I'm John Batchel with my friend and colleague, Patrick O'Donnell.

His new book is The Unvanquished, the story of the Civil War from the point of view, as one very smart reviewer said,

the saddle. We're in the saddle. We're not in the tents of the commanders.

We're not in Washington in the Congress or at the White House. We're in the saddle. We're not in the tents of the commanders. We're not in Washington in the Congress or at the White House. We're in the saddle. On the move. If we're going to West Virginia,

which is a new state in 1863, Patrick introduces to Richard Blazer.

Richard Blazer is one of the most unlikely heroes of the Civil War.

He's a, he drives a, in the Ohio River, a barge that delivers supplies before the war.

Richard Blazer joins the war, but he has this kind of knack for hunting people.

And he's a flop on the parade ground.

This guy's uniform is always disheveled.

His buttons are unbuttoned.

And he has kind of one eye that doesn't see it wanders.

But he's absolutely brilliant.

And he leads from the front.

And he's in charge of a small group of men, a company that would become known as Blazers' Scouts or the Legion of Honor.

And they are linked to John C. Carpenter's Jesse Scouts, because many of those men that

were disbanded become part of his unit. And they utilize

the tradecraft of the Jesse Scouts, which is to, like a portion of the group always rides in

front and they're always wearing Confederate uniforms. But they are manhunters. And this is the first

modern hunter-killer team in the U.S. Army that goes after

partisans. But they don't use a blowtorch. This is fine detective work. Richard Blazer is always

interviewing anybody that he sees. It could be a young, the young African-American slave. It could be a

...