Montgomery C. Meigs: Master Builder of the Union Army w/ Robert O'Harrow Jr.
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 25 May 2026
⏱️ 53 minutes
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Summary
Washington D.C. in the 1850s was a tale of two cities. It was the Capitol city of a rapidly expanding new nation while at the same time ground zero for a politically fractured and divided nation hurtling toward disunion. Standing in the middle of it all was Montgomery C. Meigs, a military engineer who led the construction of two massive public works projects at the same time: the expansion of the Capitol building and an aqueduct to provide water to the residents growing city. Meigs would go on to serve as Quartermaster for the Union Army under Abraham Lincoln. Meigs was an innovator, public servant, and one of the most important patriots of the nineteenth century.
This week Bob welcomes author and journalist Robert O'Harrow Jr. to discuss his 2016 book, The Quartermaster: Montgomery C. Meigs, Lincoln's General, Master Builder of the Union Army.
For thirty years Robert O'Harrow Jr. was an investigative journalist and contributing writer at The Washington Post and was among the first national journalists to cover cybersecurity. In 2017, he part of the team that won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of notorious Alabama political Roy Moore.
This episode originally aired as RTN #281 on August 21, 2023. This rebroadcast was edited by Ben Sawyer.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Ben Sawyer and this is the road to now. And the road last week for me was a boat. I went on this |
| 0:13.1 | incredible cruise with Greg Jackson of history that doesn't suck. Him and his team put together |
| 0:19.6 | a cruise that doesn't suck. And we were team put together a cruise that doesn't suck. |
| 0:21.4 | And we were like, it was five days, four nights. |
| 0:24.2 | I got to meet so many great people, so many of the fans of his podcast, people who listen |
| 0:28.5 | to both of our shows. |
| 0:30.3 | And, oh, man, it was, it was great. |
| 0:33.0 | We recorded an episode of The Roads Now. |
| 0:34.8 | That will be out June 15th. |
| 0:37.1 | We're holding off because that's, |
| 0:38.7 | that's the week that Greg's new book comes out. It's called Been There, Done That, How Our History |
| 0:42.9 | Shows, What We Can Overcome. It is so good. I had the honor to be a reader and give feedback |
| 0:48.3 | on it as he went through the process. Greg is just a national treasure. And yeah, so we'll put that |
| 0:53.7 | out. And the book's we'll put that out. |
| 0:56.1 | And the book's coming out June 16th. |
| 1:07.2 | So it really is exactly the type of book we need right now to think about all the hard things we've overcome in the past and draw inspiration from that. |
| 1:12.4 | Of course, that's like three weeks from the day this episode airs. So in the meantime, |
| 1:18.2 | maybe you should go check out Bob's book, America's founding son, John Quincy Adams, from president to political Maverick. If you haven't checked that book out, it's great. And man, what a recent |
| 1:23.9 | few months it is for great books coming out. So I hope you guys are getting some reading done. |
| 1:28.3 | And if you haven't checked Bob's book out, again, go do it. Now, if you're listening to the day |
| 1:33.6 | this episode comes out, it's Memorial Day. So happy Memorial Day. Thanks to everyone who has |
| 1:38.7 | signed up to serve this country in the past and made the sacrifice. In honor of that, today we are re-airing an |
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