Hey everyone, welcome to episode 228.

I'm Tracey, hello y'all, thanks for tuning into the podcast.

As y'all recall, so far in this story arc over the last couple of episodes, we've looked at Abraham Lincoln's decision in November 1862 to finally sack Major General George McClellan,

and to replace Little Mac by elevating 9th Corps Commander Ambrose Burnside to command the Army of the Potomac.

We said that Burnside only reluctantly accepted command of the Army.

He had already turned down the offer at least once before because he didn't feel confident in his own abilities,

and because it would be awkward personally for him to supersede McClellan.

But now Burnside was told in no uncertain terms that Little Mac was out, there was no getting around that,

and that if he, Burnside, didn't accept the offer of command, then the Army would be given to Joseph Hooker.

Now you need to understand that there were very few people that the good-natured Burnside downright disliked, but fighting Joe Hooker was one of them,

and so rather than see Hooker put in charge, Ambrose Burnside reluctantly accepted command of the Army of the Potomac.

Remember, we said that in addition to replacing McClellan with Burnside in the East, Lincoln had also made a significant command change in the Western theater.

A week before Little Mac's removal, the President relieved Don Carlos' fuel of his command of the Army of the Ohio.

Fuel, as a general, was cut too much from the same cloth as McClellan to suit Abraham Lincoln, and so the President replaced fuel with major general William Rose Cranes,

whose stock had risen considerably after his victory at Corinth in northern Mississippi.

It's very important to realize that Lincoln made these significant command changes in both the Eastern and Western theaters in the fall of 1862,

because he hoped he anticipated he expected that these changes would lead to major union military victories before the end of the year.

And for political reasons, Abraham Lincoln needed some major military victories, and he needed them sooner rather than later.

That's because in the recent midterm elections throughout the North, the Republicans had done well enough, but they had still suffered some substantial losses, mainly due to the lukewarm, if not outright, negative reception of Lincoln's emancipation policy by many people in the North.

As y'all recall, Lincoln had issued his preliminary emancipation proclamation in September in the wake of the Battle of Antietam, but adding emancipation as a war aim was not universally popular throughout the North, and many voters had shown their displeasure with the new policy by voting democratic in the fall elections.

With the final proclamation set to go into effect on January 1st 1863, Lincoln hoped to sustain emancipation as a war aim by gaining major military victories in both theaters of the war before the end of the year.

In spite of the recent electoral backlash, emancipation was now a key war-winning policy of the Lincoln administration,

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