Hey everyone, welcome to episode 267 of our Civil War podcast. My name is Rich.

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

As you guys were recall by the end of the last episode, Stonewall Jackson's flank attack

had stalled in darkness and confusion. The sun had said at 6.49 on that Saturday evening,

May 2, 1863. And although the moon was just one day short of being full,

its light filtering through the trees and the tangled woods produced thick shadows.

And as night settled upon the wilderness, each sound in every real or imagined glimps of movement

was, in the minds of jumpy soldiers, the enemy maneuvering somewhere nearby in the shadowy darkness.

As the moon rose in the sky and that eerie unsettling half light, half darkness

settled upon the wilderness, Stonewall Jackson continued to ride forward.

Nearing the old schoolhouse where a road from Hazel Grove joined the plank road,

he pulled up to take a message from Jeb Stewart, whose horsemen were scouting north toward Eli's Ford.

Jackson read the message, looked up and asked the courier. Do you know all of this country?

The young man, a 19-year-old private in the 9th Virginia cavalry named David Kyle,

had grown up on a farm just a mile away and had hunted throughout the wilderness.

This was literally his backyard and so he assured Stonewall that he did know the area.

Keep along with me, Jackson ordered Kyle.

With Kyle and his staff, Stonewall continued east on the plank road, passing Heath's brigade

and then catching up to Lane's troops.

You see as part of AP Hills Division, the brigades of Harry Heath, Dorsey Pender, and James Lane

had trailed behind the first two Confederate lines, which were made up of the divisions of Robert Rhodes and Raleigh Holsten.

But with Rhodes and Colston's lines getting increasingly jumbled up and confused in the tangled terrain and growing darkness,

...