The Confederacy Dominated the Early Civil War. So Why Did It Ultimately Lose?

The Confederacy Dominated the Early Civil War...

Up next

Before the Cold War, Russia and America Were the Closest of Distant Friends

Nearly a century of Cold War tensions between the United States and Russia hide the incredibly close friendship that the two nations enjoyed before this period. From America’s colonial founding in the 1600s to the eve of World War One, the two distant nations relied on each other ...  Show more

The Horrifying Sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the Titanic of the Great Lakes

One of the worst nautical disasters in recent American history is the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald. On November 10, 1975, the “storm of the century” threw 100 mile-per-hour winds and 50-foot waves on Lake Superior. The ship found itself at the worst possible place, at the ...  Show more

Recommended Episodes

General Robert E Lee: US Civil War rebel
Witness History

The US Civil War of 1861-65 left 700,000 troops dead. The Southern Confederate states rebelled against the Union of the North because the Confederates wanted to protect the right to own slaves. The hero of the rebel cause, General Robert E Lee, was charged with treason and had hi ...  Show more

How Lincoln Almost Lost it All
HISTORY This Week

December 11, 1862. Union Army engineers are urgently constructing a bridge, one that will carry soldiers into the town of Fredericksburg, Virginia, a Confederate stronghold. Union leaders are banking on the element of surprise and are desperate for a victory. But, by the time it’ ...  Show more

Stephen Cushman, "The Generals' Civil War: What Their Memoirs Can Teach Us Today" (UNC Press, 2021)
New Books in Military History

In the decades following the American Civil War, several of the generals who had laid down their swords picked up their pens and published accounts of their service in the conflict. In The Generals’ Civil War: What Their Memoirs Can Teach Us Today (University of North Carolina Pr ...  Show more

What if the South Won the Civil War?
American History Hit

What if the Civil War had ended differently, with the South seceding from the Union? Would slavery have continued? Would the southern states have continued as a whole? Would any other states have followed suit?


To explore this hypothetical history, Don spoke to Aaron ...

  Show more