John Matteson, Distinguished Professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, joins the show to discuss how the Civil War—and in particular the fall of 1862—left its mark on the nation's culture and on some of its most famous citizens. Times
01:25 - Introduction
03:28 - Fall of 1862
09:19 - Matteson's selection of Americans included in A Worse Place Than Hell
12:17 - Oliver Wendell Holmes and the 20th Massachusetts
16:13 - John Pelham
18:23 - Holmes, Pelham, and the battle of Antietam
23:56 - Holmes, Pelham, and the battle of Fredericksburg
27:23 - Valor and luck in battle
30:22 - The 20th Massachusetts in the battle of Fredericksburg
36:38 - Walt Whitman
40:17 - Oliver Wendell Holmes
Recorded December 7, 2021
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This podcast seeks to learn what war teaches. There has been a steady decline in the study of military history and its associated theoretical discipline, strategy.This podcast seeks to fill that gap through in-depth interviews on military and diplomatic history. Our guests have included former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis, and former China Select Committee chairman Mike Gallagher. We discuss the battlefield commanders, diplomats, strategists, policymakers, and statesmen who have had to make wartime decisions in the ancient and modern eras. The subject of an episode may be an historical battle, campaign, o...