Intelligence.02: An American Army

It's May 1864 and the Union has entered its fourth year of war against the Confederacy. President Abraham Lincoln has fired yet another general and is looking for an officer who will take the fight to the rebels. Enter Major General Ulysses S. Grant, the Hero of Vicksburg, and the type of general Lincoln knows will change the direction of the war in favor of the Union.

Promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General -- a rank only held in wartime by George Washington -- Lincoln tasks Grant with the job of leading all Union troops against the Confederate Army.

Grant wasted no time in forming a new aggressive strategy that will attack the Confederacy from five different directions and take him, the new commander of the Army of the Potomac, into the field to face General Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia.

Howdy, I am Kyle Bondo, a US Navy veteran, resident of Fredericksburg, Virginia, and amateur civil war history buff, inviting you to join me for my new podcast - War Yankee.

Follow me as I explore the history of the American Civil War beginning with Grant's Overland Campaign of May/June 1864. Why am I starting in the middle of the war? Because I live in Fredericksburg, Virginia, where the 40+ days of fighting started only a few miles away from my house at the Battle of the Wilderness, and then tore through my backyard into Spotsylvania Courthouse before concluding 80 miles to the south at Petersburg, Virginia.

To make this podcast, I actually walked the path of destruction from Culpeper to Petersburg, Virginia, and stood where General Grant and the brave soldiers of the Army of the Potomac stood, 156 years ago. I now truly understand what it took the Union Army, in both courage and sacrifice, to end slavery once and for all, and ultimately reunite the United States of America.

War Yankee - Overland is my American Civil War history podcast created by me, Kyle Bondo, and produced by Gagglepod. I hope you can join me as I follow the history hiding in my own backyard.