History Unplugged Podcast

Latest Episodes:

American Politicians Nearly Had George Washington Fired During the Revolutionary War Dec 10, 2019

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After the setbacks of 1777 and 1778, other American officers angled to take Washington's position as leader of the Continental Army. A conspiracy called the Conway Cable tried but failed to force him out. Washington shored up his support after victory at the Battle of Monmouth.

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The Philadelphia Campaign: When Britain Took Over Ben Franklin's House Dec 05, 2019

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The Philadelphia Campaign of 1777-8 was a British attempt to capture Philadelphia, then capital of the United States and seat of the Continental Congress, led by Gen. William Howe. They did capture the city, but British disaster loomed north in the Saratoga campaign, threatening any British gains.
Correction: The Schuylkill River was pronounced "Sky-Kill", but it is actually pronounced "School - Kill."

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The Battle of Saratoga—Benedict Arnold, An American Hero Dec 03, 2019

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The Battle of Saratoga was incredible turn of fortunes for the United States. British , Gen. John Burgoyne thought he would cut off New England from the rest of the colonies. Instead, he lost the battle and was forced to surrender 20,000 troops. Saratoga was also Benedict Arnold's finest hour. He loathed American commander Horatio Gates, who relieved Arnold of his command. Nonetheless, at the Battle of Bemis Heights on October 7, 1777, Arnold took command of American soldiers whom he led in an assault against the British. Arnold’s fierce attack disordered the enemy and led to American victory. The decisive Patriot victory compelled France to enter the war as an ally with the United States.

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Rebroadcast: Turkey is Both a Bird and a Country. Which Came First? Nov 28, 2019

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It's no coincidence that the bird we eat for Thanksgiving and a Middle Eastern country are both called Turkey. One was named after the other, and it all has to do with a 500-year-old story of emerging global trade, mistaken identity, foreign language confusion, and how the turkey took Europe by storm as a must-have status symbol for the ultra-wealthy.

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The Saratoga Campaign: Turning Point of the Revolutionary War Nov 27, 2019

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The Saratoga campaign gave a decisive victory to the Americans over the British during the American Revolutionary War. The battle also saw great heroics by Benedict Arnold.

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The Battle of Princeton Proves George Washington Was So Lucky, It Was Almost Supernatural Nov 26, 2019

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Washington and his men had their work cut out for them after crossing the Delaware River. Over the next ten days, they won two battles. First, the Patriots defeated a Hessian garrison on December 26th. They then returned to Trenton a week later to draw British force south, then launched a night attack to capture Princeton on January 3rd. With the victory, New Jersey fell into Patriot hands.

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19th-Century American Radicals: Vegans, Abolitionists, and Free Love Advocates Nov 21, 2019

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On July 4, 1826, as Americans lit firecrackers to celebrate the country’s fiftieth birthday, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were on their deathbeds. They would leave behind a groundbreaking political system and a growing economy—as well as the glaring inequalities that had undermined the American experiment from its beginning. The young nation had outlived the men who made it, but could it survive intensifying divisions over the very meaning of the land of the free?
In today's episode, I'm speaking with Holly Jackson about her new book American Radicals, which looks at this new network of dissent—connecting firebrands and agitators on pastoral communes, in urban mobs, and in genteel parlors across the nation—that vowed to finish the revolution they claimed the Founding Fathers had only begun. They were men and women, black and white, fiercely devoted to causes that pitted them against mainstream America even while they fought to preserve the nation’s founding ideals: the brilliant heiress Frances Wright, whose shocking critiques of religion and the institution of marriage led to calls for her arrest; the radical Bostonian William Lloyd Garrison, whose commitment to nonviolence would be tested as the conflict over slavery pushed the nation to its breaking point; the Philadelphia businessman James Forten, who presided over the first mass political protest of free African Americans; Marx Lazarus, a vegan from Alabama whose calls for sexual liberation masked a dark secret; black nationalist Martin Delany, the would-be founding father of a West African colony who secretly supported John Brown’s treasonous raid on Harpers Ferry—only to ally himself with Southern Confederates after the Civil War.
Though largely forgotten today, these figures were enormously influential in the pivotal period flanking the war, their lives and work entwined with reformers like Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Henry David Thoreau, as well as iconic leaders like Abraham Lincoln. Jackson writes them back into the story of the nation’s most formative and perilous era in all their heroism, outlandishness, and tragic shortcomings.

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Benedict Arnold, Vidkun Quisling, and Other Historical Villains—When is Someone Misunderstood vs. Truly Bad? Nov 19, 2019

Show notes

Do historical “villains” like Benedict Arnold, Vidkun Quisling, and Emperor Caligula deserve their terrible reputations, or are they victims of biased accounts? In this rebroadcast of a live event in the History Unplugged Facebook Page, Scott gets into what makes somebody a true bad guy in the past (unsurprisingly, Hitler makes this list), somebody best described as misunderstood, and somebody who deserves a rehabilitation.

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When Does A Scorched-Earth Policy Work? A Look at the Civil War's Final Year Nov 14, 2019

Show notes

Ulysses S. Grant arrives to take command of all Union armies in March 1864 to the surrender of Robert E. Lee at Appomattox a year later. Over 180,000 black soldiers in the Union army. And most of all, William Tecumseh Sherman launches his scorched-earth March to the Sea. Other events include the rise of Clara Barton; the election of 1864 (which Lincoln nearly lost); the wild and violent guerrilla war in Missouri; and the dramatic final events of the war, including the surrender at Appomattox and the murder of Abraham Lincoln.
Today I'm talking with S.C. Gwynne, author of Hymns of the Republic: The Story of the Final Year of the American Civil War. We discuss unexpected angles and insights on the war. Ulysses S. Grant is known for his prowess as a field commander, but in the final year of the war he largely fails at that. His most amazing accomplishments actually began the moment he stopped fighting. William Tecumseh Sherman was a lousy general, but probably the single most brilliant man in the war. We also meet a different Clara Barton, one of the greatest and most compelling characters, who redefined the idea of medical care in wartime. And proper attention is paid to the role played by large numbers of black union soldiers—most of them former slaves. They changed the war and forced the South to come up with a plan to use its own black soldiers.

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Medic! First Aid in Combat, From WW1 Trenches to Operation Iraqi Freedom Nov 12, 2019

Show notes

Up until the recent past, if a soldier was wounded in battle, he remained in the field where he had fallen without hope of rescue. Maybe a comrade would drag him to safety, but more likely he would remain there for days, hoping for aid (or, barring that, death). Not that ancients knew nothing of combat medicine. Alexander the Great had tourniquets applied to soldiers with bleeding extremity wounds. Stretchers made of wicker were used in medieval battles. Triage was used in the Napoleonic corps.
It was not until the Civil War that something like an ambulance service developed. Everything change in 1862 when Dr. Jonathan Letterman developed a three-tier evacuation system still used today. First was the field dressing station near the battlefield. The second was the field hospital (or MASH units). Finally a large hospital for those needing prolonged treatment.
Today, death rates in battle have plummeted, thanks to the work of combat medics, who keep soldiers from dying at their most vulnerable time.

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