American History Tellers

In the 1870s, a gang from Chicago hatched one of the most audacious criminal plots in American history. They planned to steal the body of Abraham Lincoln from his tomb in Springfield, Illinois, then hold the president’s corpse for ransom.   The brazen plot began in an unlikely place – the murky world of fake money. In the mid-1800s, counterfeiting was so rampant in the United States that...

Billy the Kid has become one of the most iconic figures of the American West. But many details of his life remain unknown or heavily debated among scholars and historians, from his childhood prior to his arrival in New Mexico, to the circumstances surrounding his death. On this episode, Lindsay speaks with Chris Wimmer, creator and host of Legends of the Old West, a podcast about the outlaws, guns...

With the bloody Lincoln County War finally over, Billy the Kid tried to make a truce with his arch enemy, Jimmy Dolan. But his plan backfired, and he wound up forced to go on the run, implicated in a murder Dolan committed. Billy’s charm and quick wits kept him just outside the reach of law. But he would soon meet his match. A former bartender turned lawman, Pat Garrett, vowed to capture and kill...

In 1877, Billy the Kid was saved from a life of crime by a wealthy Englishman named John Tunstall, who saw potential in the teenage outlaw. Soon, however, Billy was drawn into a vicious war between Tunstall and a rival cattle baron, one that would force him to return to his gunslinging ways. When Tunstall himself was murdered in the escalating Lincoln County War, Billy swore he would get revenge....

Henry McCarty was born in an Irish slum in New York City in 1859. By the time he died from a lawman’s bullet twenty-one years later in New Mexico, he was notorious throughout the world under a different name: Billy the Kid. Born to a single, loving mother, young Henry was smart, charming and polite. But he soon faced tragic, devastating setbacks that sent him on a path from robbery to murder. Orph...

The Philippine-American War marked the emergence of America as a global power. But what has been the legacy of the war in the country in which it was fought? How did the war set the stage for Philippine independence, and pave the way for generations of Filipino immigration to the U.S.? In this episode, Lindsay speaks with Dr. Vicente Rafael, a historian whose work focuses on the colonial and post-...

With the war officially over, William Howard Taft took over authority as the Governor of the Philippines. Taft was a deep believer in the U.S. policy of “benevolent assimilation” and turned to schooling and political attraction to draw Filipinos to his mission. But he continued to struggle with pockets of armed resistance and challenges to American rule, including a series of “seditious” plays tha...

In March 1901, American forces launched a daring raid to capture the Filipino revolutionary leader Emilio Aguinaldo. Head of U.S. Philippine forces, General Arthur MacArthur, hoped that his surrender would finally break the resistance and bring the war to an end. But fighting soon expanded to remote areas of the country. Frustrated with the stubborn resistance, America’s military leaders turned to...

In 1898, America’s victory over Spanish forces in the Philippines suddenly thrust the United States onto the global stage. It also drew the country into a more complicated conflict with the very people it claimed to be liberating. As the U.S. expanded its occupation of the Philippines, American soldiers drove Filipino rebels deeper into the countryside. Some rebels began to question the leadership...

On February 4th, 1899, war broke out between the United States and the Philippines. The two nations had begun as allies against Spain the previous year, during the Spanish-American War. The Spanish had occupied the Philippines for three centuries, and the U.S. arrived promising to drive out the European colonial power. But after the Spanish left, the Americans stayed, in defiance of widespread cal...

Not every case of treason is open and shut. With some accused traitors, questions of their guilt or innocence can linger for generations. That’s certainly the case with Mary Surratt. Even before she was hanged in 1865 for her alleged role in the plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln, many argued that she was an innocent widow convicted on false testimony. After her death, she became a martyr to the...

On June 13, 1985, Aldrich Ames packed up six pounds of top secret documents into a plastic bag and walked out the door of the CIA headquarters. He drove to lunch, where he gave the documents to a Soviet diplomat. They contained the identities of America’s most important spies within the Soviet Union. Not long after, the Soviets told Ames that $2 million had been set aside for him. Ames had become...

In September 1949, the world was shocked to learn that the Soviet Union had conducted its first nuclear weapons test, just four years after the United States dropped the first atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. U.S. authorities thought there was only one way the Soviets could narrow the nuclear arms gap so quickly -- by stealing atomic secrets from the U.S. In 1950, the FBI arrested a young J...

On the night of April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth stepped into the presidential box at Washington’s Ford’s Theatre, raised a pistol at President Abraham Lincoln, and squeezed the trigger. Lincoln would soon die of his wounds, making him the first president to be assassinated in American history. As the nation plunged into mourning, the hunt for Lincoln’s killer began. But authorities soon revealed...

Early in the Revolutionary War, Major General Benedict Arnold built a reputation as a courageous commander. He was a favorite of George Washington’s. But he also revealed a fragile ego and a penchant for holding grudges. As the war went on, Arnold’s temper, ambition, and greed would turn him from hero to villain. In this four-part series, American History Tellers explores the stories of America’s...

The Roaring 20s are often described as a time of optimism and decadence, teeming with flappers, jazz and bootlegged liquor. It was the decade that birthed modern America. But with that birth came growing tensions over civil rights, the urban-rural divide and other culture wars. Historian Michael E. Parrish captured the period in his book Anxious Decades: America in Prosperity and Depression, 1920...

On a misty morning in May 1927, Charles Lindbergh climbed into the cramped cockpit of his single engine plane, The Spirit of St. Louis . After a bumpy taxi and takeoff at a New York runway, he took to the skies, on a flight that would break records and make him a national hero. At the end of the 1920s, Americans united around a culture of celebrity, and no celebrity was bigger than Lindbergh. It w...

In 1921, Republican President Warren G. Harding entered the White House, ushering in a new era of conservative government. Harding was elected by Americans yearning for tradition and old-fashioned values. But they put in power one of the most scandal-ridden presidencies in American history. Harding filled his administration with corrupt cronies who exploited their offices for personal gain. Americ...

In the 1920s, Americans moved to the city in droves, and a new, diverse generation sparked an era of dizzying social change. It was the Age of Jazz, a time when Black Americans brought a revolutionary new musical style to northern cities. Free-spirited flappers haunted urban nightclubs. And Harlem, New York became the epicenter of a renaissance in Black artistic and political expression. But rapid...

In 1919, American soldiers returned from the battlefields of Europe to face a nation torn apart by a different war. One-fifth of the nation’s workforce put down their tools and went on strike. Anarchists sent deadly bombs in the mail to congressmen and cabinet members. And a terrorist attack on Wall Street killed dozens. As economic and political turmoil swept the country, government authorities m...

Alaska: big, open, frozen and wild. In 1867, the acquisition of Alaska from the Russian Empire was widely derided as “folly.” But early explorers like John Muir saw its potential, and clamored for its preservation in the face of increasing development and calls for statehood. Then oil was discovered in Alaska, and the real fight began. Caught between angry Alaskan individualists and an ambitious f...

In 1914, America’s National Parks had a problem: no one was using them. And those few that were faced unmaintained roads, trails strewn with garbage, and a lack of amenities that made it hard for the average American to enjoy themselves. One man had enough, and went to Washington on a mission: establish a new National Parks Service, and transform these neglected, magic spaces into clean, approacha...

In the early morning hours of Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the city of San Francisco was torn apart by a huge earthquake and devastating fire. As the city rebuilt, it also sought to ensure that if fire were to strike the city again, abundant water would available to fight it. But a new reservoir for the city would require flooding a treasured portion of Yosemite, the Hetch Hetchy Valley, one of John...

Vice President Theodore Roosevelt was atop a mountain when he heard the news: an assassin’s bullet would likely take President McKinley’s life, and make Roosevelt president. Upon his inauguration shortly thereafter, Roosevelt brought his lifelong love of the natural world to the White House. With a stroke of his executive pen, he set aside vast swaths of land as preserves and monuments. And later,...

Yellowstone was our nation’s first national park. Its strange, wondrous landscapes were perfect for exploration - and exploitation. Upon Yellowstone’s discovery by white Americans, two races began: one to build a railroad to the park to capture its commercial potential, another to protect the land from desecration. One will fail, bringing down with it the nation’s economy. The other will require t...