The Jessie Scouts

This is the story of the young scouts during the turbulent last year of the American Civil War and it is centered on the relationship with their principal agent, Rebecca Wright, a young Quaker schoolteacher living in Winchester, Virginia.  Recruited indirectly by Thomas Laws, an elderly slave and produce farmer who served as Sheridan's courier into the Confederate town, Rebecca Wright sent key information to Sheridan that helped him plan the attack that captured Winchester while removing a potential threat to Washington, D.C., during the crucial 1864 presidential election period.

The scouts in this book were all real, as was Rebecca Wright, and the stories of their hazardous operations were derived from actual accounts of their activities that were recorded in a series of letters written to his parents by scout Arch Rowand.  These courageous scouts continued to serve long after the victory at Appomattox and the account of their final and disastrous scouting into Mexico in late 1866 is based on actual records.