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Thrilling Adventures Of Daniel Ellis, The Great Union Guide Of East Tennessee, During The Rebellion
Thrilling Adventures Of Daniel Ellis, The Great Union Guide Of East Tennessee, During The Rebellion by Daniel Ellis. In this autobiographical work, Ellis recounts his life as a wagon-maker turned Unionist pilot during the Civil War, focusing on nearly four years of his adventures in East Tennessee as he guided thousands of Unionists and Federal troops through hostile mountains to safety and the Union lines. The narrative interweaves experiences from his Mexican War service, reflections on the causes and theories behind the rebellion (nullification, secession, and the right of revolution), and a relentless commitment to the Union cause. It portrays brutal rebel raids, massacres, and the suffering of loyalist refugees, while detailing routes across Cumberland Gap, Walling’s Ridge, Clinch Mountain, and along the Holston and Watauga rivers. The account blends personal memoir, historical incident, and moral commentary, offering a vivid panorama of frontier war, endurance, loyalty, and sacrifice in the Tennessee mountains.
- GenresHistory
454 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
About the author
Daniel Ellis
2 books1 followerDaniel Ellis (December 30, 1827 – January 6, 1908) was a captain in the Union Army during the American Civil War.
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February 16, 2009This is a great book. Let me say that I have never been attracted to this type but just reading the first few pages of this one has captured my mind. You feel as if you are with the author and seeing and experiencing our country during "The Great Southern rebellion. Here in this book you see things first hand. Truly exciting and on the edge of your seat wondering what is around the next bend for Mr. Daniel Ellis. I would recommend this book to anyone living in the United States to see and understand what was going on from an individual who was living at this time. It is a must read for students also to get a glimpse into the past.
November 11, 2022
My backyard
I currently participate in the Northeast Tennessee Civil War round table. This book was a suggested read from the leadership. I picked it up as soon as it was mentioned and dug into it immediately.
Our group has been tasked with cleaning up the Ellis Family graveyard of overgrowth in Carter County, Tennessee. So with permission from the family we'll be heading up to do that in the spring. I really wanted to get a feel for this Danielle Ellis before we went to the graveyard, and this book certainly did that. What an amazing man.
Northeast Tennessee residents were not southern sympathizers. They believed in the union, they believed in the country that was founded on Christian ethics. But much of Tennessee was overrun with Confederate soldiers who decided these northern sympathizers needed to be tortured, killed or conscripted.
Daniel Ellis was a pilot during the civil war. And by that I don't mean flying a plane, obviously. It's a man who leads endangered family men, often from their own hometowns (who’ve been in hiding for their lives), skirting rebel scouts who were always in search of men avoiding conscription, bringing them to a federal fort or encampment where they'd be safe, and be able to join the northern army if they desired. It was an extremely dangerous journey during difficult winters, running out of food as they traipised through rivers, over mountains and thickets, hundreds of miles on foot to reach their goal. Danger was in their way constantly as they were being hunted and shot at, even being captured once.
This is an autobiography by Daniel Ellis of all of his exploits during the Civil War. At the time of the writing, Jefferson Davis, the elected President of the South, was in a northern prison. Danielle Ellis loathed this man and hoped he would suffer the same sort of indignities, deprivation and cruelty his soldiers wrought on union men and their families.
This was an eye opener. I had no idea that Northeast Tennessee suffered at the hands of murderous, bloodthirsty Confederate soldiers as was represented within these pages, which also included two chapters detailing a massacre of a community (including children) in the mountains of North Carolina who just wished to remain neutral. Whew! Truly, truly awful.
I gave this book four stars instead of five because of the ghost writer who made the voice of Daniel Ellis far too eloquent, constantly throwing in quotes from philosophers and ancient literature, using run-on sentences that lasted whole paragraphs, often hard to understand. Daniel Ellis was not an educated man, at least not from school. He was very poor and worked hard all his life, so I don’t see him as using such philosophical verbiage used throughout this book. Personally I would’ve liked a more realistic language, southern mountain-man language, for that’s what he was.
Oh, and the errors in translating this very old book into Kindle form were so numerous (many per page) I quit making note of them and just pressed on. But I’m not downgrading the book for that reason. It’s not the author's fault. Just something to note should you read the Kindle version.
I currently participate in the Northeast Tennessee Civil War round table. This book was a suggested read from the leadership. I picked it up as soon as it was mentioned and dug into it immediately.
Our group has been tasked with cleaning up the Ellis Family graveyard of overgrowth in Carter County, Tennessee. So with permission from the family we'll be heading up to do that in the spring. I really wanted to get a feel for this Danielle Ellis before we went to the graveyard, and this book certainly did that. What an amazing man.
Northeast Tennessee residents were not southern sympathizers. They believed in the union, they believed in the country that was founded on Christian ethics. But much of Tennessee was overrun with Confederate soldiers who decided these northern sympathizers needed to be tortured, killed or conscripted.
Daniel Ellis was a pilot during the civil war. And by that I don't mean flying a plane, obviously. It's a man who leads endangered family men, often from their own hometowns (who’ve been in hiding for their lives), skirting rebel scouts who were always in search of men avoiding conscription, bringing them to a federal fort or encampment where they'd be safe, and be able to join the northern army if they desired. It was an extremely dangerous journey during difficult winters, running out of food as they traipised through rivers, over mountains and thickets, hundreds of miles on foot to reach their goal. Danger was in their way constantly as they were being hunted and shot at, even being captured once.
This is an autobiography by Daniel Ellis of all of his exploits during the Civil War. At the time of the writing, Jefferson Davis, the elected President of the South, was in a northern prison. Danielle Ellis loathed this man and hoped he would suffer the same sort of indignities, deprivation and cruelty his soldiers wrought on union men and their families.
This was an eye opener. I had no idea that Northeast Tennessee suffered at the hands of murderous, bloodthirsty Confederate soldiers as was represented within these pages, which also included two chapters detailing a massacre of a community (including children) in the mountains of North Carolina who just wished to remain neutral. Whew! Truly, truly awful.
I gave this book four stars instead of five because of the ghost writer who made the voice of Daniel Ellis far too eloquent, constantly throwing in quotes from philosophers and ancient literature, using run-on sentences that lasted whole paragraphs, often hard to understand. Daniel Ellis was not an educated man, at least not from school. He was very poor and worked hard all his life, so I don’t see him as using such philosophical verbiage used throughout this book. Personally I would’ve liked a more realistic language, southern mountain-man language, for that’s what he was.
Oh, and the errors in translating this very old book into Kindle form were so numerous (many per page) I quit making note of them and just pressed on. But I’m not downgrading the book for that reason. It’s not the author's fault. Just something to note should you read the Kindle version.
July 28, 2011
The adventures truly are thrilling, but I have a good mind to slap Captain Ellis's ghost-writer. Purple prose sprinkled into the tale of a daring mountain man who piloted loyal Tennesseans to freedom in Kentucky during the Civil War?
It's a good book, but it would have been much better had the ghost-writer allowed Captain Ellis to tell his own story.
It's a good book, but it would have been much better had the ghost-writer allowed Captain Ellis to tell his own story.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews