Shortly afterward scout James White made his way back after ‘deserting’ from Harry Gilmor’s Southern command, where he had been gathering information on the guerrillas. By this time, Mosby had been seriously wounded and Sheridan was concerned that Gilmor would take his place.

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Young’s scouts made intelligence sweeps through the region, turning up information that Gilmor would soon be holding a recruiting meeting in Moorefield, W.Va. Sheridan ordered 20 of Young’s scouts to lead 300 men commanded by Lt. Col. Edward Whitaker to capture the brazen Rebel.

On February 5, the Union soldiers entered Moorefield before daybreak during a snow squall. The scouts, as usual, posed as Rebels and located the Confederate headquarters three miles south of town. After dashing over fields, the Federals came to the home suspected to be the headquarters. Young knocked on the front door, and when it was opened by a black woman who worked there, he asked what soldiers were in the house. She at once replied, ‘Major Gilmor is upstairs.’

Gilmor later recalled that his bedroom door’suddenly opened, and five men entered with drawn pistols, and, although dressed as Confederates, I saw at a glance what they were . . . . My attention was arrested by feeling the muzzle of a pistol against my head . . . . ‘ In a few moments the scouts were hustling their captives northward.

The scouts’ success continued that day when they snared Rebel irregular leader Captain George Stump at his brother’s nearby home. Stump tried to pass himself off as his brother, but he was found out and tersely told he was going to be killed then and there. Instead of a rope or a knife, which Stump had been known to use on helpless prisoners, they would give him a 50-yard lead across the field. A scout recalled: ‘Captain Stump smiled, rode out, and we gave him the word `Go.’ We allowed him about ten rods start, then our pistols cracked, and he fell forward dead.’

The next major actions the scouts participated in were in the James River, Petersburg and Appomattox campaigns between February and April 1865. Grant ordered the James River expedition, wanting Sheridan to sever all major communication and supply links connecting the besieged Confederate army at Richmond and Petersburg with the Shenandoah Valley and points south.

Lynchburg, more than 100 miles west of Richmond and about 150 road miles south of Winchester, was the first strategic point that Grant directed Sheridan to seize. The railroads that intersected there, the James River Canal and regional military depots were to be destroyed. The Union valley commander’s scouts kept him well posted on every aspect of Early’s dispositions in the upper valley all winter long. The Confederate leader had several cantonments scattered in that region, with Staunton serving as a central connecting point.

During this time, Sheridan’s force was reorganized and he was put in overall command of Grant’s cavalry. On February 28, Sheridan’s men broke camp, and the scouts were soon in a fight outside New Market with Maj. Gen. Thomas Rosser’s Confederate cavalry. Years later, Rowand remembered that ‘at New Market we went after General Rosser and his escort, and Campbell was so reckless at that fight I asked him if he thought he could whip the whole Southern Confederacy himself.’ Camp was made at Lacey Spring, just north of Harrisonburg, and the march was resumed in the rainy weather, with small groups of irregulars pestering the Union flanks.

On March 1, the Federals passed through Harrisonburg, following the Valley Turnpike. The Rebels tried to use the swollen condition of the major watercourses to their advantage when Rosser’s few hundred cavalry attempted to obstruct and burn the bridge over the North Fork of the Shenandoah River at Mount Crawford. The scouts aggressively engaged the Confederates and alerted the nearest brigade commander to the blocked bridge. Two Union cavalry regiments swam across the river, outflanked the dismounted opposition and drove them pell-mell toward Staunton, which the Federals occupied on March 2. Then Sheridan decided to change course and momentarily forgo capturing Lynchburg to go after the remnants of Early’s Army of the Valley at Waynesboro, 12 miles to the southeast.

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