Civil War | A Moment in Time | with Dan Roberts

City Point Explosion I

April 8, 2022PermalinkNancy WaldoToday's AMITAmerican History, Civil War, Military History

Lead: On a hot sultry August afternoon in 1864 a huge explosion wracked the wharves at City Point, Virginia, filled as they were with goods supplying Union forces at Petersburg. The Federals thought it was an accident.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: City Point was a quiet and peaceful village roughly 10 miles northeast of Petersburg. Today it is a part of Hopewell, Virginia, but for a brief period in 1864 and 1865 it seemed the center of the American universe. Determined to break the supply line between the rest of the Confederacy and its capital at Richmond, General Ulysses S. Grant, had besieged Petersburg which lay at the head of that vital web of railroads spreading south and west. City Point became Grant’s headquarters and its wharves, old and improvised, soon filled with Union food, medicines, supplies and, dangerously, as it would develop, munitions, guns, armament, and gunpowder in huge quantities.

A House Divided: (35) – Origin of Taps

March 24, 2022PermalinkSandy CreedToday's AMITAmerican History, American Politics, Civil War

Lead: One hundred and fifty years ago the Republic was facing its greatest crisis. This continuing series examines the American Civil War. It is A House Divided.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Despite appalling losses on both sides, Robert E. Lee’s rebel forces had hammered and ultimately thwarted the timid George C. McClellan’s grand attempt to take Richmond, the Confederate capital, in spring 1862. During the Seven Day’s Battles in June, the Union Army had been forced to retreat southeast to Harrison’s Landing. Many of the units in the Army of the Potomac bivouacked on Berkeley Plantation, the mansion of which was built in 1726. Berkeley is situated on a bluff above the James River and is the traditional home of the Harrison family which sired two Presidents of the United States.

Taking too long?

Reload document

Open in new tab

Download [64.03 KB]

A House Divided: The Tide Turns IV

March 9, 2022PermalinkSandy CreedToday's AMITAmerican History, Civil War

Lead: One hundred and fifty years ago the Republic was facing its greatest crisis. This continuing series examines the American Civil War. It is A House Divided.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: The American Civil War, Phase One, 1860-1861, Confederate Consolidation; Phase Two, 1861-Spring 1862, Union Ascendancy, particularly in the West; Phase Three, Spring 1862 through Gettysburg, Confederate Ascendancy; Phase Four, July 1863 through Spring 1864, The Tide Turns; Phase Five, Stalemate in Virginia, Union triumph in the South and West.

Taking too long?

Reload document

Open in new tab

Download [106.14 KB]

A House Divided: The Tide Turns III

March 8, 2022PermalinkSandy CreedToday's AMITAmerican History, Civil War

Lead: One hundred and fifty years ago the Republic was facing its greatest crisis. This continuing series examines the American Civil War. It is A House Divided.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Looking at the Civil War in Phases helps sort out the sometimes confusing course of events and demonstrates how the fortunes of Union and Confederacy ebbed and flowed. By May 1864 the Tide had turned and the power of Northern industrial and financial strength began to make possible significant Union progress. There was a new Yankee commander facing Robert E. Lee’s dwindling forces and increasingly narrow options. Ulysses S. Grant, determined to use his superior numbers and material resources, hammered away at Lee in the Overland Campaign. And though Lee was successful in the Wilderness, at Spotsylvania and in the terrible fighting at Cold Harbor, Grant refused to let up, wheeling around Lee’s right flank and soon the Southern miracle worker ran out of miracles and was slammed with his back on the defenses of Richmond and was forced to endure nearly a year of siege before Petersburg

Taking too long?

Reload document

Open in new tab

Download [104.98 KB]

A House Divided: The Tide Turns II

March 7, 2022PermalinkSandy CreedToday's AMITAmerican History, Civil War

Lead: One hundred and fifty years ago the Republic was facing its greatest crisis. This continuing series examines the American Civil War. It is A House Divided.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts

Content: If one looks at the American Civil War in phases, Phase One would be Confederate Consolidation ending at the First Battle of Bull Run, July 1861. Phase Two would be Union Ascendency August 1861 until May 1862 with Union forces rolling up victory in the West. Phase Three: Confederate Ascendancy – May, 1862-July 3, 1863. Union morale collapsed as rebel forces were victorious from Jackson’s valley campaign to the Seven Days, Second Bull Run, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville. Only the strategic Union victory and reversal of the Lee’s first Northern invasion at Antietam and the Emancipation Proclamation strengthened Northern prospects. Lee’s victories tempted him north a second time toward the disaster of the third day at Gettysburg.

Taking too long?

Reload document

Open in new tab

Download [105.41 KB]

A House Divided: The Tide Turns I

March 6, 2022PermalinkSandy CreedToday's AMITAmerican History, Civil War

Taking too long?

Reload document

Open in new tab

Download [106.54 KB]

Frederick Douglass II

February 15, 2022PermalinkNancy WaldoToday's AMITAfrican American History, American History, Civil War, Slavery

Lead: Born a slave, Frederick Douglass became one of the most articulate spokesmen for abolition in the pre-Civil War era.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: After escaping from slavery as a teenager, Douglass began to speak to church audiences throughout the North about the horrors of slavery. "I've come to tell you about slavery. Other abolitionists can tell you something about slavery; they cannot refer you to a back covered with scars." William Lloyd Garrison, the crusading newspaper editor, hired Douglass as a lecturer and audiences of whites flocked to hear his eloquent and compelling denunciation of America's peculiar institution. So effective was Douglass on the speaking circuit that his handlers began to fear attempts to recapture him and take him back South. Therefore, they sent him on a two-year European tour. He returned after twenty-one months, an international celebrity.

Taking too long?

Reload document

Open in new tab

Download [8.05 KB]

Frederic Douglass I

February 14, 2022PermalinkNancy WaldoToday's AMITAfrican American History, American History, Civil War, Slavery

Lead: "All the other speakers seemed tame after Frederick Douglass. He stood there like an African Prince, majestic in his wrath."Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Elizabeth Cady Stanton knew her activists. It was an age of moral agitation and she would go on to great fame at the side of Susan B. Anthony in the service of women's rights. That day in the mid-1800s when Frederick Douglass spoke to an antislavery meeting in Boston, Stanton was as moved as the rest at the sound of his voice and the moral imperative of his message.

Douglass was an escaped slave. Raised by his grandmother on a Chesapeake Bay plantation, at the age of six he began his work under Captain Aaron Anthony, the white farm manager and, so some of the slaves said, Frederick's father. In later years, he would make vivid to audiences throughout the North the picture of life as a slave.

Taking too long?

Reload document

Open in new tab

Download [7.41 KB]