A Slight Demonstration is a 2007 book about the 1864 Civil War Battle of Decatur, a pivotal event in Confederate General John B.
Hood had intended to cross the Tennessee River to go to Nashville, where he planned to cut off the supply lines of Union General William T. Sherman, who had just taken Atlanta.
Carpenter provides the richest detail available to date about the engagement at Decatur, including the important contribution of the Fourteenth Colored Infantry, an African-American regiment whose brave action stalled Hood's forces long enough to effectively carry the day.
Carpenter died in 2000 at the age of 82, having devoted the last 12 years of his life to his book about the battle that took place in the town of his birth.
University of Arkansas professor Daniel E. Sutherland, Co-Editor of The Civil War in the West, a series from the University of Arkansas Press, has said, "I found Carpenter's account and analysis of events at Decatur thoroughly readable and quite convincing," and "I came away from his narrative believing that historians may, indeed, not have given events at Decatur their due.