A remarkable military leader, Robert E. Lee was a likely candidate to take charge of the Union Army in 1861. However, compelled by a love of his home state of Virginia, this principled man, who disliked slavery and disagreed with secession, pitted himself against an army he served for 36 years. Bestselling author Michael Korda explores this compelling figure, who, as the leading Confederate General, provided the Union with a most fierce adversary.
The American Civil War was the largest non-British conflict ever fought by British men and women. Serving as soldiers, spies and nurses for both the Union and Confederacy, never again would so many risk their lives on behalf of a foreign cause. In this discussion, acclaimed historian Amanda Foreman, in conversation with Harold Holzer, takes the audience on a journey to the drawing rooms of London, the offices of Washington and the front lines of a divided America to examine Great Britain’s integral role in the Civil War.
In July 1863, several months after President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation and signed the nation's first federal draft law, New York City was nearly destroyed in a four-day cataclysm of arson, looting, and lynching. Join historian Barnet Schecter for an in-depth look at the festering racial and class conflicts that produced the deadliest riots in American history.