This episode of the podcast is dedicated to the memory of my grandpa,

Staff Sergeant Alan Birdy, who served as a combat infantryman in the United States Army

during World War II, European Theatre of Operations.

Hey everyone, thanks for tuning into episode number 45 of our Civil War podcast.

My name is Rich. And I'm Tracy. Hello y'all, welcome to the podcast.

As promised, this will be the first of several episodes that we'll use to look at the

three combat arms in which Civil War soldiers served. The infantry, cavalry, and artillery.

Right, because although we've already started in on the actual battles,

we thought this would be a good time to hit the pause button, so to speak,

and take a look at how the war was fought by the Union and Confederate soldiers.

And so we're going to take some time to focus in on how the infantrymen,

cavalrymen, and artillerymen of both sides fought the war.

And just so you know, we'll also do an episode in the near future that looks at why the soldiers fought.

In that episode, we'll look at what motivated Northern soldiers to enlist and fight for the Union,

and we'll look at what motivated Southern soldiers to enlist and fight for the Confederacy.

But we wanted to treat why they fought as a separate topic.

So like Rich said, right now we're going to look at how the soldiers of both sides fought the war.

To start off, let's throw some numbers at you.

Because you may want to know that some three million Americans took up arms during the four years of the Civil War,

with Union armies holding a more than two to one advantage in numbers over their Confederate opponents.

In April 1861, when the first shots of the war were fired at Fort Sumter,

the United States Army stood at a total strength of just over 16,000 officers and men.

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