The Battle of Ox Hill

He Hath Loosed the Fateful Lightning:
The Battle of Ox Hill

"The Battle of Ox Hill was a nasty, rain-soaked night action, which cost the Union Army two of its popular and more aggressive field generals - Philip Kearny and Isaac Stevens. He Hath Loosed the Fateful Lightning has preserved in detail for future generations the fateful, yet forgotten, battle between Second Manassas and the Maryland Campaign. It belongs on the shelf of every serious student of the Civil War in the East." John Michael Priest, author of Before Antietam: The Battle for South Mountain and Into the Fight: Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg

"Paul Taylor has produced here as complete a history of Chantilly as we are likely to get and to need. His research has been solid." James I. Robertson, Alumni Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech in Richmond Times Dispatch

"A meticulous, exhaustively researched, blow-by-blow recounting and reconstruction, He Hath Loosed the Fateful Lightning is an impressive and enthusiastically recommended addition to any personal, academic, or community library Civil War Studies collection." Midwest Book Review

"The narrative is well-written and supplemented by informative footnotes. Photographs and drawings are placed well, and the maps are excellent....Chantilly may be a battle that lasted only a few hours, has a disputed name and is lost to preservation, but readers now have more than the customary paragraph hitherto used to describe it."
Civil War News

"Paul Taylor has done a tremendous job in presenting this overlooked but extremely important battle that too often gets caught up as a one or two paragraph afterthought of the Second Manassas Campaign." from Amazon.com

"Anyone interested in the Second Manassas Campaign or Phil Kearny & Isaac Stevens will enjoy this book."
American Civil War Gaming and Reading

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Published in 2003 by White Mane Publishers of Shippensburg, Pa.
6" x 9", 180 pages, 42 illustrations, 8 maps, bibliography, index

Spectacular displays of lightning, thunder crashing so loud that it masked the roar of the cannon, a torrential downpour with gale-force winds; these were the hallmarks of the fateful September 1, 1862, battle of Ox Hill. He Hath Loosed the Fateful Lightning presents to the reader a full-scale treatment of this little-known engagement, fought two days after the slaughter of Second Bull Run and only twenty miles west of Washington D.C. Outnumbered almost three to one, Union divisions under Generals Isaac Stevens and Philip Kearny staged heroic flanking attacks into Stonewall Jackson's fatigued Confederates, catching them considerably off guard in the process. The brief affair helped to save the Union capital from possible rebel attack, but at a steep price. Fought partially in the dark and in conditions that rendered the bayonet much more than an ornamental weapon, Ox Hill became in the words of one participant, "a terrific, horrible, phantasmagoria," whose nightmarish memories were never forgotten by those who survived. Utilizing extensive unpublished and uncommon primary source material, He Hath Loosed the Fateful Lightning tells the story of this crucial and deadly engagement through the eyes of its combatants.