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Hello, this is Matt and McKinley from History Dispatches.

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or wherever you get your podcast app. Hey everyone. Thanks for tuning in to episode number 491 of our Civil War podcast.

My name is Rich.

And I'm Tracy.

Hello, y'all.

Welcome to the podcast.

As y'all will recall in what has really been one big continuing story arc, encompassing events in Virginia in the spring of 1864.

So far, we've covered the wilderness and Spotsylvania and also the collapse of Grant's peripheral strategy.

In war, when embarking on a course of action, a good commander will contemplate many contingencies or

possibilities and how he'll react to them. And Ulysses S. Grant had contemplated the possibility

of making another slide around Robert E's flank days before it became necessary to do so.

And therefore, he could respond immediately to the news that Siegel had been defeated

out in the Shenandoah Valley, and Butler had allowed himself to be bottled up down in

Bermuda, 100. Grant knew those failures in other parts of Virginia would result in Confederate forces being

...