Episodes Around: 18651110

  1. The End of the Civil War in Indian Territory
    date 1864 to 1865map Unorganized, Oklahomatags Native-Americans, Politics, War

    The war in the West went on long after Lee surrendered, and not just because it took a little while for news to travel. The Confederates appeared utterly defeated, and yet some still were willing to fight. But the South was not the only problem for the North. Corruption was rampant in Forts Smith and Gibson (Indian Territory, now Oklahoma); safe havens for both southern and northern refugees, from...

  2. Desolation Leads to a Soldier's Desertion
    date December 4, 1864 to 1865map RAPIDES, Louisianatags Agriculture, Government, Politics, Slavery, War, Women

    On December 5, 1864, John L. Sharitt, Jr., a Confederate soldier, epitomizes the eventual doom of the southern cause.He reflects gloomily upon Abraham Lincoln, the South's lack of supplies, weakening morale, and, more specifically, the barren and ruined physical state of Louisiana.On this day, Sharitt rode with his company seven miles up the Cane River.Throughout the entire ride, all he saw...

  3. One Family's Tragic Loss and Wartime Poverty
    date 1865map CADDO, Louisianatags Agriculture, Crime/Violence, Health/Death, Economy, Government, War

    While aboard a steamer ship headed from Alexandria, LA for Shreveport, LA, J.M. Bundy, a northern soldier, witnessed human cruelty and the outrageous poverty encompassing much of the South. Bundy and his Union comrades were invited to ride up the Red River to Shreveport on the Confederate flag-of-truce boat before a conference with southern officers about terms of surrender. Flying towards this...

  4. Tobacco Business Revives Economy in Durham
    date 1865map ORANGE, North Carolinatags Agriculture, Economy, Urban-Life/Boosterism

    In 1865, John Ruffin Green, a newcomer to Durham, bought a tobacco factory from Dr. Richard Blacknall. Green knew that there was a future in the manufacturing of tobacco because he noticed the extensive amount of its consumption in the Confederate Army and among university students. Green focused on the manufacture of smoking tobacco by buying only the best grades of leaf. Later that year, a terrible...

  5. Enslaving the Free: The Development of Southern Sharecropping
    date 1865map CHARLESTON, South Carolinatags African-Americans, Agriculture, Economy, Race-Relations, Slavery

    "We are going to work for ourselves and for nobody else." The newly-freed slaves of Thomas Pinckney took this stand when he called them to start working again after the Civil War ended. Pinckney, a plantation owner in South Carolina, did not expect these men to continue working for free, but he realized that without them, his plantation was destined for failure. He stated simply, "I acknowledged...

  6. The Day in the Life of a Union Prisoner of War: Disease and Deprivation
    date 1865map Washington City, District of Columbiatags Crime/Violence, Government, Health/Death, War

    The United States Sanitary Commission conducted a series of interviews following the conclusion of the Civil War. The Commission focused on the details of Union soldier's imprisonment during their service. The soldiers gave testimony as to their experience as a prisoner of war. The compilation of accounts details the suffering and privations of different soldiers both commissioned...

  7. Argues for a Racially Mixed America
    date 1865map Washington City, District of Columbiatags African-Americans, Race-Relations, War

    Miscegenation stirred the pot in the American courts for much of the nineteenth century. According to historian Warren Sollors, in 1727 a white woman abandoned her husband because she fell in love with a black man. As a result, laws in 1741 called attention to the interracial marriage of whites and blacks in America. A fine of fifty pounds was to be paid in addition to children of these marriages...

  8. An assistant surgeon reports on gangrene
    date January 1, 1865 to December 31, 1865map SUMTER, Georgiatags Civil War, prison, Health/Death

    Andersonville's prison had a hospital crowded with patients, due to the bad living conditions in the cells. The prison was overcrowded with prisoners crammed in rooms, inactive and secluded from society, lacking food, exercise and fresh air. The atmosphere was so polluted that people could hardly breathe. The promiscuity made sickness spread in a heartbeat, and in the winter of 1865, the prison...

  9. Jefferson Davis Finds a Friend in Prison
    date May, 1865 to December, 1866map MONROE, Virginiatags Civil War, prison, Reconstruction

    Around May 10 1865, federal troops captured Confederate President Jefferson Davis fleeing in Georgia and sent him to be confined in Fortress Monroe, Virginia. Davis was held prisoner for two years from May 1865 to May 1867, six months of the time confined in a casemate under heavy guard. According to a war memo excerpted in a New York Times article, he was not arraigned upon any indictment or formal...

  10. The Arrest of Senator Clay in the Assasination of Lincoln
    date May 22, 1865 to April 17, 1866map Washington City, District of Columbiatags Crime/Violence, Politics, War, Women

    When Mrs. Virginia Clay, the wife of Senator Clay of Alabama, received news of her husband's arrest, she was immediately enraged. Up to this point in 1865, she had been enjoying the life of a socialite in Washington, DC, while Mr. Clay had taken on the role of Senator for the Confederacy. President Johnson had Clay arrested, alongside Jefferson Davis for allegedly conspiring in the assassination...

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