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That's the Explorers Podcast. The Hey, everyone. Welcome to episode 504 of our Civil War podcast. I'm Rich.

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

With this episode, we'll continue setting the stage for the start of the Atlanta campaign.

And we're spending some time doing this because the background story is not only

necessary information to understand the campaign, but the build-up to the campaign is really a

fascinating story in and of itself. So we decided to go back to the start of the year,

the start of 1864, that is, and work our way up

to the beginning of the campaign in May. So far, we've talked about how critically important

the 1864 campaigns would be for the North, both psychologically and politically, with the upcoming

presidential election looming on the horizon

that November. And of course, the flip side of that same coin was the importance of the 1864

campaigns for the Confederates, as far as winning the independence of their Southern slave-holding

Republic. And we talked about how, as the calendar turned over from 1863 to 1864,

the Federals on the Chattanooga Front were working to sort out their supply situation

and get the railroads behind the lines working with maximum efficiency.

Meanwhile, the Confederates, who had retreated to Dalton in northwestern Georgia, after the

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