We will press pause on the progression of events, and zoom into some of the lives caught up in those events

We will slow down and parse the increasing volume of dispatches related to Lauderdale County, Alabama, in the context of the Civil War in the western theatre. Any information may yet prove crucial, and no one knew where the tide would turn next.

*This is my first episode I've recorded since Spotify eliminated mobile recording. The sound may be different than what you're used to. Feedback will be appreciated as I consider how best to adapt to the transition.

We will examine the events of a very tense five days at the start of 1864, as General Croxton cautiously watches the alarming Confederate movements at the Shoals, Federal high command scramble to make sense of the developments, and local people find themselves caught up in the events in surprising ways.

We will examine the details of Hood's movements from October 29 to November 1, 1864, culminating in the Confederates establishing a foothold at Florence, and the at times awkward Federal response. We will hear from surprisingly detailed and insightful first-person sources to these movements who witnessed it all.

We will follow the frustrated and often inscrutable events that placed General John Bell Hood at Decatur, Alabama in the last week of October 1864.

We will examine the tense time between the end of the pursuit of Forrest and the movement of General Hood out of Georgia toward the Shoals. We'll see how reaction, contingency, uncertainty and strategy all coalesced to lay the groundwork for the Shoals to find itself centerstage in the drama to come

We will follow Forrest from Elk River to his incredibly daring crossing of the Tennessee at Florence, as he continues his destructive path throughout Middle Tennessee - with wide reaching and unintended consequences.

We will explore the swift and stunning movement of General Forrest north of the Tennessee River late in September 1864, as the surprised and skeletal Federal garrisons scramble to meet the threat, with disastrous results

We will learn the fate of Atlanta and follow General Wheeler's retreat out of Middle Tennessee and across the Tennessee River at the Shoals. We'll see how the Federals were mired in misinformation, surrounded by disparate rebel groups everywhere they looked, and how local people were impacted by these events. *correction: At minute mark 17:49 I stated incorrectly that Rowett's regiment was the 9th Illinois. In fact it was the 7th Illinois.