By the time Union Jessie Scout Jack Sterry, also known as Lincoln’s Special Forces, delivered his final thoughts, a lonesome roadside signal sits by a winding Virginia state smaller. He tried to steer the Confederate army away from a time when it was vitally needed through his devious. The sign is where I accidentally stumbled upon it. The indicator, which turned out to be a doorway into an incredible untold story, was discovered by another book.
On the terrible morning of August 28, 1862, the youthful guide, who was dressed in the chestnut of a Rebel infantry officer, “gracefully saluted and pointed north” said,” This manner, General Hood.” General John Bell Hood” stopped his column and carefully examined the guide, feeling sure that he had made a mistake.” Despite this, it seems as though the author may remain accurate. He was brilliant, convinced, certain, certain of his directions, and swift and evident in his replies”.
At the Second Battle of Bull run, General Stonewall Jackson’s Southern army had marched up the road to Manassas via Thoroughfare Gap. ” The situation was important, no need of conflict could be more so. The death of a strategy was in the balance, not just the outcome of a fight.
The link urged Hood to take the road north away from the field, where he claimed General Jackson was retreating.
” Did General Jackson himself give you these directions”? asked Hood.
” Yes, General. Stonewall Jackson’s railways, General. He is pushing them toward Aldie, where I supposed you would add him”, responded the link.
” I have heard little of all this”! cried a stunned helmet.
” Then I’ll show you what it is, General Hood, those wicked Jessie Scout are at it again! —cutting off Stuart’s shippers! Johnson has n’t heard from Longstreet since yesterday morning, and he’s worried that Thoroughfare Gap will try to follow the old order and join him there.
” How did you learn all these stuff”? General Hood continued to question the guide, but he was “hardly wary of treachery because the guide was so formulaic, completely, and unconstrained.”
” I am Frank Lamar, of Athens, Georgia, enrolled with the army of Hampton’s Army, but presently detailed on mail service at the office of Stonewall Jackson”.
The entire details of this amazing tale are told in my bestselling book, The Unvanquished: The Untold Story of Lincoln’s Special Forces, the Manhunt for Mosby’s Rangers, and the Shadow War That Forged America’s Special Operations. The guide details the play of the unfathomable tale of Confederate guerrilla war that shaped the Civil War, as well as the tale of Abraham Lincoln’s special forces who hunted Mosby and his Confederate Rangers from 1863 until the battle’s end at Appomattox, which was the inspiration for the establishment of modern special operations in the United States during World War II. The Confederate Secret Service is also the subject of the book.
The guide proceeded to tell a story of how to impress a girl that he had deserted from the infantry and captured a horse, and his real name was Harry Brooks, when a message down the line demanded that the colonel commanding the Hampton Legion immediately report to the crossroads.
Despite diligent questioning, “many of us remained convinced that the guide was a real man,” until a fatally wounded Confederate scout was discovered who later revealed that he had been” shot by one of our own men”! and his dispatches stolen. The guide was immediately in everyone’s sights. Unshaken, the Jessie Scout boldly declared:
” Stop! I’ve got three more words for you. I am neither Frank Lamar, of Georgia nor Harry Brooks, of Virginia. I am Jack Sterry, of the Jessie Scouts. I fought alongside those who did, but I did not kill that rebel. By this point, his dispatches are secure enough! I want to let my friends know that I spent the entire 45 minutes fighting with General Pope while the old Stonewall was being strewn down. Now men, I am ready! —and in parting, I will simply ask you to say, if you should ever speak of this, that Jack Sterry, when the rebels got him, died as a Jessie Scout should”!
Harper’s magazine: Alden, Henry Mills, 1836- 1919
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Jack Sterry tried to influence the course of events through his personal agency, and he sat at the right spot and at the right place. Sterry was a member of an extraordinary group of men. Often referred to as Jessie Scouts, they were named after the wife of Major General John Charles Frémont, an explorer and a politician. In 1856, he ran for president as the first Republican Party member from California. Frémont was in charge of the Department of the West at the start of the Civil War. Frémont organized the specialized group of operators at the start of the war in St. Louis and employed them in Missouri, which was engaged in guerrilla fighting, known as” the Pathfinder” for his pioneering missions that explored and mapped the West while fending off hostile Native Americans.
His wife, Jessie Ann Benton Frémont, was also the daughter of a U. S. Senator. The flaxen-haired beauty, who rubbed elbows with politicians and shared his political views, including being a staunch supporter of slavery, attended her father’s side as a child. Brilliant, powerful, charismatic, and a tremendous advocate for her husband, one admiring journalist of the time dubbed Jessie not only a “historic woman but the greatest woman in America”. In many circles, it was known Jessie “was the better man of the two”.
Reportedly, she first advised her husband’s Scouts to wear their enemies ‘ uniforms. Jessie, who had been living with her husband up until recently, frequently ran into these men. So they are currently enamored of her. They swear by her and put her initials in a very modest but coarse manner on their coats. In addition to embroidering her initials, they also adopted Jessie as their namesake.
Colt Navy and Army Revolvers and an 1860 Cavalry Saber Carried by Men in The Unvanquished. Patrick K. O’Donnell
In the spring of 1862, John Charles Frémont reorganized the Mountain Department, which was located in southwest Virginia and what would become West Virginia, with the help of men who were knowledgeable about rugged terrain and guerrilla warfare. The foundations of American special operations and unconventional warfare would be profoundly affected by the adaptation of some of their fighting strategies and the American West’s taming of conflict with Native Americans. According to one contemporary, the Pathfinder “proceded following his notion derived from experience in the Western frontier.” He was aware that the accuracy with which he received information about the enemy’s plans and movements depended on how safe and effective his army would be in a remote, wooded, and rugged area. He at once called around him a set of Western frontiersmen, who had served all through the campaign in Missouri. Some had been in the border wars of Kansas, some served long years on the Plains, hunting the buffalo and the Indian, men accustomed to every form of hardship, thoroughly skilled, not only in the use of the rifle, but drilled in all cunning ways and devices to discover the intentions, position, and strength of a foe. The Jessie Scouts, a small group that made the best of these men, were chosen and assigned to them.
Members of the U. S. Army, civilians, and later even a turncoat former Confederate cavalry trooper, the Scouts morphed into the enemy, taking on their uniforms, accents, and mannerisms:” He seems a Tennessean, a Georgian, an Irishman, a German—anything indeed but what he really is”, recalled one contemporary. The Jessie Scouts used false backgrounds to impersonate men and learn convincing cover tales to portray themselves as the enemy to pass off as Confederates. The story of the founding of the current American special operations forces also includes the previously untold tale of these covert warriors who lived decades before their time.
Patrick K. O’Donnell is a bestselling, critically- acclaimed military historian and an expert on elite units. He is the author of thirteen books, including , his forthcoming book on the Civil War The Unvanquished: The Untold Story of Lincoln’s Special Forces, the Manhunt for Mosby’s Rangers, and the Shadow War That Forged America’s Special Operations, which is currently in Barnes and Noble Stores nationwide. His other bestsellers include: The Indispensables,  , The Unknowns, and Washington’s Immortals.  , O’Donnell served as a combat historian in a Marine rifle platoon during the Battle of Fallujah and often speaks on espionage, special operations, and counterinsurgency. He has provided historical consulting for DreamWorks ‘ award- winning miniseries , Band of Brothers , and documentaries produced by the BBC, the History Channel, and Discovery. PatrickKODonnell.com ,
