Intelligence.03: Rifleman First

01/17/23 • 20 min

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Overview

It's May 4th, 1864 — You are a soldier in the Army of the Potomac marching towards the Rapidan River and into The Wilderness -- a 70-mile tract of thickets and dense forest that only a year before had been the location of this same armies defeat at the Battle of Chancellorsville. Before you cross the floating bridge over the Rapidan River that will later be torn up so that you cannot use it again to retreat... you may ask yourself... How did I get here?

Quotes

“It's just like shooting squirrels, only these squirrels have guns.”

— Federal Veteran instructing Recruits in Rifleman Skills, America Goes to War by Bruce Catton

Overview

Quotes

“It's just like shooting squirrels, only these squirrels have guns.”

— Federal Veteran instructing Recruits in Rifleman Skills, America Goes to War by Bruce Catton

Previous Episode

Intelligence.02: An American Army

Overview
It's May 4th, 1864 — You are a soldier in the Army of the Potomac marching towards the Rapidan River and into The Wilderness -- a 70-mile tract of thickets and dense forest that only a year before had been the location of this same armies defeat at the Battle of Chancellorsville. Before you cross the floating bridge over the Rapidan River that will later be torn up so that you cannot use it again to retreat... you may ask yourself... How did I get here?

Quotes
“I am greatly obliged to you, and to all who have come forward at the call of their country.”

— President Abraham Lincoln

Next Episode

Intelligence.04: Ring Knockers

Overview

It's May 1864, You are an officer in the Army of the Potomac during the first week of the Overland Campaign leading men into The Wilderness against the Confederacy. As you struggle to maneuver your soldiers in a straight enough line to engage the rebels within this 70-square-mile tract of thickets and dense forest... you may ask yourself... How did I get here?

Quotes

"Let no man be so rash as to suppose that in donning a general’s uniform, he is forthwith competent to perform a general’s functions."

— Prof. Dennis Hart Mahan, USMA (1824-1871)

"[I] hail the day [I] left public office as the happiest of my life, except possibly the day I left West Point, a place I felt I had been at always and that my stay had no end."

— Lt.Gen. Ulysses S. Grant (1871)

"I was always a friend of southern rights but an enemy of southern wrongs."

— Maj.Gen. Benjamin Butler (1861)