Throughout 1863 and 1864, Confederate guerrilla leader John Singleton Mosby and his intrepid Rangers, “the South’s most dangerous men” terrorized the Northern troops in the area surrounding the Shenandoah Valley, known as “Mosby’s Confederacy.”
Never more than a few hundred highly disciplined courageous men, they tied down tens of thousands of Federal troops, cut Union supply lines, captured generals, and pioneered a form of warfare that, had the South adopted it on a larger scale, would have prolonged the Civil War and perhaps resulted in a different outcome.
Guerilla Warfare, Civil War, Albert Bierstadt (1862). Century Association, New York City
One of Mosby’s most valuable Rangers was originally a Union traitor: Sergeant James Foster Ames. The muscular Ames, who later earned the nickname “Big Yankee,” was a thirty-year-old sailor from Bangor, Maine, with dark hair and piercing blue eyes. In February 1863 after deserting from the 5th New York, Ames somehow found Mosby and his men at Blackwell Farm, located near Upperville, VA. He manifested a passionate hatred for the Union government and the officers in his command and would later reveal his disdain for Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation.
An excellent judge of character, Mosby believed Ames’ story but still needed to verify his fealty. The Union deserter did not have a mount, so Ames’ first test was to go back to his old command, unarmed, and steal a horse. Still dressed in Union blue, Ames and another young man in “full Confederate uniform” who also wanted to join the Rangers covertly “entered the camp of the 5th New York Cavalry at night on foot and [rode] out on two of the finest horses they could find in the stables.” The other men still harbored suspicions, but Ames eventually won them over through ruthless conduct. While on one mission, he ran into a Union trooper from his command who, unaware that Ames had deserted, greeted him: “How are you, Sergeant Ames?”
“Well,” Ames responded, then shot the man dead. Mosby later wrote of the Yankee deserter, “He seemed to burn with an implacable feeling of revenge toward his old companions in arms. I never had a truer or more devoted follower.”
The full story of Big Yankee Ames and Mosby’s other remarkable Rangers is told in my new 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 book reveals the drama of irregular guerrilla warfare that altered the course of the Civil War, including the story of Lincoln’s special forces who donned Confederate gray to hunt Mosby and his Confederate Rangers from 1863 to the war’s end at Appomattox—a previously untold story that inspired the creation of U.S. modern special operations in World War II as well as the story of the Confederate Secret Service. The book gives a ground-breaking fresh perspective on the Civil War.
Ames proved his invaluable worth to Mosby countless times, but one of the first was when Mosby took his Rangers on one of his most audacious missions deep into Northern territory, guarded so heavily that “no one dreamed of the possibility of an enemy approaching them” in order to kidnap a high-ranking Northern officer that had been plaguing him. Mosby did not communicate the nature of the mission to any of his men except Ames, who only weeks earlier had been a member of the Union Army. Mosby would place his entire trust in this deserter and rely on him to get his men through Union checkpoints, skirting the camps of literally thousands of sleeping Union soldiers.
Mosby wrote of Ames, “Without being able to give any satisfactory reason for it, I felt an instinctive trust in his fidelity, which he never betrayed.” Ames had his own unique sense of integrity, like Mosby who eventually became a Republican after the war’s end and so many other men who had to pick sides in a war that split families and pitted brother against brother. While riding toward the Battle of Gettysburg to reinforce General Robert E. Lee, Ames told a fellow Ranger, “Well, I am going with you, but I will not fire a shot. When the Emancipation Proclamation was issued and I saw the war was for the negro and not for the Union, I joined the South, and am willing to fight to repel the invasion of her soil and am willing to give my life in her defense, but I will not fight on Northern soil.”
For Ames, war was kill or be killed—if captured, he knew he would be executed on the spot for desertion and the path of Union dead bodies he left in his wake. A year and a half in the saddle riding into the heart of the Ranger’s fiercest engagements hardened the New Englander into a ruthless and efficient killer.
Eventually, Ames met his end, likely from the bullet of a lone Jessie Scout, one of Lincoln’s Special Forces wearing a Confederate uniform. Ames’ men heard the pop from the Jessie Scout’s weapon, saw the smoke rising, and spotted Ames’ riderless horse running down the lane from the nearby house. One Ranger caught the animal, and several others galloped toward the house, where they saw the Jessie Scout’s horse tied at the gate. They quietly approached to find him rifling through Ames’ pocket and called out, “Are you a Yankee?”
The Jessie Scout jumped up and shouted “no” but ran down toward his horse. One of the Rangers dismounted and ran after the Scout and shot him as he tried unsuccessfully to vault over a fence. The Rangers tearfully buried their thirty-eight-year-old comrade in arms, a Union traitor who had proven loyal to them to the end.
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 new bestselling 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, currently in the front display of 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 @combathistorian
