Description: Award-winning Civil War cavalry historian Eric J. Wittenberg tells the story of the Battle of Aiken in both tactical and strategic detail for the first time.
Brief description: Colonel (Ret.) Wade Sokolosky is a graduate of East Carolina University and a 25-year veteran of the U.S. Army. Wade is the co-author (with Mark A. Smith) of "To Prepare for Sherman's Coming" The Battle of Wise's Forks, March 1865, and author of North Carolina's Confederate Hospitals, 2 vols., and Final Roll Call: Confederate Losses during the Carolinas Campaign.
Review Quotes:
Like a good cavalryman, Eric Wittenberg's sharp eye remains on the lookout for something new, something vital, something that stands out. He finds it in the battle of Aiken--an early engagement in the Carolinas Campaign that saw two seasoned cavalry forces clash in an urban environment. Wittenberg applies his formidable cavalry expertise to a battle that's been long overlooked but which had enormous implications at the time, shedding important new light on Sherman's march and the last struggling months of the Confederacy.
-- Chris Mackowski, Ph.D., Editor-in-Chief, Emerging Civil War
The bloody but pyrrhic cavalry battle in the streets of Aiken, South Carolina, was the only significant Confederate victory during William Tecumseh Sherman's 1865 drive through the Carolinas. No scholar is more equipped to describe the intense fighting, the larger-than-life participants, and the portentous consequences than Eric Wittenberg. Five or Ten Minutes of Blind Confusion is the definitive, blow-by-blow account of that collision from the dean of Civil War cavalry historians. It is a wise and welcome addition to the military history of the war.
--Kenneth W. Noe, Draughon Professor of Southern History, Auburn University and author of Perryville: This Grand Havoc of Battle
There are some late-war actions that have an outsize influence on war's end and its aftermath but get largely forgotten afterward. The Battle of Aiken is one of those actions - both impacting the South Carolina campaign but also producing a dramatic story of cavalry conflict. Eric Wittenberg is an authority on Civil War cavalry operations and a master storyteller, and his expert pen brings Aiken out of the shadows and back into its rightful place as a key moment in early 1865.
--Christopher L. Kolakowski, Chief Historian, Emerging Civil War