Thaddeus Stevens: Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice

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Reconstruction: A Concise History

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Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln's Legacy

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The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction

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America's Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise That Preserved the Union

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The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made

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Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction

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The War after the War: A New History of Reconstruction

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April 1865: The Month That Saved America

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The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War

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Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson

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All the Powers of Earth: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln Vol. III, 1856-1860

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Washington's Farewell: The Founding Father's Warning to Future Generations

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The Know Nothing Party: The History and Legacy of America’s Most Notorious Nativist Political Party

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How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America

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Capital Dames: The Civil War and the Women of Washington, 1848-1868

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Accidental Presidents: Eight Men Who Changed America

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The Men and the Moment: The Election of 1968 and the Rise of Partisan Politics in America

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The King Years: Historic Moments in the Civil Rights Movement

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The Union War

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The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution

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The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan

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Salmon P. Chase: Lincoln's Vital Rival

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Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King

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Stanton: Lincoln's War Secretary

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The Ascent of George Washington: The Hidden Political Genius of an American Icon

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Terrible Swift Sword

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John Tyler, the Accidental President

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Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War

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Dark Sky Rising: Reconstruction and the Dawn of Jim Crow (Scholastic Focus)

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The Impending Crisis: America Before the Civil War: 1848-1861

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The House of Hidden Meanings: A Memoir

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Killing the Witches: The Horror of Salem, Massachusetts

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Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race

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Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present

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Land of Delusion: Out on the edge with the crackpots and conspiracy-mongers remaking our shared reality

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How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States

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Ghosts of Honolulu: A Japanese Spy, A Japanese American Spy Hunter, and the Untold Story of Pearl Harbor

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Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History

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The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women

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The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party

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Killing the Guys Who Killed the Guy Who Killed Lincoln: A Nutty Story About Edwin Booth and Boston Corbett

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Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom

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JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters

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Lies My Teacher Told Me: 2nd Edition

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The Untold History of the United States

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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

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Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

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The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple

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UFO: The Inside Story of the US Government's Search for Alien Life Here—and Out There

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John Adams

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Sins of the Founding Father: George Washington, the Indigenous Tribes, and the Decisions that Shaped America’s Future

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Waco: David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and A Legacy of Rage

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The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of September 11, 2001

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Up From Slavery

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How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America

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The Wright Brothers

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1776

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South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation

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Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis Thomas Jefferson And The Opening Of The American West

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Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune

Podcast episode

Lecture 25 - The "End" of Reconstruction: Disputed Election of 1876, and the "Compromise of 1877": This lecture focuses on the role of white southern terrorist violence in brining about the end of Reconstruction. Professor Blight begins with an account the Colfax Massacre. Colfax, Louisiana was the sight of the largest mass murder in U.S. history, when a white mob killed dozens of African Americans in the April of 1873. Two Supreme Court decisions would do in the judicial realm what the Colfax Massacre had done in the political. On the same day as the Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court offered a narrow reading of the 14th Amendment in the Slaughterhouse cases, signaling a judicial retreat from the radicalism of the early Reconstruction years. The Cruikshank case, two years later, would overturn the convictions of the only three men sentenced for their involvement in Colfax, and marked another step away from reconstruction. Professor Blight concludes with the Panic of 1873 and the seemi

Podcast episode

297 Claudio Saunt, Indian Removal Act of 1830: The history of Native American land dispossession is as old as the story of colonization. European colonists came to the Americas, and the Caribbean, wanting land for farms and settlement so they found ways to acquire lands from indigenous peoples by...

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Lecture 23 - Black Reconstruction in the South: The Freedpeople and the Economics of Land and Labor: Professor Blight begins this lecture in Washington, where the passage of the first Reconstruction Act by Congressional Republicans radically altered the direction of Reconstruction. The Act invalidated the reconstituted Southern legislatures, establishing five military districts in the South and insisting upon black suffrage as a condition to readmission. The eventful year 1868 saw the impeachment of one president (Andrew Johnson) and the election of another (Ulysses S. Grant). Meanwhile, southern African Americans struggle to reap the promises of freedom in the face of economic disempowerment and a committed campaign of white supremacist violence. Transcript Lecture Page

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How to Stop A Civil War: Jeffrey Goldberg, Danielle Allen, and Adam Serwer discuss how America is coming apart—and how they think it can be reunited.

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Lecture 21 - Andrew Johnson and the Radicals: A Contest over the Meaning of Reconstruction: In this lecture, Professor Blight begins his engagement with Reconstruction. Reconstruction, Blight suggests, might best be understood as an extended referendum on the meaning of the Civil War. Even before the war's end, various constituencies in the North attempted to control the shape of the post-war Reconstruction of the South. In late 1863, President Abraham Lincoln offered his lenient "Ten Percent Plan." Six months later, Congressional Republicans concerned by Lincoln's charity rallied behind the more radical provisions of the Wade-Davis Bill. Despite their struggle for control over Reconstruction, Congressional Radicals and President Lincoln managed to work together on two vital pieces of Reconstruction legislation in the first months of 1865--the 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery in the United States, and the Freedmen's Bureau bill. Transcript Lecture Page

Podcast episode

The Zealot and the Emancipator with H.W. Brands: Host Reed Galen is joined by Dr. H.W. Brands (Professor of History and Bestselling Author) to discuss the vastly different approaches John Brown and Abraham Lincoln took to confront the issue of slavery in their time and what parallels we can draw to...

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128 Alan Taylor, American Revolutions: A Continental History: Historians often portray the American Revolution as an orderly, if violent, event that moved from British colonists’ high-minded ideas about freedom to American independence from Great Britain and the ratification of the Constitution of 1787. But...

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042 Heather Cox Richardson, A History of the Republican Party: Ben Franklin's World: A Podcast About Early American History

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Lecture 17 - Homefronts and Battlefronts: "Hard War" and the Social Impact of the Civil War: Professor Blight begins his lecture with a description of the sea change in Civil War scholarship heralded by the Social History revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. Along with a focus on the experience of the common solider, women, and African Americans, a central component of this shift in scholarly emphasis was an increased interest in the effects of the war on the Union and Confederate home fronts. After suggesting some of the ways in which individual Americans experienced the war, Professor Blight moves to a discussion of the war's effect on industry and economics, North and South. The lecture concludes with a description of the increased activism of the federal government during the war, an activism that found expression in finance, agriculture, taxation, building railroads, and, most importantly, in emancipation. Transcript Lecture Page

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Professor Allen Guelzo on Robert E. Lee

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147 Don Hagist, British Soldiers, American War: What about the British Redcoats? When we discuss the military history of the American War for Independence, we tend to focus on specific battles or details about the men who served in George Washington’s Continental Army. Rarely do we take the...

Podcast episode

Lecture 22 - Constitutional Crisis and Impeachment of a President: Professor Blight continues his discussion of the political history of Reconstruction. The central figure in the early phase of Reconstruction was President Andrew Johnson. Under Johnson's stewardship, southern whites held constitutional conventions throughout 1865, drafting new constitutions that outlawed slavery but changed little else. When the Republican-dominated U.S. Congress reassembled late in 1865, they put a stop to Johnson's leniency and inaugurated Radical (or Congressional) Reconstruction, a process that resulted in the immediate passage of the Civil Rights bill and the Fourteenth Amendment, and the eventual passage of four Reconstruction Acts. The Congressional elections in 1866 and Johnson's disastrous "Swing Around the Circle" speaking tour strengthened Radical control over Congress. Each step of the way, Johnson did everything he could to obstruct Congressional Reconstruction, setting the stage for his i

Podcast episode

Reconstruction 101: Progress and Backlash: Just months after the Civil War ended, former Confederates had regained political footholds in Washington, D.C. In her overview of Reconstruction, Kate Masur notes how—in the face of evolving, post-slavery white supremacy—Black people claimed...

Podcast episode

Lincoln on Infrastructure: Known in history for his role in ending slavery and prosecuting the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln's most important issue in his time as an elected official was infrastructure. And in that, he was little different than his pioneer constituents. In this episode, we talk about Lincoln's roots, his arguments countering objections to improvement projects (that have relevance today), and how it shaped slavery and other political issues of his time.

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Bacon’s Rebellion, Part 1

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A Comanche Story: Quanah Parker: In this episode, we tell the story of Cynthia Ann Parker's son, the Comanche war chief Quanah Parker. Quanah led Comanche forces until his defeat at Adobe Walls. He then encouraged his people to settle on the reservation, refusing to sacrifice his culture

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Beth Macy on 'Dopesick'

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Lecture 14 - Never Call Retreat: Military and Political Turning Points in 1863: Professor Blight lectures on the military history of the early part of the war. Beginning with events in the West, Blight describes the Union victories at Fort Donelson and Fort Henry, introduces Union General Ulysses S. Grant, and narrates the horrific battle of Shiloh, fought in April of 1862. Moving back East, the lecture describes the Union General George McClellan's abortive 1862 Peninsula campaign, which introduced the world to Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. The lecture concludes with Confederate General Robert E. Lee's decision to take the battle to the North. Transcript Lecture Page

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75: Reconstruction (Part 3): The Rise of the KKK and the First Black Men in Government

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Lecture 3 - A Southern World View: The Old South and Proslavery Ideology: Professor Blight lectures on southern slavery. He makes a case for viewing the U.S. South as one of the five true "slave societies" in world history. He discusses the internal slave trade that moved thousands of slaves from the eastern seaboard to the cotton states of the Southwest between 1820 and 1860. Professor Blight then sketches the contents of the pro-slavery argument, including its biblical, historical, economic, cynical, and utopian aspects. Transcript Lecture Page

Podcast episode

Joseph J. Ellis, "The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents, 1773-1783" (Liveright, 2021): An interview with Joseph J. Ellis

Podcast episode

Fergus Bordewich: President Grant’s War Against the Ku Klux Klan: Join us for a special online-only program as Bordewich shares the stunning history of the first national anti-terrorist campaign waged on American soil, as Ulysses S. Grant wielded the power of the federal government to dismantle the KKK.

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Buried Treasure: Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis (w/ Adam Hochschild)

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ZINNOPHOBIA - Why So Many Still Fear "A People's History of the United States" (w/ David Detmer)

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Ep 96 | Jewish Space Lasers & Deplatforming 'MAGA Media' | Ben Shapiro | The Glenn Beck Podcast

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Ed Larson: Liberty and Slavery in the Birth of Our Nation: Pulitzer Prize-winner Ed Larson returns to The Commonwealth Club with a revealing look at how the twin strands of liberty and slavery were joined in the nation’s founding.

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#1544 Ten Things about Woodrow Wilson: This week, Clay Jenkinson’s conversation with Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky about the 28th President of the United States Woodrow Wilson. Best known for his Fourteen Points and the League of Nations, Wilson was one of the most pronounced idealists among...

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Bonus: Huey P Long, Episode 1-2: The Whirlwind: Imagine, for a moment, that there was a politician in the United States very unlike the others. One who was willing to promise all things to all people, who had no qualms about changing his position on a daily basis. One who viciously attacked the...

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Understanding the History of Black Rebellion: In the year since the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the mass mobilization of protest that followed — the largest collective gesture against police violence in this country’s history — there’s been a constant and energized call to d...

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What Happened to the Racist F***ing A**hole Dick Officials of the Confederacy After the End of the American Civil War? With Robert Icenhauer-Ramirez Ph.D.