the mighty U.S. military machine, he had to have lieutenants who would execute his strategies. This episode is about five of them - one glorified Chief of Staff and four who served in the field. This is the story of five who administratively and militarily landed the blows that their commanding officer called for. These - biographical sketches of men who, by their deeds, assured Grant’s position in the pantheon of this country’s greatest warriors. This is the story of Grant’s Lieutenants.
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Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode:
Subscribe to the Threads from the National Tapestry YouTube Channel here
Thank you to our sponsor, Celebrity Word Scramble. In collaboration with Fred Kiger, they have published a Civil War edition of the Celebrity Word Scramble series. Included in the book is 16 pages of Civil War facts, stories, and insights written by Fred Kiger.
Get your copy of the book 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
25 March 2026, 2:43 pm - 43 minutes 16 seconds095 - After The Sound Of Bugles Faded: The Last Years of Robert E. Lee - Part 2
About this episode:
We begin Part II of our post-war story of R. E. Lee. It is early 1867 and, we remind you that in March of that year, there was to be a fund-raising event for Washington College in, of all places, New York City. 500 were to attend. Men of means and power - all potential donors - and much was expected from this highly anticipated gathering. And yet, a month before the gala, on the 4th of February, a disturbance in Lexington that created dark clouds for not only Lee but the college. We now pick up with the story…
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Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode:
For Further Reading:
The Last Years of Robert E. Lee: From Gettysburg to Lexington by Douglas Savage
Lee: The Last Years by Charles Bracelen Flood
Subscribe to the Threads from the National Tapestry YouTube Channel here
Thank you to our sponsor, Celebrity Word Scramble. In collaboration with Fred Kiger, they have published a Civil War edition of the Celebrity Word Scramble series. Included in the book is 16 pages of Civil War facts, stories, and insights written by Fred Kiger.
Get your copy of the book 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
25 February 2026, 2:57 pm - 44 minutes 59 seconds094 - After The Sound Of Bugles Faded: The Last Years of Robert E. Lee - Part 1
About this episode:
We begin a two part presentation that tells the story of a man who never truly sought fame and never wanted to be controversial, and yet his destiny casts such a long shadow that to this day, he may well be one of the most noted generals in American military history, and to more than a few, lurks as one who was and continues to be deemed a traitor. He began his military career at 18 years of age, when he entered West Point in 1825. We pick up his life when, after surrendering the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, he ceased to be a soldier and began his role as civilian and as an educator. Now, at 58, we seek to humanize the so-called marble man. This is the story of the final five and one half years of his life. This is part one of After The Bugles Faded: The Last Years of Robert E. Lee.
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Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode:
For Further Reading:
The Last Years of Robert E. Lee: From Gettysburg to Lexington by Douglas Savage
Lee: The Last Years by Charles Bracelen Flood
Subscribe to the Threads from the National Tapestry YouTube Channel here
Thank you to our sponsor, Celebrity Word Scramble. In collaboration with Fred Kiger, they have published a Civil War edition of the Celebrity Word Scramble series. Included in the book is 16 pages of Civil War facts, stories, and insights written by Fred Kiger.
Get your copy of the book 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
26 January 2026, 4:29 pm - 1 hour 15 minutes093 - Fighting On The Frontier: The American Civil War West Of The Mississippi
About this episode:
For this episode, we’ll take the American Civil War to places that far too many dismiss - west of the Mississippi. Sites and confrontations that may not be as well-known as eastern theater battlefields like Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysburg or Chattanooga but, nevertheless at locations where national interests were just as great, passions of those involved just as deep and consequences that were just as far-reaching. Three selected stories - each to provide a snapshot of personalities, events and ramifications. One to highlight Union and Confederate campaigns in faraway New Mexico Territory; Another, vengeful guerilla warfare in Kansas and Missouri; and, for our third story, while civil war raged, a clash between whites and Native Americans in Minnesota. And now, stories from the American Civil War that originated in the Trans-Mississippi. Stories from then the western frontier.
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Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode:
Additional Resources
Battlefields Of New Mexico
Battles Of Kansas And Missouri
Subscribe to the Threads from the National Tapestry YouTube Channel here
Thank you to our sponsor, Celebrity Word Scramble. In collaboration with Fred Kiger, they have published a Civil War edition of the Celebrity Word Scramble series. Included in the book is 16 pages of Civil War facts, stories, and insights written by Fred Kiger.
Get your copy of the book 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
30 December 2025, 10:12 pm - 49 minutes 37 seconds092 - A Man Committed: William Tecumsah Sherman, Part 2
About this episode:
In the aftermath of the great and bloody battle of Shiloh, we pick up with the life and career of William Tecumseh Sherman. His personal journey continues to be one that spans the vast spectrum that comprises life itself - ups and downs, triumphs and defeats. In this episode, we speak of his command of the Union’s Western Theater and its campaigns, his post-war rise to General-in-Chief and, after retirement, his time as citizen. Through all, he was larger than life and no stranger to complexity and controversy. Now, in Part II, we continue the deeply-layered story that is William Tecumseh Sherman.
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Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode:
For Further Reading
Citizen Sherman: A Life of William Tecumseh Sherman by Michael Fellman
Sherman: Merchant of Terror, Advocate of Peace by Charles Edmund Vetter
William Tecumseh Sherman: In the Service of My Country: A Life by James Lee McDonough
Subscribe to the Threads from the National Tapestry YouTube Channel here
Thank you to our sponsor, Celebrity Word Scramble. In collaboration with Fred Kiger, they have published a Civil War edition of the Celebrity Word Scramble series. Included in the book is 16 pages of Civil War facts, stories, and insights written by Fred Kiger.
Get your copy of the book 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
21 November 2025, 3:51 pm - 52 minutes 8 seconds091 - Finding Himself: William Tecumsah Sherman, Part 1
About this episode:
It was a Wednesday, August 11, 1880 and some 5000 Union veterans gathered at the Ohio State Fair. President Rutherford B. Hayes had just finished a speech when another was called for. The next speaker was tall, sinewy and long in the neck. His head was large and his face a regular nest of wrinkles. Often animated and mercurial in temperament, on this day, his features expressed determination - especially his mouth. “There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but boys, it is all hell…” This is the story of that speaker - one who survived charges of insanity. A man who, in the vortex of civil war, bonded with another and the two would eventually bring the Confederacy to its knees. This is the story of William Tecumseh Sherman.
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Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode:
Subscribe to the Threads from the National Tapestry YouTube Channel here
Thank you to our sponsor, Celebrity Word Scramble. In collaboration with Fred Kiger, they have published a Civil War edition of the Celebrity Word Scramble series. Included in the book is 16 pages of Civil War facts, stories, and insights written by Fred Kiger.
Get your copy of the book 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
29 October 2025, 2:13 pm - 1 hour 3 minutes090 - Rich In "Guns And Butter": The North In 1860
About this episode:
The year was 1859 and future Confederate Secretary of the Navy, Florida Senator Stephen R. Mallory, trumpeted, “It is no more for this country to pause in its career than for the free and untrammeled eagle to cease its soar.” He had every reason to be optimistic, for the decade of the 1850s had brought the United States of America exceptional growth and prosperity. And, with enormous resources, there was much to look forward to: vast unoccupied lands, a network of navigable rivers, untapped riches in timber, iron, coal, copper and California gold. It is also true that in that same decade political tension had escalated but in the cold light of economics, the two sections were interdependent - perhaps inseparable. Yet there were unsettling factors at work: geography, population and its make-up, internal improvements, technology, religion, education, reform, politics and, yes, slavery and the question of its expansion. Taken as a whole, the United States in 1860, was in fact, two worlds. On the heels of our tour of the American South in 1860, we now look at that world that comprised the so-called Free States - the North.
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Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode:
Subscribe to the Threads from the National Tapestry YouTube Channel here
Thank you to our sponsor, Celebrity Word Scramble. In collaboration with Fred Kiger, they have published a Civil War edition of the Celebrity Word Scramble series. Included in the book is 16 pages of Civil War facts, stories, and insights written by Fred Kiger.
Get your copy of the book 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
30 September 2025, 1:23 pm - 1 hour 9 minutes089 - 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 Confederate officers dressed as knights competing for the honor of a local belle, he was moved…even enraptured. To him, the scene was a metaphor for the war itself. The South was a gallant knight battling against dark Northern materialistic forces. Defending hallowed chivalry. As Lanier put it, the Confederacy’s war had “the sanctity of a religious cause” arrayed in “military trapping.” These men, this image of knights in shining armor, this lifestyle are what most remember of the antebellum South. Indeed, what many still want to remember. But they represented only a very thin slice of Southern society. About only one half of 1% of a total population of some nine million. And unlike royalty of old, those planters… those knights were part of an aristocracy sired by property, not birth. Most of them self-made men from ordinary backgrounds whose influence was measured in the number of slaves they owned and the acreage of their plantations. Enjoying leisure and wealth, those few had the time and energy to pursue politics and, in positions of economic and political power, they enjoyed deference from the masses that made up the majority of the Southern white population. Deference which meant that majority followed the leadership and adopted the views of something they would never attain over the course of their entire existence. For this episode, we tell the story of a 19th century world filled with magnolia and cotton…populated with planters, yeomen farmers, “crackers” and the enslaved. Taken together, the completed picture of a world…a culture that in five years would truly be “gone with the wind.” This is the story of the Antebellum South on the eve of civil war.
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Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode:
James Dunwoody Brownson De Bow
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
29 August 2025, 1:21 pm - 1 hour 11 minutes088 - 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 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.
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Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode:
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
31 July 2025, 1:17 pm - 1 hour 4 minutes087 - 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 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.
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Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode:
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
26 June 2025, 6:51 pm - 1 hour 21 minutes086 - 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 Southern men. This is the story of fire eaters Louis T. Wigfall and Edmund Ruffin.
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Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode:
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
29 May 2025, 7:33 pm - More Episodes? Get the App