Hey everyone, thanks for tuning into episode number 173 of our Civil War podcast.

I'm Rich and I'm Tracy. Hello y'all. Welcome to the podcast. We're back after that two

week break for the Thanksgiving holiday and now that we're back, we're going to continue

our march toward the second Battle of Manassas, which took place over two days, August 29th

and 30th in the summer of 1862. And there have actually been quite a few moving parts,

so to speak, as we've been making our way towards second Manassas. So a quick review might

be an order. First though, just a reminder that with these Civil War battles that have two names,

and in this particular case, the battle was known as Second Bull Run in the North and Second

Manassas in the South, but we here on the podcast, just as a rule of thumb, will go with the name

that the National Park Service uses for the battlefield, although sometimes we may slip back and forth

between the two names, but officially for the show, will use the name, the same name as the

Park Service. Okay, so anyway, a quick review of where we've been so far in the story arc.

Remember that this is all taking place in the aftermath of McLean's failed peninsula campaign,

and wrapped up in that, of course, is the Confederate victory in the seven-day battles,

those series of bloody, hard-fought battles by which Robert E. Lee pushed Little Mac back from

the very doorstep of Richmond. And even as the second seven-day battles were kicking off down

around Richmond, the new Union commander in Northern Virginia, John Pope, was taking command of a

new federal army, the Army of Virginia. And Pope's army of Virginia was new, but actually it was

cobbled together from three separate commands, which really had just one thing in common.

All or parts of each force had previously been on the losing end of battles with Stonewall Jackson

out in the Shenandoah Valley. At first though, rather than joining his army in the field,

Pope chose to remain in Washington. Pope was unusual in that he was a high-ranking army officer,

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