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.

----more----

Some Characters Mentioned In This Episode:

John C. Calhoun

Eli Whitney

Edgar Allan Poe

Stephen Foster

James Dunwoody Brownson De Bow

William L. Yancey

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:

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