Hey everyone, welcome to the 43rd episode of our

Civil War Podcast. My name is Rich. And I'm Tracy. Hello y'all. Welcome to the

podcast. In the last episode, we followed a bit of a rabbit trail into the

future to see what happened to Arlington, the home of Robert E. Lee and his

family. So we hope y'all enjoyed that show. And this time we return to Virginia

where we'll start off once again in the northeast part of the state near

Washington DC. But then we will end this episode out in the western part of the

state in the section that eventually splits off and becomes West Virginia. On

May 28, 1861, a few days after Union forces secured that foothold on the

Virginia side of the Potomac River across from Washington DC, Brigadier General

Irvin McDowell crossed the river to formally assume command of the Department of

North Eastern Virginia. While the federal soldiers drilled and also labored at

building the line of for fortifications that would protect the approaches to

the capital city, McDowell went to work organizing the regiments of his

growing army into three brigades. To command them, he selected regular army

kernels, Samuel Heinselman, Charles P. Stone and David Hunter, all of whom had

previously outranked him. McDowell was also a regular army officer, but he'd

recently been promoted. He had jumped straight from major to Brigadier General.

Exactly. And we should maybe explain why on the podcast we keep talking about

regular army officers and about soldiers in the regular army. So, well, with

the build up of Union forces at the start of the war, the regular U.S. Army was

expanded, but it still remained relatively small compared to the huge number of

...