Protected by their illustrious names and their wealthy connections, they more or less dabbled in war. They drank fine wines, ate exquisite food, and slept soundly in comfort while other soldiers contended with vermin, slop and raw death. At least, this was the situation until the 1864 Battle of Haw's Shop, a turning point in the history of the Charleston Light Dragoons, in which a few of them saw real war for the first time. They served, but they served to bring further esteem to their own privileged class of great planters and merchants, the very people whose fortunes were built by slave labor. Emerson, and historian and journalist, describes this unique situation as the real war decimated their ranks and eroded their fortunes, leaving the few to scrape up a living and perpetuate the stories about the noblemen who defended the ways of the South. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)