Episodes
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Vice President to a narrow election winner, Chester Arthur was a very unlikely President. But on September 20th 1881 he took his seat as the 21st President of the United States at the dawn of the modern administrative state and presidency.
So what kind of President did he become? Was he progressive? What was his role in the creation of the Civil Service? And how did the Presidency impact him as a person?
Don is joined by Michael J. Gerhardt for this episode in our Presidential series. Michael is the Samuel Ashe Distinguished Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law in Chapel Hill. He is the author of The Forgotten Presidents: Their Untold Constitutional Legacy and FDR's Mentors: Navigating the Path to Greatness.
Produced by Sophie Gee and Freddy Chick. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.
Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for $1 per month for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORY sign up at https://historyhit.com/subscription/
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11 Tonys, a Grammy, a Pulitzer Prize and broken box office records - there's no denying the impact of Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton.
Throughout this series on the real Hamilton, we have been trying to uncover the man the musical is based on. But how much of the show and its production is truthful? And how much does this matter?
Renee Romano joins Don to look into this new American Myth. Renee is a writer, historian and professor, and one of the editors of 'Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical is Restaging America's Past'. She can be found here.
Produced by Sophie Gee. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.
Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for $1 per month for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORY sign up at https://historyhit.com/subscription/
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Missing episodes?
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Today we dive into the little-known true story of American castaways abandoned on the Falkland Islands during the War of 1812 ― a tale of treachery, shipwreck, isolation and a desperate struggle for survival.
In this fascinating episode, best-selling author Eric Jay Dolan joins Don to explore this wild encounter between an American sealing vessel, a shipwrecked British brig and a British warship in the desolate Falklands, all while the two nations remained at war. Fraught with misunderstandings and mistrust, this bizarre incident left three British sailors and two Americans adrift for eighteen months, and is the subject of Eric's new book Left for Dead: Shipwreck, Treachery, and Survival at the Edge of the World.
Produced by Sophie Gee. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.
Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for $1 per month for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORY sign up at https://historyhit.com/subscription/
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When Alexander Hamilton took a bullet to the abdomen on the morning of the 11th July 1804, he joined a long list of people who had fallen foul of this very strange practice. So where did duelling come from? And how did these two revolutionary American politicians find themselves with pistols in their hands?
Don is joined for this third episode of our Real Hamilton series by Mike Loades, British author and presenter of History Hit's new series of documentaries about the tradition of duelling, first with swords, then with pistols.
Find 'Duelling, with Mike Loades' on History Hit TV.
Produced and edited by Sophie Gee. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.
Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for $1 per month for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORY sign up at https://historyhit.com/subscription/
You can take part in our listener survey here.
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This may have been the second shortest Presidency in the history of the United States, but the term of James Garfield is definitely not one to miss.
From his dark horse nomination to his assassination by Charles Guiteau, Don is speaking with bestselling author of ‘An Assassin in Utopia,' Susan Wels.
Produced by Sophie Gee. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.
Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for $1 per month for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORY sign up at https://historyhit.com/subscription/
You can take part in our listener survey here.
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Founding Father, first Secretary of the Treasury and focus of one of the world's first political sex scandals - we couldn't do a series about Alexander Hamilton without touching on his personal life.
Don is joined by Elizabeth Cobbs in this episode to explore the private lives of the Hamiltons. Who was Elizabeth Schuyler? Did her sister have an affair with her husband? And was the Reynolds affair an elaborate plot or an unhappy coincidence?
Produced and edited by Sophie Gee. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.
Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for $1 per month for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORY sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/
You can take part in our listener survey here.
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Theodore Roosevelt is arguably the most masculine president in American history. So how was he influenced by the women around him? And how was he impacted by the deaths of two of them on the same day?
In this episode, Edward O'Keefe introduces us to Theodore Roosevelt's mother, two sisters, and two wives: Mittie, Bamie, Conie, Alice and Edith.
Edward O'Keefe, Prime Time Emmy award and Peabody winner, CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, is the author of 'The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt: The Women Who Created a President'.
Produced by Sophie Gee. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.
Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for $1 per month for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORY sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/
You can take part in our listener survey here.
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Who really was Alexander Hamilton, and what do we actually know about his life?
A Founding Father, he fought in the Revolutionary War, founded the American financial system and was the first ever Secretary of the Treasury. But who really was Hamilton? How did his face come to be on our bank notes? Did he love his wife? And why would he go to duel even after his son had died in doing so?
In this first episode of our 4 part series on American History Hit, Don Wildman is talking to William Hogeland to find out. William is the author of 'The Hamilton Scheme: An Epic Tale of Money and Power in the American Founding' and his substack can be found here.
Produced by Sophie Gee. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.
Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for $1 per month for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORY sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/
You can take part in our listener survey here.
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Emerging victorious from an electoral quagmire in 1876, Rutherford B. Hayes became the 19th President of the United States.
Professor Mark Zachary Taylor joins Don to explore the first great depression and how Hayes navigated the US towards recovery from it.
From strike and unrest to growth and stability, how did Hayes lay the groundwork for economic prosperity?
Produced by Freddy Chick. Edited by Sophie Gee. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.
Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for $1 per month for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORY sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/
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An iconic signature on the Declaration of Independence - that is what John Hancock is best known for. But how did he come to be the first signatory? What was his role in the American Revolution?
Brooke Barbier joins Don in this episode to take us through the life and works of John Hancock, and to explain how he got the nickname, 'King Hancock'.
Brooke is the author of ‘Boston in the American Revolution’ and ‘King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father’. She also founded 'Ye Old Tavern Tours', a private tour company in Boston.
Produced by Sophie Gee. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.
Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for $1 per month for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORY sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/
You can take part in our listener survey here.
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During the spring of 1921, eleven bodies were found in in rural Georgia. These men were victims of horrific murders, and also of a more widespread crime - peonage.
Whilst enslavement had legally ended with the surrender at Appomattox and the 13th Amendment, black people across the south were still being entrapped into debt slavery half a century later, in the Twentieth Century.
To find out more about this, and about what drove these men's murderer to his crimes, Don speaks to Earl Swift, author of 'Hell Put to Shame: The 1921 Murder Farm Massacre and the Horror of America's Second Slavery.'
Produced by Sophie Gee. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.
Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for $1 per month for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORY sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/
You can take part in our listener survey here.
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How does a heroic general of the Civil War become one of the lowest rated Presidents (at least until recently)?
To discuss Grant's commitment to reconstruction, civil rights, and the crushing of the Ku Klux Klan, Don is joined by Professor Anne Marshall. Anne is a historian of the Nineteenth century U.S. South and the Civil War in historical memory at Mississippi State University.
Produced by Freddy Chick. Edited by Sophie Gee. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.
Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for $1 per month for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORY sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/
You can take part in our listener survey here.
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Strategic brilliance? Relentless determination? Unbeatable leadership and cooperation with Lincoln? How did Ulysses S. Grant distinguish himself in the Civil War?
Don speaks to Cecily Zander, a historian specializing in the Civil War era and the American West. Together, they discuss Grant's rise to General, his role in the war and why he has been known as 'the Butcher'.
Produced by Freddy Chick and Charlotte Long. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.
Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for $1 per month for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORY sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/
You can take part in our listener survey here.
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Al Capone is one of the most notorious gangsters in US history. His story of rags to riches, set against the backdrop of the prohibition era, is worthy of the many movies that it has inspired.
Violent mobster, genius businessman or semi-professional baseball player, who was the real Al Capone? To find out, Don speaks to Claire White, Director of Education at the Mob Museum in Las Vegas.
Produced and edited by Sophie Gee. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.
Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for $1 per month for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORY sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/
You can take part in our listener survey here.
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It comprises more than half of the world's defence spending, but what is the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation? How has the United States influenced it from its inception to today? And how, during its 75 years, has it impacted the United States in return?
Don is joined by Peter Apps, journalist and Reuters global defence commentator. From the signing of the treaty by the first 12 members on 4th April 1949, through tensions, failures and the addition of member states, how might NATO be 'the world's most successful military alliance'?
Produced by Sophie Gee. Edited by Ella Blaxill. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.
Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for $1 per month for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORY sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/.
You can take part in our listener survey here.
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A wealthy man in his early 30s. An army man. A German immigrant. A bootlegger. A lover. Who was Jay Gatsby? And if he was based on a real person, what do we know about them?
To delve into one of the most famous fictional characters of the 20th century (from one of Don's favourite authors, F Scott Fitzgerald) Don speaks to Joe Nocera. Joe is the host of a new eight-part investigation that delves into the shrouded mystery behind the person who claims to have inspired The Great Gatsby.
American Dreamer: Who Was Jay Gatsby? An Audible Original podcast, is out now.
Produced and edited by Sophie Gee. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.
Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for $1 per month for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORY sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/
You can take part in our listener survey here.
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Three quarters of a million people dead in the Civil War. A country separated in to two. How do you join it back together? Do you punish the secessionists? How do you grapple with the question of enslavement? And who do you choose to be at the controls?
When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, his Vice President, Andrew Johnson, became President. Johnson was a Southerner who had sided with the Union during the war. To hear how his standpoint impacted on his policy in the aftermath of the war, Don speaks to Erik B Alexander.
Erik is an Associate Professor of American History at Souther Illinois University.
Produced by Sophie Gee. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.
Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for $1 per month for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORY sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/
You can take part in our listener survey here.
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More than 200 accused, 20 executed and a village plagued with hysteria. Were the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 and 1693 the work of superstition, a power struggle, fungus or actual witchcraft? What makes them stand out in the history of witch trials?
In this episode, Don speaks to Jessica Parr from Northeastern University about the alleged crimes, persecution and lasting memory of the so-called Salem witches.
Jessica is a historian of the Early Modern Atlantic and author of 'Inventing George Whitefield: Race, Revivalism, and the Making of a Religious Icon.'
Produced by Sophie Gee. Edited by Tean Stewart-Murray. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.
Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for $1 per month for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORY sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/
You can take part in our listener survey here.
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Would the Cold War have happened if the nuclear bomb was never created? How did Gorbachev, Reagan and Thatcher reduce tensions between the East and West? And, according to one of the Russian authorities' most wanted journalists, how are echoes of the Cold War felt today?
'Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War' is a new, 9-part Netflix documentary which answers these questions and more. In this episode of American History Hit, Don speaks to the series' director and two contributors to get some insight.
First, he speaks to Brian Knappenberger, the documentary filmmaker behind this series, Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror and others.
Then, he is joined by Archie Brown, Emeritus Professor at the University of Oxford and author of 'The Human Factor. Gorbachev, Reagan, and Thatcher, and the End of the Cold War'.
Finally, he speaks with Andrei Soldatov, Russian investigative journalist and co-founder and editor of Agentura.ru, a watchdog of the activities of the Russian secret service.
Produced and edited by Sophie Gee. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.
Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for $1 per month for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORY sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/
You can take part in our listener survey here.
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At least 23 of the Presidents of the United States can have their ancestry traced back to Ireland.
So why did this diaspora come to America? What was their reception like? And how have they reached the top of the power structure so regularly?
We are finding out in this episode with historian Kevin Kenny, Professor of History and Glucksman Professor in Irish Studies at New York University. Kevin is the author of 'Making sense of the Molly Maguires' and 'Diaspora: A Very Short Introduction' among other titles.
Produced by Sophie Gee. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.
Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for $1 per month for 3 months with code AMERICANHISTORY sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/
You can take part in our listener survey here.
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