This is an IHeart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show, from the arts to sports

and from business to history, and everything in between, including your stories. Send them to our

American Stories.com, and all of our history work is brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale

College, by the way. Go to Hillsdale.edu to sign up for their terrific and free online courses.

And our next story comes to us from a man who's simply known as the History Guy.

His videos are watched by hundreds of thousands of people over on YouTube.

The History Guy is also heard here at our American Stories.

In this next story, the History Guy remembers the 16th president's son,

Robert Todd Lincoln. Because of his father, Abraham Lincoln, Robert Todd's life has been largely

forgotten. And we're telling this story because on this day in 1809, Abraham Lincoln was born.

Here's the History Guy.

On April 9th, 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant following the defeat of the Confederate Army at the Battle of Appomattox Courthouse.

The surrender documents were actually signed in the parlor of a home owned by a man named

William McLean and they were witnessed by both Grant and Lee's staff.

The last survivor among those witnesses lived all the way until 1926, and by coincidence

was a very famous person, one of the most important statesmen of his day. Robert Todd Lincoln was Abraham

Lincoln's firstborn son and the only one of Abraham Lincoln's children to survive to adulthood.

His younger brother Edward died of a fever at just the age of three. Robert grew up at a time

when his father was practicing law on a circuit and thus was traveling gone most of the time,

and so their relationship was distant, not very close. Robert once noted that his most vivid

memories of his father growing up was Abraham packing his saddlebags. By the time that Robert's

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