Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in to episode 64 of our Civil War podcast.

My name is Rich.

And I'm Tracey.

Hello y'all, welcome to the podcast.

Before we get rolling, we wanted to let you guys know that at the end of this show, there

will be a special announcement.

And not to give anything away, but it has to do with world peace and puppies.

No, it doesn't.

Tracey's right.

It's even better than world peace and puppies.

But you guys will just have to stay tuned till the end of the episode to find out what the

special announcements really about.

For right now, let's get to the real business at hand, which is Mayhem in Missouri.

In the early days of the Civil War, both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis were acutely

sensitive to the critical balance of allegiances in the states of Kentucky and Missouri.

Both leaders realized that the key to success in the Western theater of the war would belong

to whoever could hold those crucial states.

And significantly, Kentucky and Missouri were the only slave states beyond the Appalachian

Mountains that hadn't declared themselves for one side or the other in the aftermath

of the attack on Fort Sumter.

And in Missouri and Kentucky, loyalties were so precariously balanced that the two states

could go either way with momentous results.

...