transmission

Hey everyone, welcome to episode 256 of our Civil War podcast.

My name is Rich.

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

With the last several episodes we've been, as you might have guessed, setting the stage

for the Battle of Chancellor'sville, which took place in May 1863.

But before we actually get to that major battle in Northern Virginia, we wanted to take

a detour and go down to Charleston, South Carolina to look at some big goings-on that have already

happened there in 1862 and will be happening there in April of 1863.

With some past members episodes, we've already talked about some of what was going on

at Charleston, but we realized that we'd be remiss if we didn't also talk about them

with y'all here on the regular episodes.

So as Rich just said, before we dive into our coverage of the Battle of Chancellor'sville,

we're going to be taking a trip down to Charleston.

Not many people realize that the longest running single campaign of the Civil War was the

union effort against the Confederate port of Charleston, South Carolina.

For three years, from the summer of 1862, when federal troops launched their first attempt

to carve away through Charleston's formidable ring of forts, to virtually the war's last

days in 1865, union and Confederate forces expended vast amounts of energy and resources

in the struggle for control of the city with its superb harbor and maze of waterways.

Much of the fighting was naval.

Federal warships, including a flotilla of the menacing new monitor-class ironclads, hurled

...