Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in to episode 264 of our Civil War Podcast.

I'm Rich.

And I'm Tracy.

Hello y'all.

Welcome to the podcast.

As y'all recall with the last show, it was Saturday, May 2, 1863, and we got Stonewall

Jackson started on his famous blank march.

Despite Stonewall's desire that the movement would be done in secret, without the enemy's

knowledge, the march had hardly started before federal observers at Hazel Grove spotted the

Confederates through a gap in the trees, as the rebel infantry hustled through a short,

exposed stretch along the furnace road.

The Federals shaled the marching Confederates, but their brief view of the rebels as they

double-timed past the exposed spot, and the fact the Yankee Gunners were essentially

shooting down a narrow alley through the trees made it difficult to fire with any real

effect, and so the cannonade harassed but didn't know real harm to the Confederates.

But a bit farther along as the column-passed Catherine Furnace where the area all around

the complex had been cleared of timber, the Confederates were again spotted by federal

observers at Hazel Grove, as the rebels turned south to follow a road the furnace's

owner, Charles Wilford, had recently cut through the wilderness.

Stonewall Jackson had worried that the Federals might send scouts, or something worse, south

from Hazel Grove toward Catherine Furnace, so he detached a single regiment, the 23rd

Georgia, from the column, and had it take up a defensive position just north of the

...