American History Tellers

For white settlers, the Gold Rush offered a chance for fortune, but for California’s Native inhabitants, the sudden hunger for gold spelled disaster. As the numbers of miners grew, they forced Native people off their ancestral lands, often starving or slaughtering them in the process. As California became a state, informal policies that discriminated against indigenous Californians became law. Soo...

In early 1849, thousands of gold-hungry Americans began pouring into California from the eastern United States. But most of the so-called 49ers were wildly unprepared for the perilous journey west. Once they reached California, they found unexpected obstacles and fierce competition in the gold mines. For many, their dreamed-of riches rarely materialized. And even for those who did hit paydirt, the...

​​After the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in 1848, hundreds of thousands of prospectors poured into California, hoping to strike it rich. In the early days, rather than coming from within the U.S., most miners arrived from places like China, Hawaii, Chile, and Australia. But when President James K. Polk confirmed that newspaper reports of vast gold fields were true, it would kick the Gold Rus...

The job of guarding the President’s life belongs to the men and women of the United States Secret Service. There have been many highs and lows in the agency’s more than 150-year history – most poignantly the assassination of JFK in 1963. On today’s show Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter Carol Leonnig joins host Lindsay Graham to discuss the agency’s response to assassination attempts...

In 1981, a gunman fired six shots at Ronald Reagan after the president gave a speech at a Washington D.C. hotel. Over the next several hours, split-second decisions made by Secret Service agents and D.C. hospital staff would determine whether Reagan would live or die. Amidst Cold War tensions, as Reagan lay unconscious in an operating room, questions would emerge over the presidential line of succ...

On November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy was shot and killed while riding in his presidential limo through downtown Dallas. His violent and public death became one of the most traumatic moments in the nation’s history — and one of the most controversial, as Americans debated the mystery around his killer, Lee Harvey Oswald. The tragedy also thrust Vice President Lyndon Johnson into the White House, w...

In September 1901, President William McKinley visited the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York to deliver a speech celebrating American achievements at home and abroad. But waiting in the crowd in Buffalo was an embittered Polish-American laborer seeking to prove his commitment to the anarchist cause. Leon Czolgosz fired two bullets, striking the 25th president and sparking a rush to save...

On April 14th, 1865, John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. Lincoln died hours later, shocking the war-torn nation and becoming the first President to be assassinated in office. But he would not be the last. Sixteen years later, no action had been taken to protect the commander-in-chief. When James Garfield became president in March 1881, a disturbed...

The yellow fever epidemic of 1793 posed one of the greatest threats to the young United States. Doctors and scientists couldn’t agree on the cause or the treatment. They split into factions and debated their theories publicly. On today’s show, Thomas Apel, historian and author of Feverish Bodies, Enlightened Minds: Science and the Yellow Fever Controversy in the Early American Republic, joins host...

In 1793, Philadelphia served as the nation’s temporary capital, and the yellow fever epidemic crippled the federal government. After fleeing the capital, President George Washington struggled to make decisions and govern the young nation. Meanwhile, Philadelphia was running out of space to bury the dead. With the epidemic growing in strength, crime soared and jobless tenants were evicted from thei...

In September 1793, yellow fever continued to ravage Philadelphia. As the death toll mounted, Dr. Benjamin Rush raced to find a cure. Rush used an aggressive and controversial treatment to battle the grisly disease, sparking a political backlash. Soon Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton and President George Washington were forced to flee the disease, leaving government on the verge of collapse. B...

In the hot and humid summer of 1793, a deadly epidemic struck Philadelphia, then the capital of the United States. Thousands suffered high fevers, yellow skin, and bloody vomit. Many died within days. At first, the cause of the illnesses was a mystery. Then the city’s leading physician, Dr. Benjamin Rush, identified it as yellow fever, one of the era’s deadliest diseases. Panic soon spread through...

During the Golden Age of Piracy, two female pirates became infamous despite their short careers. Anne Bonny and Mary Read went down as some of the fiercest pirates in popular mythology.. Dr. Rebecca Simon is a historian of early modern piracy and lover of all things pirates. Her latest book is called Pirate Queens: The Lives of Anne Bonny and Mary Read. She joins host Lindsay Graham to separate fa...

In 1717, the pirate known as Blackbeard launched an attack along the Atlantic seaboard, disrupting international trade and striking terror into sea captains and colonial governors. Working with his sidekick, the “Gentleman Pirate” Stede Bonnet, Blackbeard blockaded the busy port of Charles Town and took city residents hostage. Soon, he would find himself in a pitched battle against a secret milita...

As England waged war against France in 1689, Scottish sailor William Kidd led a deadly mutiny aboard a French privateer in the Caribbean. It was his first act in becoming one of the most feared sea captains of his generation. After Kidd retired from piracy and settled down in New York, the English Crown hired him to hunt down other pirates and secure its lucrative trade routes. But Kidd would soon...

At the end of the 17th century, pirates stalked the coast of North America and the waters of the Caribbean, attacking merchant vessels from every nation. But they were more than just armed robbers of the high seas. They were also crucial figures in the growth of England’s American colonies, supplying them with vital goods that were often unavailable otherwise.  One of these early pirates, Cap...

When he escaped Nicaragua in 1857, American William Walker was a failed despot responsible for the death of thousands of people and the destabilization of Central America. But he returned to New Orleans with fanfare, greeted by cheering crowds and parades. Soon Walker vowed to return to Central America to take back control of his empire. But his final, daring invasion would end in disaster. ...

In 1855, William Walker faced a criminal trial in the United States for his illegal, and unsuccessful, invasion of Mexico. But he emerged from court fully acquitted, and to some, a national hero. Emboldened by his popularity, Walker set his sights on a new prize: Nicaragua, which had become a critical transit route between east and west. This series was originally released as a Wondery+ exclusive....

In the mid-1800s, the United States was full of adventurers and entrepreneurs looking to take advantage of the country’s ever-expanding boundaries. One of them was a young lawyer and newspaper editor from Tennessee named William Walker. Hoping to establish his own republic, like Texas, Walker became a “filibuster” – a mercenary who attempts to colonize foreign lands without government authorizatio...

During the Civil War, Black people in America took the opportunity to free themselves and to serve the Union cause. At great personal risk, tens of thousands of refugees -- men, women and children -- fled Southern slave owners for Union lines. They enlisted in the Union Army and served as cooks, laundresses, nurses and even spies. On today’s show, Wayne State University history professor Kidada Wi...

In early 1865, after four long years of bloodshed, the Confederacy was on the brink of defeat. General William Tecumseh Sherman marched his army through South Carolina, where Union soldiers sought vengeance against the secessionist state that started the war. After nine grueling months of siege warfare in Virginia, General Ulysses S. Grant prepared to strike a final blow against Robert E. Lee’s st...

In 1864, Ulysses S. Grant took charge of the entire Union Army and laid out his ambitious plans to finally win the war. Grant pursued Lee in Virginia in a campaign unrivaled in the history of the war for its brutal, savage fighting. In the Election of 1864, Abraham Lincoln battled Democratic General George McClellan for the presidency. And that fall, General William Tecumseh Sherman launched his i...

In the summer of 1863, General Robert E. Lee made a daring bid for victory. He marched his army north to invade Pennsylvania. For three sweltering days, two massive armies locked in combat in the Battle of Gettysburg, the defining clash of the Civil War—and the conflict’s bloodiest. In the West, General Ulysses S. Grant emerges as the North’s most capable military leader as he drives his forces in...

As the Civil War raged on, families on the homefront faced increasingly heavy tolls, enduring crippling economic turmoil, food shortages and explosive class tensions. Meanwhile, Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis waged their own battles with congressmen and governors over war policies. And in 1863 politics clashed with realities on the ground when hundreds of starving women rioted in R...

The Civil War began as an effort to hold the country together. Few Northern soldiers marched into battle to end slavery. But tens of thousands of enslaved men, women, and children took matters into their own hands, using the chaos of the war to free themselves from bondage. Their action forced a gradual shift in Union war policy. After a bloody, hard-fought victory over Confederate forces at Antie...