Blue Lightning

Book excerpt: With a potent combination of rapid-firing Spencer rifles, aggressive and determined leadership, and unlimited confidence in themselves, the soldiers of Colonel John T. Wilder's mounted Lightning Brigade -- so christened during the summer of 1863 -- solidified a reputation in the savage battle of Chickamauga as one of the Union Army's hardest fighting and most effective combat organizations. His five Indiana and Illinois regiments, along with Eli Lilly's Indiana Battery, confronted troops from five different Confederate brigades during three clays of fighting, and badly bloodied them all. In Blue Lightning, author Richard A. Baumgartner skillfully blends dozens of first-person narratives, including eyewitness accounts from 60 Lightning Brigade officers and enlisted men, with 156 photographs -- many of them never before published -- to vividly depict one major segment of this brigade's proud history during the Civil War.