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.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

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

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

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

that is on the southern side of Lee's army, and it cuts off the railroad lines that are bringing supplies up from North Carolina, and his soldiers haven't eaten in days.

And so Lee really recognizes, basically, my army is trapped, and there's no other solution except to surrender.

He did not have any personal connection.

It's an interesting question.

I don't see how I certainly would have been alerted, I hope, in saying this, that they hadn't ever met.

Lee and Grant had met.

Most of the West Point generals knew each other, and there are huge classes in the 1840s.

Sherman and Braxton Bragg are very close compatriots, so there's all kinds of personal connections, but not Lincoln.

And Lincoln is quite clear in his instructions to Grant and Sherman

You negotiate the surrender of an army, I end the war.

These are different things that what we need to do, because the end of a war involves questions of whether there's going to be prosecution of treason for the leaders of this, you know, whether there'll be imprisonment that's awaiting people, that the question of whether a war is happening is fundamentally a political one.

an army can surrender.

And this is really where Sherman gets hung up as he takes and tries to negotiate sort of broader terms that would in fact end the war.

And very quickly, the Northern cabinet says, you don't as a general have the authority to do that.

All you can do is receive his surrender.

And then Sherman returns to Durham Station and Johnston says, I surrender my army is exhausted and this is fruitless as well.

This is where we then get into the question of what did the war mean?

What are the core accomplishments?

And for Lincoln, it was very clear that reunion was from the beginning, the centerpiece of the Northern War effort.

And also that emancipation had been added as a accomplishment that could never be undone.

Showing 401–420 of 924 · page 21 of 47