Another Confederate cavalry raid impends. You hear the snort of an impatient horse, the leathery squeaking of saddles, the low-voiced commands of officers, the muffled cluck of guns cocked in preparation—then the sudden rush of motion, the din of another attack.

In this book Stephen B. Oates combines the factual accuracy of the scholar with a sympathetic imagination and a sense of color and drama in examining the development and activities of a hitherto unpublicized segment of the Confederate cavalry. He re-creates it not only as a fighting force engaged in producing facts and figures for the historian, but also as a group of men living and dying—men fighting a war.