"Your readers have been informed by telegraph of the recent raids of immense forces of rebel guerrillas along our whole line at different points, . . . in which the rebels were driven back; but this . . . leaves the impression that it was but an ordinary affair. Instead of its being a skirmish, it was one of the fiercest and most brilliant little battles yet recorded in this fearful struggle for constitutional liberty."

Thus wrote Durante Bailey, a special correspondent for the Chicago Times, in September 1862, about the battle of Britton's Lane, the culminating event in a military campaign known as Armstrong's Raid.

This book emphasizes the men, North and South, who rode down the dust-choked roads and died in the unharvested farm fields on a summer day more than one hundred and fifty years ago. They fought and died, not in the glare of public view, but in a forgotten campaign in a remote area of the country . . .; however, their sacrifice was no less than any other person who fought in that sectional conflict.