Aaron Sheehan-Dean

speaker

924 appearances 3 recordings 1 series first heard Feb 2026 last heard 24 Aug

Aaron Sheehan-Dean’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.

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American History Hit · What Made America? Victory in the Civil War · 22 Jun 2026 podcast

And so, you know, Grant and Sherman had been very clear that the purpose of this is not to simply bleed the Confederacy out.

That is at odds with Lincoln's goal of reunifying the country.

He wants white Southerners to come back into the United States and just killing them is pointless.

But if you reduce their ability to fight,

And by trapping Lee there and Sherman is coming up along through the Carolinas and he reaches the middle of North Carolina by late March, early April at Goldsboro and first Fayetteville and then Goldsboro and then Durham.

He's very close to the Virginia border.

Lee really has nowhere to go.

And the the Union Army breaks through the Confederate lines on April 1st.

1865 outside the the richmond petersburg line and and famously there's this moment at at the church where on a sunday morning where uh jefferson davis is at the service and one of his aides comes running into the church to say grant's troops have breached the line and davis gets up and leaves the church in the middle of service and everyone knows this is it

This is we've been sort of waiting for this.

And then an evacuation begins.

And Lee is hoping that somehow he'll be able to move west and maybe connect with Johnston's army in western sort of central North Carolina.

But Grant's cavalry is to the south of him and cuts off that escape.

And so then it's really it sort of forestalls any option of escape.

And rations aren't reaching his army either because they have to get through that Union cavalry line.

And Appomattox just happens to be the surrender point.

No, certainly not in the direction.

I mean, you know, if they could have continued into the south side, perhaps.

But again, the line of Union cavalry, Rance is really sort of to the north of Lee's army on a march going to the west.

And he has a huge cavalry force under Sheridan's command.

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