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Hey everyone, welcome to episode number 241 of our Civil War podcast. My name is Rich.

And I'm Tracy. Hello y'all. Thanks for tuning into the podcast. As y'all recall,

with last week's show, we started to set the stage with the Battle of Stones River.

We talked a bit about the aftermath of the Battle of Periville and the Confederate retreat back down into Tennessee.

We looked at the internal tension within the rebel army as Braxton Bragg's top lieutenants lobbied Confederate President Jefferson Davis to remove him.

But Davis helped sow the seeds for disaster in Tennessee when he refused to either replace Bragg or transfer his unhappy subordinates.

So there was internal tension within the rebel army, but then we also discussed the external pressure on William Rosecran's, the federal commander, to advance against the Confederates and engage Bragg and battle before the end of the year.

As we continue to set the stage for Stones River, one thing we wanted to be sure to cover in this show is the importance of a Confederate who didn't even fight in the battle.

In some ways, though, it's impossible to understand the Battle of Stones River without understanding the influence of the rebel cavalry commander, John Hunt Morgan.

We mentioned in last week's episode that in August 1862, Morgan had struck the most vulnerable point on the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, the 800-foot-long, big-south tunnel, seven miles north of Gallatin, Tennessee.

A locomotive and several box cars were set ablaze and run into the tunnel, igniting a vein of coal inside, with the result that it was weeks before anyone could even enter the tunnel to start to clear out the debris.

With the Tunnel out of commission, supplies for the federal force to the south at Nashville had to be hauled by wagon around the break.

Supplies were also transported on the Cumberland River, but by November 1862, the water level had fallen too low for the steamboats to continue using the river.

And so only a trickle of supplies managed to get to Rosecran and the Army of the Cumberland at Nashville.

And then, in December, Morgan went on another raid and set the Union High Command on edge.

The result of these two raids was the occupying of Central Kentucky with some 32,000 federal troops from the Department of the Ohio.

In addition, two of Rosecran's divisions, about 8,000 men, were dispatched to Gallatin to protect the town and nearby tunnel so that Morgan's raiders wouldn't be able to stage a repeat performance there.

The Federal's thus had about as many troops guarding Gallatin and points up in Central Kentucky as Bragg had in his entire army.

It could be argued that the rebels also had to guard a rail line, the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad.

There was a small Confederate brigade stationed at Bridgeport, Alabama, but it was ordered up from the rear and fought at Stone's River.

This left only two regiments, numbering perhaps 700 men, to guard the railroad from Murphy's Road to Chattanooga.

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