In 1864, Nine Union Officers Escaped from a P...

The Disney version of Johnny Appleseed has a cheerful barefoot man in a tin pot hat scattering apple seeds for grateful pioneers to bake into pies. The real John Chapman collected his seeds for free from cidery waste, planted them into strategically fenced nurseries on land he bo ...  Show more

For the last 5,000 years, empires ruled the world — Rome administered hundreds of languages across three continents, and the Ottomans governed Christians, Jews, and Muslims under a single legal canopy. The nation-state as we know it is barely a century old for most of the world's ...  Show more

In early 1864, a group of Union prisoners made a daring escape from Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia - the capital of the Confederacy. Known for its sadistic guards and horrific conditions, Union Officers at Libby suffered from hunger, lice, and the freezing cold. In this ep ...

During the Civil War, Black people in America took the opportunity to free themselves and to serve the Union cause. At great personal risk, tens of thousands of refugees -- men, women and children -- fled Southern slave owners for Union lines. They enlisted in the Union Army and ...  Show more

Today in our series, Secrets of the Civil War, we’ll meet some of the key players in the Abolition Movement–a persuader, an agitator, and a conductor. Their ideals and actions helped foster the success of the Underground Railroad and the path to emancipation. How did so many ensl ...  Show more

Robert Smalls was born into slavery in Beaufort, South Carolina in 1839. He escaped from enslavement during the U.S. Civil War, in a particularly dramatic fashion.