Darkest Hours: Brother Against Brother

American History Hit

History Hit

History, America

4.3 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 2 February 2026

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There is no question that the Civil War is one of the darkest chapters in American history. With roughly 2.5 percent of the population lost, a higher number of Americans than in both World Wars combined.

In portraying the war in history, however, we often focus on the tragic division of loyalties in the the United States - the predicament of brother fighting brother.

To discuss this idea - where it came from, how true it is and how it has been used by various parties - Don is joined once more by Aaron Sheehan-Dean. Aaron is the Fred C. Frey Professor of Southern Studies at Louisiana State University, and author of ‘Reckoning With Rebellion: War and Sovereignty in the Nineteenth Century’.

This is the first in a series on America's Darkest Hours. In the coming weeks we will explore the Great Depression, the Kent State Shootings and the origins of slavery.

Edited by Aidan Lonergan, produced by Sophie Gee. Senior Producer was Freddy Chick.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The battle is over. It is won. Now the field is quiet and still, save for the groans of the wounded and the slow work of collecting the dead.
0:11.0	A Union soldier in dark blue slowly walks a line of captured men in Confederate gray.
0:18.0	Many injured, slumping against each other. All are caked in mud and blood,
0:23.7	wearing expressions of defeat and defiance. The soldier moves along, counting each of these
0:29.8	captured troops, readying them for transport. But for a brief moment he hesitates, pausing,
0:36.2	losing his count.
0:38.1	In that line of unfamiliar faces, faces that until hours ago were deadly threats, he sees
0:44.7	a pair of eyes that look different, eyes he thinks he knows, that remind him of home,
0:50.5	of cherished childhood, of someone long absent. Could it be no? During the Civil War
0:59.4	and in the decades after, stories of family separation would come to define how Americans
1:04.5	talked about the war. Brother against brother, family against family, a nation tragically torn in two. But how often did
1:12.9	this really happen? And do such stories illuminate the agony of the war itself, or just as much
1:19.2	the way Americans have chosen to remember it?
1:37.1	No. Greetings and welcome. I'm Don Wildman. This is American History Hit.
1:46.4	The idea of the American Civil War as a family feud, a conflict of brother against brotherst brother, house-divided, has endured to the present. It's a powerful image. But like so much else in history, it tells us as much about
1:53.0	how the war has been remembered and reshaped over time as it does about the events themselves.
1:59.1	The story of the Civil War has been influenced not just
2:02.4	by what happened, but how it has been told. So to help us unpack where this brother versus
2:08.2	brother idea came from and why it's proven so durable, we turn to an expert of those troubled times.
2:14.3	Aaron Shian Dean is a historian of the American Civil War and professor of history at Louisiana
2:18.7	State University. His work focuses on the lived experience of the war, how Americans North and
2:24.6	South understood and remembered the conflict. He is the author and editor of several major works of
	...

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