Hey everyone, welcome to the 7th episode of our Civil War podcast.

I'm Rich and here with me is my just arrived back home co-host. Her name is Tracy.

Hello y'all, welcome to the podcast. So we're a couple of days late with this

episode but I have a good excuse and that excuse is that it's Tracy's fault.

Hey! Well you were the one that was out of town and you know I thought of just

recording the show myself over the weekend so it would go out on time but I

figured all you listeners out there would be willing to wait a couple of

days for a new episode if it meant you could avoid having to listen to just me

drawn on about the war in Mexico. People would have led to listen to just you.

I sincerely doubt that. Okay so before we get rolling we just wanted to point out

that today New Year's Day 2013 is the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln

issuing the final emancipation proclamation. That's right on January 1st 1863

Lincoln followed up the preliminary proclamation which he'd released in September

1862 and President Lincoln faced quite a bit of criticism and negative pushback

after he did that in September. So a lot of people didn't think he would issue

the final proclamation on January 1st but he did and by doing so he showed a

great deal of moral courage. I agree but we'll cover that whole story farther

down the road in the podcast like when we actually get to the Civil War and then

to 1863 so we better keep moving. Alright so Trace and I were talking about

episode 6 after we finished that show and we realized we probably should have

included a certain story in that show. It's a Jefferson Davis Zachary Taylor

pre-Mexican War story and it's actually a very interesting connection between

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