After the Civil War ─ The Heroes, Villains, Soldiers, and Civilians Who Changed America

Acclaimed historian James Robertson examines the myriad ways the Civil War transformed American society, bringing listeners back to 1865 to explore the critical postwar years and the seventy-five key figures who would come to shape America during Reconstruction and beyond.Set against the backdrop of the chaotic days following Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, as Washington and the world struggled to come to terms with the loss of the figure who symbolized America’s Union, we meet the people whose lives marked shifts in everyday life in the United States, from Edwin Holmes, who would revolutionize the funeral industry, to Clara Barton, who would found the modern Red Cross. We meet the Old Soldiers such as Winfield Scott, the general who was older than the city of Washington, DC, when he took command of the Union Army in 1861, and William Tecumseh Sherman, an enigma of a man who would revolutionize modern warfare. We meet Edwin Stanton, the dour secretary of war who would attempt to seize political power amid the chaos of post-assassination Washington and avenge the Union with harsh punishments for Confederate president Jefferson Davis. Together their stories tell the complex and fast-paced history of America as the country struggled to reunite and adapt to the inevitable changes wrought by war.