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Black John Ambrose 2

"Black" John Ambrose (died 1865) was a Confederate bushwhacker and the leader of the 1st Missouri Irregulars during the American Civil War. He and his partisans took part in attacks on the Union Army along the Kansas-Missouri border before accompanying William Quantrill's raiders into Kansas and then Kentucky, where Ambrose was killed at the end of the war.

Biography[]

Black John Ambrose

Ambrose in 1862

John Ambrose was born in Missouri to a family of Southern farmers. At the start of the American Civil War, he assembled the 1st Missouri Irregulars, a unit of bushwhackers who would engage in banditry and ambushes targeting Unionists along the Missouri-Kansas border. This gang's activities included horse theft, the killing of Union Army soldiers, and the assassination of alleged Unionist collaborators. During the winter of 1862-1863, the gang was isolated and nearly destroyed by the Union Army, leading Ambrose to consolidate his unit with Quantrill's Raiders. On 13 August 1863, Ambrose lost three of his womenfolk when the Women's Prison in Kansas City collapsed, and a vengeful Ambrose participated in William Quantrill's raid on Lawrence, Kansas, which devolved into a massacre of Unionist civilians and the burning of the town. Ambrose came to doubt the loyalty of his once-favorite subordinate, Jake Roedel, after Pitt Mackeson informed him that Roedel had gotten in his way when he tried to murder a family of restaurant owners; Ambrose warned Roedel against thinking that he was a good man, as doing so would get in the way of his duty.

Over the next few years, Ambrose and his Irregulars found themselves hunted down. Quantrill was killed in Kentucky, and Black John was killed at Dover across the river. Ambrose's severed head was impaled on a pole and displayed in town, and a photograph of his head was published in Unionist papers.

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