Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1912 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IX. THE JESSIE SCOUTS. There was not a home within Mosby's Confederacy where the name of the Jessie Scouts was not spoken with bated breath. They came and vanished; there was a mystery about them that could not be fathomed; the crying children were threatened into silence by them, as were the bairns of the Scottish Lowlands hushed by their mothers telling them that Black Douglas would catch them. They were an organized Union band from the frontier--scouts, or rather spies, picked men, cool, fearless and utterly merciless. They dressed up in the Confederate uniform, and operated inside our lines; their chief aim was to kill dispatch-bearers, and send the papers to the Federal headquarters; also do all the harm they could to the Rebels. They were not regularly enlisted men, and examination at the War Department shows that they were not borne on the rolls of the army, but Mr. Staunton, Secretary of War, had a vast Secret Service fund at his disposal, and they must have been highly paid, for the risks they ran were so great that no ordinary men would undergo them for either love or money. This outlaw organization was named for Jessie Fremont, the brilliant wife of General Fremont, who commanded a detachment of U. S. Dragoons on the frontier of the Far West in the fifties. Mrs. Fremont was of the dashing type of woman, a splendid horsewoman, a good shot, and often accompanied her husband on his campaigns against the Indians of the plains. She was the idol of the troops and the backwoodsmen, and a shining light in society in Washington in 1861 and 1862, when her husband commanded the army in the Valley until he went down in defeat and oblivion betore Stonewall Jackson. The living survivors of Longstreet's Corps, who, in that...
