On April 27, 1865, just weeks after the end of the American Civil War, a steamboat

carrying former Union prisoners of war sailed up the Mississippi River from Vicksburg, Mississippi.

At 2 a.m. the boililers on the steamship exploded, killing 1,800 people in what is still the largest maritime disaster in US history.

Learn more about the largely forgotten sultana steamboat disaster on this episode of sponsored by audible.

My audio book recommendation today is Steamboats and the Rise of Cotton Kingdom by Robert

Gunnmansad.

The arrival of the first Steamboat, the New Orleans, in early 1812, touched off an economic revolution in the South.

Robert Gunnmansad examines the wide-ranging influence of steamboats on the southern economy.

From carrying cash crops to market to contributing to slave productivity, increasing the flexibility of

labor, and connecting Southerners to overlapping orbits of regional, national,

and international markets, steamboats not only benefited slaveholders in Northern

industries, but also affected cotton production.

You can claim your one month trial to Audible and your two free audio books by going to

Audible Trial.com slash everything everywhere or clicking on the link in the show notes.

On April 23rd, 1865, the United States was in the middle of the most dramatic month in its history.

Two weeks before, on April 9th, General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Virginia at Appamatics Courthouse, Virginia. Eight days before on April 15th,

Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. While there were still some Confederate troops in the field,

for the most part the country was transitioning from a wartime state to one of peace.

Soldiers were returning back to their homes and prisoners of war were being released.

In the town of Vicksburg in what was considered the Western Front of the Civil War,

a large group of Union POWs who had been released were waiting for transportation to return home.

Many of them had spent years in such notorious facilities as Andersonville in Georgia or

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