He eventually became a pilot, leading Unionists, Confederate deserters, prison escapees, slaves, and all manner of fugitives through the mountains into Kentucky or wherever the Union lines would advance.

At the same time Ellis recruited for several regiments, provided information on Confederate activities to federal authorities, and maintained a mail service between mountain Unionists and their men in the Union army.

War in the mountains was a brutal, bloody, often lawless affair, and the likelihood for the survival of Ellis and his family was enhanced by his reputation for extraordinary viciousness when crossed.

As the war waned and his piloting duties were less in demand, he formally joined the Union army as captain of Company A, 13th Regiment, Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry.

After the war, trying to eke out a living in the war-savaged mountains and often the victim of his own altruistic nature, Ellis petitioned the U.S. Congress for compensation for his efforts on behalf of the Union.

Years later, writer James R. Gilmore ("Edmund Kirke") was shocked to find Ellis, whom he considered "the hero of the late war" living in obscurity and poverty in the east Tennessee mountains.

Today Ellis is hardly remembered outside of Carter County, with his legacy perhaps swept up in a healing repression of the horrors, cruelty, and upheaval of the Civil War in the Appalachian mountains.

[citation needed] Thrilling Adventures of Daniel Ellis remains in print and, despite its narrative excesses, is largely regarded as an invaluable, if highly partisan, accounting of conditions in wartime Appalachia.