Guerrillas in Their Midst

The history of the Civil War frequently is told through its biggest battles and personalities: the Battle of Bull Run. Antietam. Gettysburg. Abraham Lincoln. Jefferson Davis. U.S. Grant. Robert E. Lee
Certain big moments inevitably figure into the narrative. South Carolina’s secession. The attack on Fort Sumter. The Emancipation Proclamation. Booth’s assassination of Lincoln.
The Civil War was all that—and it was the first modern war, featuring ironclad ships, submarines, trains, and instantaneous communications via the telegraph.
But the War Between the States also very much was a story of small, often furtive machinations by individuals of less stature—most of whom are unknown to history. The Unvanquished, as Patrick K. O’Donnell terms them, were proto-special forces operatives who engaged in unconventional warfare to extraordinary effect.